Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character

Dropping out is a great American tradition, the very essence of amateurism, another recapitulation of the pioneer/immigrant narrative, the ultimate in starting fresh: no school!

Historically, our amateur ancestors grew out of the Ben Franklin tradition of tinkering at home. In the mid-nineteenth century, the homebrew style had to contend with a societal drive to professionalize, a movement that accelerated with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution.

A 2006 Harvard Business Review article detailed the Curse of Knowledge, reporting that many breakthroughs are achieved by people who don’t know the jargon and minutiae of a field, who work outside the realm of day-to-day expertise. Lacking that detailed scaffolding of understanding, they can often see things that insiders look right past.

Like any invasive species, amateurs gather where there has been some kind of stress to the system, some kind of disturbance. When they clump together by forming a group of websites or a weekend club, it reveals something about where the inventive surges in a culture are located.

There is no fixed American meta-narrative, but there is this ebb and flow between Adamsian veneration of piety and Franklinian love of improvisation, between Calvinist certainty and Deist doubt, between head and heart, virtuocracy and meritocracy, good character and cunning action, between security and freedom, between professionalism and amateuris

Once you start looking for it, the only real shocker is how ubiquitous a figure the aspiring amateur is in America and yet how seemingly invisible these people are in our journalistic media.

If you look at the history of professionalization of any kind, you’ll see that it tends to follow this route. In America and Europe, a great deal of professionalization occurred in the nineteenth century, when most gentlemen of breeding considered themselves amateurs at all kinds of disciplines. Go all the way back to Jefferson, who collected fossi

The amateur breaking out and getting recognized—that is our secular God.

Individuals like Barron can be men or women, old or young, but chances are their gusto for their singular obsession is captivating (or irritating, depending on your mood that day).