www.ExactingEditor.com/UniParts.html

Universalists vs. Particularizers

This world contains two kinds of analyst-writers. And, as soon as they glimpsed that kickoff sentence, a third kind – people who can’t stand simplistic dichotomies – began to leave the room. Sound of shuffling feet and clicking keyboards.

Look, I’m sorry about that. Actually, like them, I prefer continuums to dichotomies. But, in this case, the line needs to be drawn very starkly. (It can always be re-fuzzed later on.)

The first type is a PARTICULARIZER. More likely to be a female, she wants to tell stories and paint landscapes whole – and, the more differentiated the scene, the better. These writers are nicely suited for fiction. Granted, novelists can fall into pat money-making formulas – but even then, all the details have to change, from book to book. They seek variety and differentiation, the better to surprise you with.

Since this website is for non-fiction types, I gravitate toward a different brand of Particularizer: The journalist. Same traits, very different beat. Particularizers make great reporters (and please, no wisecracks along the lines of "what’s the difference between fiction and newspaper reporting").

More about the "P" mode of analysis and text-production later. What about the second type, the other half of my simplistic dichotomy? That would be the UNIVERSALIST.

Note how I deliberately put an "ist" at the end of that root word rather than an "izer," because the "U" is after Truth. Unlike the "P" being enthralled with the work of discovery, the U wants to arrive at a body of thought, and turn it into a home, a temple, or a fortress. Not for them the P’s penchant for detail, novelty and anomaly.

The longer runs the Universalist’s quest for Truth, the more it works against sloppiness and sprawl. In the early years though, it can be an obsessive type of fun. Well, maybe not "fun," but they realize the search will take time, and bring some blind alleys. So the U gains insight into various fields. Further research, various crosscurrents, a few new leaps.

Yet much of that is backdrop to the ongoing quest to come with a framework that diagrams chaos and reduces the risk of tomorrow. A truly insightful U will invent or develop a new one. Since most of us realize how damnably hard that is, we latch on to one that seems to meet our needs.

The underlying theory can be sociological, scientific, or religious/spiritual. For Universalists, the journey is not the destination. They mean to get somewhere, set up camp, and ultimately dig in. At that point, they often turn their efforts to expanding the community. Having attained coherence, they seek adherents.

Is "U versus P" a Fork in Your Road?

What kind of an analyst-writer do you intend to be? Down deep, are you out to find Truth, or does such a prospect appear too bloody boring and rigid?

That’s very hard to answer for the long haul without defining how your mind works. What’s the "default setting"? When information is coming in, or people are passing by, how do you do the processing?

A trusty tool of us dichotomizing editors is the two-column table. Haven’t turned this into a scored test yet, but if anyone wants to go in on a grant proposal, I’m game. For now, please be content with this preview…

Beware of casting the "P" type of writer as a wandering info-glutton. In Georgia 25 years ago, I knew a Republican Party activist who got a free subscription to the Congressional Record from our local congressman. This activist tried to read each day’s Record -- and talk to me about it. That was carrying openness and curiosity too far. And in any case Ralph wasn’t a writer-analyst.

Point is, a literary Particularizer does not seek endless originality. From Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970, creator of "Perry Mason") to Tom Clancy, fiction-writers develop a formula. To that extent, as writers and self-marketers, they are quite disciplined. But they still aim to surprise readers with the details and plot twist, not reassure them that life is bankable. Their books feel like grab-bags, not schematics.

Universalists are playing a profoundly different game. They are fundamentally into control: If they can’t literally see the future before it happens, they develop rules that will reduce uncertainty about tomorrow. This can create social breakthroughs as well as antisocial misfits.

Control by Anticipation

When a U keeps going, and insists on an original spin rather than becoming some other writer’s acolyte, they eventually become gurus. During the ‘90s, two of my favorites were Neil Howe and Bill Strauss, who recast the history of America in a stunning 500-page book called Generations. Many of the forecasts in that book are playing out as you read this.

That book’s landscaping was radical and mostly new, although in fact a wacky genius and corporate presenter named Morris Massey had "discovered" what later came to be known as Generation X. See his 1979 book The People Puzzle (if you can locate it). I finally saw it in 2002, and it took my breath away. Intuiting and researching "social programming," Massey was 12 years ahead of anyone else in knowing what the post-Boomer generation would do and why. His tools also confirmed the existence of a generation between the World War Two and Boom generations.

A few gurus – Robert Prechter and Paul Ehrlich come to mind – retain tens of thousands of loyalists despite being spectacularly wrong. Their model or framework is so compelling that its workaday accuracy can be overlooked.

We find an abundance of Universalists among stock-market theorists, academic modelers, generational determinists, and management consultants who assume all employees are of one type. Some make predictions and hedge their bets, others preach general laws while dodging any deadline -- but neither subtype lacks self-confidence. This can be inspiring at certain times, off-putting at others.

The most seasoned Universalists are media-savvy people who have learned to look like they are being thoughtful and just came up with a helpful hunch. In fact they spent hundreds of hours nailing it down, and perhaps 10 or 20 years forming the method that allowed them to make the leap. They are heavily invested in that past. And what you just heard them say wasn’t a leap but a tough climb.

If you want to get a "U" going, try to poke holes in their core theory; point out the joshua tree in their color-coded and cordoned-off landscape. If they can’t acknowledge such protrusions – places where the model doesn’t quite work -- they have hardened into ideologues. Original thinking has given way to dogma and (secular) preaching.

Which type of analyst-writer are you? Or which way are you headed? Universalists, assuming they’ve amassed some credibility, are more profitable to listen to. Having spent half my career around them, I admire they way they can make sense out of otherwise nutty landscapes.

At the same time, Particularizers are much more fun to have a conversation with. As friends and colleagues, they’ll do far more to keep your mind fresh and creative. Universalists hand out maps, which are always handy. But the map is not the real territory, so get out of the vehicle and nose around.

Useful Probabilities plus Intrinsic Uniqueness

At the outset I acknowledged people who don’t like sweeping dichotomies -- and half-admitted to being one of ‘em. In fact, I favor a combination of the U and P modes. For an editor, not to mention a stock investor, it became a good idea to transcend the extreme distinctions this essay is built on.

How? Instead of seeking absolutes, get comfortable with various "rules of thumb," or probabilities. Play them. Don’t let ‘em own you. Don’t advocate any one framework. Use them opportunistically. Set one aside, for years at a time if need be, after something big and real emerges that it can’t explain. Pit rival frameworks against each other. And never override the intrinsic uniqueness of every fellow human.

© 2004, Gregorsky Editorial Services

APPENDIX: One place where it’s tough to "transcend" is the field of generational analysis. So, from a website I used to edit, here’s a related exhibit: An article by three authors and consultants who manage to define "generations in the workplace" yet allow for individuation. In his heyday (roughly 1976-93), Morris Massey did the same thing. One might say these analyst-writers "commit sociology without dogma." In the process, they bridge the normal analytic divide between Particularizers and Universalists.

The article appeared in Training magazine, which was then edited by one of the authors, Ron Zemke, who passed away in August 2004. As a distant colleague of Ron’s, I developed great respect for how he and his collaborators Raines and Filipczak wrote up complex issues. If your own work requires interaction with college kids, X-genners and old-timers, you’ll value their book Generations At Work. If you haven’t seen it, try this 1999 item as the introduction…

www.ExactingEditor.com/Training99.html