I like your post Red. Well put. In my scenario, I would be sharing knowledge because I have spent my entire life volunteering to help people. I have also grown in unusual circumstances that has made me appreciate everyones individual opinion, while at the same time making me strongly opinionated. On your bit about specialization, where I work, each employees is grouped based on their talent into a department to have them specialize in that area, and the ones that do move ahead are completely on the Peter Principle course. I keep seeing so many get promoted above their intellectual ability to later be fired for incompetence while the smart ones who are too bold eventually quick from continual rejection. It depends on the level that the other leaders in the work situation are at and your ability to fit into that group. What I have done for myself is make myself strong in every department. It gives me more challenge as five years of doing the same thing makes me very bored. This gives me the edge, though I do not strive to further my position due to other stated priorities.
As far as society goes
It will almost always be the same. In a group of 100 people, 80 will be average intelligence and middle class, 10 will be below average and lower class, 6 will be above average and upper class while 4 will be sociopaths, very much above average, good at working the lower 90 and making the upper 6 look stupid while doing as little as possible to help any of them. In your group of 25 on the hill, the one to quickly identify would be the sociopath and get him out. I do mean him because most sociopaths are men. He will be the one who messes up the group dynamics. Being able to class them by their abilities will in effect class them by IQ. Will these rules always follow? No of course not, If you work hard you can overcome your weaknesses as well as the lazyness will affect your ability to strive, but my strength that I would quietly add to the group would be my ability to figure all of that out. That means that I would be able to say to the person with the lowest amount of contributing ability, hey, I see you are do this VERY well. Hey, group, what do you all think about making this person in charge of this? This will relieve some of their responsibility as well as help this person realize they are a valued member of the group. If everyone feels united this way, the sociopath would be the only one trying to mess things up but will have more difficulty doing so. Getting the used to hearing, Hey group, they will be more likely to listen up in terms of freeing themselves of the lazy but very sly manipulating snake of the group.
Rather than keep absolutley quite I'd probably couch my knowledge/experiance in terms of " I had a freind who told me about a time he was in a similar situation and doing things this way, what you think about us trying it" That way they have to give it some thought rather than just follow and then blame if it's not up to what they hoped/expected.
That why you set down a belt and ask the group if they can come up with any ideas on how to use it, rather than look all smart and say all the ideas you can think of. Then when they get that far, ask them again if they have other items they might be able to use. Take me for example, I could whip out a fire piston, make fire and voila, then finish it up, Yea AND if you remove the piston you can use it as a survival whistle, use the lanyard for a bow drill if you can no longer acquire tinder, use the lanyard bead as a fishing floater, use the spare string to attach a lure to your fishing rod, ect, ect. Now by this time everyone will turn their back on me. Instead, Ive got this thing here that makes fire. Lets use it tonight but we dont have an endless supply of tinder so tomorrow hopefully we can find other ways to make fire. But I dont want to see this wasted so if any of you can think of other ways to use it or its accessories, well give it a try. My number thought would be, I could do all these things with the fire piston but maybe these other 22 people could come up with better ideas. If I spout off, they will not want anything to do with it or my self righteousness, although I may not be intending to come across that way
Yes my family would be number one. But forsaking those who are willing to take a step outside their usual self to help their families too would not be the example I would want to set for my children. If something happened to myself or Darrel, how would either of us hunt or explore while watching the children? Or if we were alone, could we go on without the others company or assistance? We are a very independent from society family but I dont think wed go that far if there was a problem and half our neighbors showed up in our yard. We have the lady who knows mushrooms and who gardens all the time, the school teacher, the woman who taps maple trees to make syrup, the farmer with the blacksmith tools (and a some skill) and meat cattle, the dairy farmer, and the taxidermist, and us. Dang wed be doing well if we were together and it would be a very diverse group age and interest wise, most very mainstream with societies rules too. Everyone being a leader could work for or against us but that fact that everyone would be willing to give it try suggests that it would work.
Becky