When you have a complex society that relies on the division of labor to function, you have these insulated subcultures which develop within the divisions.
This insulation occurs because of human cognitive limits and tribal tendencies. A discipline grows more complex with various subdivisions over time as the basic concepts are mastered, and adherents to a given school continue to progress, creating new branches through their changing personalities and the changing constitution of society itself. Technological progress in all directions further complicates this process.
This seems to happen in cycles: metaphysical concepts are produced to account for phenomena outside the scope of empirical, or practical knowledge, with heirs in agreement with these concepts locating the concepts in more concrete and technical terms.
As this progresses in every direction, the mind's powers of cognition can only take so much. It becomes impossible to take in these expanding stores of theoretical and practical knowledge, so that subdivisions are made in the various disciplines, and students within these subdivisions can communicate with each other.
Students with overlapping disciplines can communicate with each other, and bridge separate but interrelated disciplines. Further out though, and a given discipline can require so many resources that one individual has to commit to a remote, isolated subdivision, with its own language and eventually culture.
In a stable time, in which levels of trust are relatively high, and everyone is connected and communicating with someone else and there is a general trust in the continuity of the larger project, this arrangement poses no problem. Subdivisions communicate amongst themselves, which communicate within broader categories, and so on up the chain. It all holds together.
In stressed times, in which trust drops, communication begins to wane, and each isolated subculture or discipline finds itself stranded, as if trapped on an island. There is a collapse in confidence that the greater body is continuous, and that each link - so on down to subcultures and disciplines that are remote - becomes suspect.
So each individual seeks to take on more disciplines, so as to bridge those gaps in information and action. This helps immensely, but the human mind can only take so much information. Bridging numerous disciplines - each of which has become incredibly complex - can be an incredibly strenuous undertaking.
One becomes unsteady in one's weak areas. If one given subculture is trying to solve these complex problems on its own, through its own lens and language, it denies other sectors of society. It opens a vast blindspot. Multiply this conflict a thousand-fold, with every other subculture insisting on its own solution, and you have all the necessary information blasted into endless fragments, and a population agitating and thrashing against itself.
It takes both a multi-disciplinary approach and a restoration of trust. One should open up lines of communication once again between disciplines through one's own individual efforts, but at the same time, trust others to fill in the gaps, to pick up where one is weak. This is the most difficult part.
