There’s a quiet sorrow in realizing that our grandparents carried a kind of completeness we’ve slowly misplaced. They could fix a door, write a poem, chop wood, raise children, and still show up for work the next morning—whole humans with whole skill sets. Today, everything feels narrower. We specialize, then sub-specialize, until our world becomes a thin corridor with no windows.
Stephen Bartlett reminded me of this today when he spoke of the “complete human.” The idea struck me because it’s been echoing in my mind for years. And strangely, the story that brought it full circle wasn’t philosophical at all—it was the story of a needle.
The Needle That Split the World
Adam Smith once illustrated a simple principle: divide the work and you multiply productivity. If one craftsperson had to mine the ore, refine the metal, forge the needle, polish it, test it, pack it, and sell it, they might produce a dozen a week.
But split the work into stages—miners, smiths, polishers, packers, sellers—and suddenly the output jumps into the thousands.
This principle built modern civilization. It also quietly fragmented us.
We became tasks, not wholes. Inputs, not identities. Specialists who know everything about nearly nothing. And now, in the AI era, the same logic returns in a new form.
The Age of Agents and the Missing Human
Most AI models today behave like that original needle-maker trying to do everything: research, plan, reason, write, critique. Impressive, but stretched thin. They hallucinate. They overload. They depend on human correction.
The future belongs to agents—small, specialized intelligences working in parallel like a digital assembly line.
But if AI becomes more specialized, humans must move the other way.
AI divides. Humans must connect.
AI executes. Humans must understand.
AI narrows. Humans must broaden.
Some call this Organic Intelligence. To me, it’s simply reclaiming what we already were before the world became obsessed with efficiency: complete humans.
My Own Circle Back to Wholeness
My eldest daughter once started Liberal Arts & Sciences—a modern sanctuary for generalists. Philosophy. Law. Science. Technology. A joyful refusal to be boxed into a single lane. It made me reflect on my own path.
In high school, I unknowingly chose what the Dutch jokingly called the pretpakket—the “fun package.” Geography, history, economics, general math. Not because I didn’t know what I wanted, but because I wanted everything.
I was told (incorrectly) that computer science required a different math track. So I zigzagged—economics, Microsoft technologies, IT roles, product work, DJing, parenting, philosophy, AI. A kind of lifelong Liberal Arts without the official label.
I’ve always been a generalist pretending to be a specialist.
Stephen’s post today reminded me that this wasn’t confusion but alignment.
Becoming Renaissance Again
We need specialists. Of course we do. The world breaks without expertise.
But what we lack—what we bleed for without noticing—is the human who sees across silos. The complete human. The Renaissance person. The one who can:
- write code in the morning,
- play music at night,
- explore philosophy on weekends,
- understand law at a dinner table,
- raise children with curiosity,
- and guide AI agents not just by instruction, but by intuition.
When eight AI agents work together, someone must still see the whole. Someone must know when the system is right—or wrong—in ways that transcend the data.
Synthesis is humanity’s superpower.
Connection is our creativity.
Judgment is our edge.
In a world where AI becomes increasingly specialized, our task is not to compete on specialization. It’s to reclaim the wholeness we once took for granted.
The era of intelligence demands Renaissance humans—not narrower ones.
And perhaps that’s the strange circle closing: the needle that once divided the work may now remind us to stitch ourselves back together.
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