Though it is clear to anyone who bothers to take a look at the massive amount of prose that I write that I have a clear and consistent set of concerns that I often examine, at the same time I don’t have a hobby horse because my interests are broad (even, in the eyes of some, scattered). Nonetheless, there are many people one deals with who have a much narrower frame of interest, and to be honest, I find it frequently tedious to talk to people who are driven by one subject that they have to talk about all the time to the exclusion of everything else. That is not to say that a focus on a variety of subjects will mean a scattering of focus to an unhealthy degree, especially when one finds questions of moral corruption and illegitimacy of authority in many areas of life, but on the contrary one finds advantages in being able to see the same concerns and same phenomena in a variety of different areas, including the benefit of perspective as well as the ability to use an approach of comparative analysis (which requires more than one item to be compared).

All of this should be basic, but there are a variety of reasons why some people have hobby horses rather than seeking a broader understanding. For one, specialization is the way of the contemporary world. In order to gain a perceived expertise in an area, it is often seen as desirable for people to limit their focus to become knowledgeable about a smaller and smaller world that is not able to communicate with anyone else because the level of required knowledge and jargon is too high and the interest in communicating insights to other fields too low. Because there are tradeoffs between depth and breadth of understanding, a deliberate focus on being a generalist who nonetheless is not a mere dilettante requires a great deal of work, an openness to knowledge and an ability to assimilate insights from a great variety of fields and draw the connections that is going to allow the information to be remembered and to be useful. In order to understand a variety of fields, one must understand a large vocabulary (often in several languages) that explains the field, and this is a great deal of work to do outside of one’s initial comfort zone. I can understand why many people would not wish to perform this mental labor, labor that depends on the existence of specialists who are nonetheless sufficiently interested in explaining their field to communicate with the educated lay reader to provide the raw materials of broad and relatively deep understanding.

Intellectual laziness is not the only reason for people to ride a hobby horse, though. Often, people are particularly passionate about subjects where there is a degree of personal relevance. This can be both a strength and a weakness, though. While personal experience grants someone a passion to wrestle with a subject and master it, it can also prevent the development of a balanced perspective. For example, a woman who constantly complains about abusive men is not fit, by virtue of her bias and bitterness, to speak authoritatively on the biblical obligations of the genders, because her own bias against men will lead her to neglect her own duties of respect and submission to her husband. Ideological commitment can often cut one off from genuine insight because one’s bias overwhelms any potential balancing effect and lead to intellectual corruption. This corruption and bias can exist on any side of a dispute, and if we are to maintain a perspective that allows for balance and justice, we need to counteract our own native biases even as we take on the biases of those around us. And in an age that celebrates and glorifies bias, to find genuine wisdom is correspondingly more difficult, because wisdom consists not only in knowledge but also in its balanced application with understanding and broad sympathies rather than narrow biases and commitments.

Hobby horses are also ridden for the reason of an absence of historical perspective and a lack of well-developed moral worldviews. As much as specialized expertise requires focus on a particular field, it can often be a focus based on subject matter rather than a focus based on a cohesive worldview, which places one’s field in balance with larger moral and philosophical concerns. It is having a deeper moral foundation and worldview that allows one’s efforts to be placed in that larger balance. Here is a situation where depth and breadth work together–having a coherent worldview allows different fields to be placed into the larger picture, which is what allows one’s work in a particular field to have greater reach and influence in a society constructed of people with a great variety of interests and specializations. It is when those broader worldviews break down that one has to deal with the problem of people riding hobby horses without a larger worldview or purpose to their specialized interests. And it is that situation one often finds nowadays, as research and learning lacks a consistent and moral worldview to give it meaning, boundaries, and significance.

If we wish to avoid riding the hobby horse in our intellectual lives, we have to take certain definite steps. First, we have to be willing to learn the languages of more than one field, to provide ourselves with the capability of comparison between one field and another, or between one nation or culture and another, which requires a great deal of time and effort to do effectively. We also need to counteract ideological bias which hinders us from a true and balanced perspective, and this requires a great deal of honesty about where we are coming from as well as the humility to seek to understand rather than presume that we know others. In addition, we also need a moral worldview at the base of our search for knowledge that allows us to place our learning in a greater perspective and understand its role in the larger godly culture and society, without being seen to the exclusion of other valid concerns. If we are able to bridge linguistic gaps, counteract biases, and work within a coherent worldview, we will be able to leave our hobby horses behind and work for the benefit of all as part of a larger whole. And that is where our own understanding can serve to benefit others, by being placed in its proper context in balance and in harmony with the larger whole. To avoid riding the hobby horse, we must must our proper place.