Fulfilling Talent
People misunderstand the phenomenon that is the fulfillment of talent. Some think it’s innate, passed on genetically. Some think the environment molds it. Some think fulfillment takes the magic number of 10,000 hours of practice (This is not accurate. You can achieve world-class mastery with less hours, sometimes substantially less.). All doesn’t quite describe reality.
Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outlier.” His book has given Tiger Moms everywhere fuel to push their kids to hit the holy grail of 10,000 hours of practice. The truth is something else entirely, and such simplistic logic escapes empirical evidence to the contrary.
Let’s examine realization from a macro perspective. To this day, we stand in awe of the achievements of the Renaissance for its breadth and depth. Da Vinci, Galileo, Petrarca, and d’Este are just some of the names that grace the history pages of the Italian Renaissance. Many of these names come from Florence or resided in Florence for an extended period in their lives. The Italian Renaissance lasted for about 200 years. During this time, Florence never surpassed 100,000 residents. 100,000. Imagine the density of genius in Florence back then. If you lived in Florence during the 15th to 16th centuries, you probably walked past one of those giants. Shoot, you might have even worked with one.
Patrons of genius.
This begs the question: why was Florence able to produce or attract so many geniuses? The environment and system at that time cultivated such talent to express themselves. The distribution of talent in a large population doesn’t fluctuate that wildly over the course of time. What does change are the conditions that allow such talent to take hold. That’s why we see cities and civilizations rise and fall.
Let’s now look at micro perspective. Each one of us is a product of the system that we grew up in. If we really want to change the societies that we are part of, we need to change the system and culture. That new system and environment should encourage everyone to pursue the stars. These pursuits should be backed up by infrastructural support by the state, village, and family.
Eventually, people will act and achieve through their own volition. Achievement through free will. Imagine it. Imagine a district like the Sunset in the city of San Francisco having the same output like Florence, Italy during the Renaissance. Now, replicate this across the United States.
Or you could be like the People’s Republic of China pouring billions, no tens of billions of dollars and spending years trying to develop talent at multiple levels to make China into a football superpower. For what? To lose to Vietnam 0-3. Fail to reach the World Cup every 4 years. They recently lost to New Zealand, a country of 5 million people. Remember, the Kiwis like rugby more than football. A population of 1.4 billion loses to a country of 5 million. And we see this in other realms like war. Russia, a country with a population of 140 million and “spends” 84 billion dollars on their military cannot subdue a regional neighbor like Ukraine, which has a population of 40 million and spends about 10-11 billion dollars on their military. How sad.
The question is up to you. Which one do you choose?
