Born Un-Special

“To really understand another culture, to really understand a country, you have to be born there.”

This kinda talk really bites my ass. I've lived in Turkey now for 15 years and I get it. I didn't use to get it, but now I do. Nearly all of it. And next year, it'll be nearly-nearly all of it. You don't have to be 'born' anything. Human is human is human. We all think about the same shit, and say the same shit. When I didn't speak or understand Turkish very well, I would wander about thinking "Ooh everyone is saying very deep clever stuff, and I'm a doofus because I can't understand it." Then when I could understand, I understood that they had just been talking about tits the whole time.

Of course they'd made the same mistake with me, except I talk a lot more with my hands, so they twigged I was just talking about tits much sooner.

There is no such thing as a concept that cannot be transmitted cross-culture. (Arrgh, double-negative).

Same with the whole "It's an art, you’ve either got it or you haven’t.” schtick. It's not. Even art isn't an art.

There is no behaviour or technique that cannot be replicated by another. (Arrgh, another double negative).

The position of "X is an art - you've either got it or you haven't" is damaging I feel because of the implications. Basically - it implies not only that it's an either/or situation with no middle ground, but also - if you haven't got it - you never will. A - "Hey you, you ain't no Mozart, so drop the violin, back away. Abandon all hope n00b" - kinda feel. It imposes a static view of individuality upon humanity by making the property of 'having it' or 'not having it' innate and immutable.

When you expand this view you get a rather bleak picture of the world.

I don't know if you've ever seen one of those shorts on the Discovery Channel or whatever showing how potatoes get sorted in a processing plant but here's how it goes. The potatoes, all glowing with golden starchiness and still wet behind the ears from the vast cleaning drum, travel along a succession of vibrating conveyor belts which are full of holes.

It's important to note that right from the start, the potatoes possess one immutable quality: size. And somewhere lurking below the systems of conveyors, are different hoppers - graded by size - marked for different purposes. For example the hopper for the big fuck-off potatoes will be trotted off to be sold as roasters maybe, whereas the smaller more uniform potato hopper will be trundled off to the slice and dice crisp factory perhaps. Think of these hoppers not as big metal bins, but rather 'potato vocational opportunities."

Anyway. The conveyors shake, rattle and roll. The potatoes, according to their property of size, will fall through the right size hole, and end up eventually in the right vocation. But the particular vocation is determined, right from the start, and inescapable. Joe the small potato with aspirations of becoming a roaster will always have his hopes dashed. His fate is moot.

And that's the trouble with the "have it/don't have it" deal. It forces society and all its machinations into the role of a simple passive filter - people are fed into the top, and emerge at the bottom to occupy only a certain range of positions, and no hopper-hopping is allowed. Only If person X contains the innate property of 'being able to do philosophy' right from the start will they ever be able to occupy the final position of philosopher.

Where is the dynamicism there..? Where's the evolution, the interaction..? The flexibility of human potential..?

It's just not that simple. Let's take the two proverbial twins. Let's equally stereotypically separate the poor bastards at birth. Let's send one, Mumpo, to be brought up by a nice, middle-class, pseudo-intellectual couple who live near a very good library, and the other, Chumpo, to an abusive home situated near an open field where every year, the circus comes to town.

Mumpo grows up surrounded by books, and totally by chance, meets a kindly old man in the local park who takes his childishly precocious bookish opinions seriously enough to point him in the direction of the "easy-philosophy for snotty kids" section of the oh-so-fortunately-placed library. One day, as he's perusing the shelves, a book falls on his head and knocks him out cold. The book is - I dunno, one of those big son's of bitches by James T. Kirkerguard or something. The librarian, an astrology-believing ex-hippy believes it is a 'sign'. She picks him up dusts him down and says in a rather spliff-wrecked voice "This book has chosen you little one - some day you will become a great philosopher..." Thus begins Mumpo's career as a philosopher.

Chumpo however, gets his ass-whipped by his new dad nearly every day, and pretty much ignored by his new mum. A hug-free-zone. He takes so much, then one day, when the oh-so-fortunately-placed circus comes to town, jumps ship and runs away. Starting as a fetcher and carrier he unfortunately gets sat on by an elephant, because elephants frequent circuses more often than they do libaries, leaving him curiously unharmed but for his face, which becomes strangely chimpish in shape. Thus begins his new life, as Chumpo the monkey-faced boy.

The point of this aside is to illustrate that life is not a passive filter but more of a mold. People with extraordinary abilities - the ones who have got 'it' in spades - owe this not so much to innate properties, though of course, these play a factor, but to their unique experiental histories, and to luck.

Let's say the bastard social worker who separated Mumpo and Chumpo flipped a coin for example.

"But Tab, some people do just have better genes than others, don't they..?"

Sure - but unless there is a context supplied, it's hard to simply generalize. Some people - by virtue of their specific genetic traits - are better examples than others within the specific sphere of [...Fill in activity here...]. Polymaths do exist, I'm pretty damn good at a lot of things, and maybe so are you, but we/they are still outshone by specialists within a given field - ie. I can paint a decent picture, but I'm no rival to even a so-so commercial artist.

Basically if someone says: "My genes are better than your genes" I always wanna answer "At what..?"

Of course, not everything we do is so murkily steeped in sociality - when it comes to events of physical prowess for example, genetics is still king. Well, genetics and chemical abuse.

This is because there is a limited variation of technique within the different spheres of sport. Swimming - how many strokes are there..? And the fastest is probably always always gonna be the crawl simply because it's the most efficient way to propel a body of X mass, Y drag, and Z power through water. ie. It is impossible to counter pure innately-led strength with diversity of technique and so then yes - genetic factors count for everything. Chumpo the monkey faced boy will never win an olympic medal, even after huge amounts of surgery and a really cool dolphin-skin-surrogate swimming costume.

Same with running marathons. It's a no brainer. You put one leg in front of another repeatedly, for as long as you can, and as fast as you can. New techniques spread globally through the population of Marathon runners quickly, the advantages thereof cancel out, and genetic led differences between individuals remain crucial.

But with things like music, art, poetry etc, the more cerebral pursuits, there is a massive diversity of techniques, perspectives - all routes if you like, toward greatness. More than enough to compensate for the individual genetics involved in brain-creation.

Becoming great at something, becoming truly outstanding at something considered an 'art' is not just a matter of genetic destiny. Being 'gifted'. It's also practice. (A shit load of practice - something like 10,000 hours). It's opportunity. It's what has happened to you in your life. Much of whatever it is I've been able to do here and there is a product of having five months of each year free and easy. Time to read, time to think, time to write. 

Simply employing a babysitter upped my IQ by twenty points.

ie. To become a genius, to aquire the 'it' factor, a good brain is handy, but not decisive. But for the lack of a library, and the butt of an elephant, Chumpo might well have outshone them all.

No-one is special. Except you of course. And me, and him, and her over there...

...Continued...