08-09-2017, 10:56 PM
(08-04-2017, 10:58 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: This one goes back even prior to age 9.
I think I must have been 6 and change. Early part of 1st grade. I was already aware that I had a knack for science. I also had a knack for saying clever things to the grown ups. My mother said something to the effect of "you are a Little Professor." I let all of this go to my head. So I was a bit too full of myself in 1st grade ... and beyond. This ended up being a bad diversion that hindered my socialization with other kids. Things that the grown ups think are witty seem lame to other kids. Most kids, especially in early primary school, don't give a rat's ass if you can do science. I should have been perfecting my pitch and my swing. I had to do that more painfully a few years later, too late to be on a certain track. I do have natural baseball talent ... something I found out too late. By the time I found out, the kids who were on the secondary school team (and in some cases collegiate) track were way ahead of me vis a vis skills development. Talent is nothing without skills development.
Malcolm Gladwell gets this well in Outliers, recognizing the secret to consummate achievement is 10,000 hours (roughly) of early preparation before age 25 in anything from sports to the arts to engineering and computer science to academia. This applies in the arts as much to popular culture (the Beatles, the most polished pop group to have ever existed, all did about 10000) hours in semi-pro music in performing (in awful locations), practice, and study of music of all kinds. Then they went pro and made it look easy.
But there is a price. one that Gladwell misses. One must get away with about 5000 hours of preparation while still a child, which implies a dedication that few people can get away with. If you consider playing a violin... it is easy to develop a certain level of mastery fairly quickly and feel satisfaction in obvious achievement, but beyond a certain level of refinement one must get the opportunity to spends hours of drudge work on scales and other studies in which the difference is so subtle that recognizing a difference worthy of further effort is a valid use of time. There will be temptations to do something more immediately satisfying or necessary. If one has great talent and grows up on a farm, then there will be crops to plant and harvest, eggs to fetch, livestock to feed, or cows to milk. If one is from a poor family there will be economic pressures to get a job and perform it instead of sing in a choir. Popular culture, conformist as it is, might show the person trying to master the fine art of painting as a freak when the temptation is to date, to tool around in cars, or hang out at the mall.
High achievement often comes with a stilted life. Musicians in symphony orchestras may be highly refined in music and perhaps languages, but they are often utter naifs at just about everything else -- including romantic love. But falling short of the needed perfection comes with no chance of a second chance to be anything other than a 'prole' -- and quite possibly a very unhappy prole because of having had a taste of Elysium and ending up as doing clerical work, being a short-order cook, driving a truck, doing vehicle repair work, or delivering letters. The person whose ambition is to be a short-order cook, a truck driver, a vehicle repairman, or a letter carrier might find life tolerable. Someone who wanted to be something more exalted and fell short can live a life of guilt and regret.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.