The untalented

[andrewducker]

One of my favourite blogs at the moment is AllMenAreLiars , which I don't always agree with, but constantly makes me think, which is something I value far more.

Today he's talking about success, fear of success and fear of failure, and had this fascinating set of quotes from Eric Hoffer

"It has been often stated that a social order is likely to be stable so long as it gives scope to talent. Actually, it is the ability to give scope to the untalented that is most vital in maintaining social stability."

"For not only are the untalented more numerous but, since they cannot transmute their grievances into a creative effort, their disaffection will be more pronounced and explosive. Thus the most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them."

Hoffer argues that when people are untalented, they tend to focus their energies "into the management, manipulation, and probably frustration of others. They want to police, instruct, guide, and meddle.

"In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them," he writes.

===
And this rings very true with me - most of the problems with society aren't with the people who are successful in life, but with the people fallen off the bottom of the ladder. And what I largely see is a lack of interest in providing the right kind of help, for fear of being seen as soft on people who, let's face it, frequently aren't very "nice". I'm a committed social meddler, not just because I want to help people (which I do), but also because I believe that massive social inequalities are bad for pretty much everyone in society, because of the amount of discontent they cause, and the problems that this in turn causes.

I vary back and forth, and sometimes seem to contradict myself on this one. Because on the one hand I believe that people are responsible for their actions, while on the other hand I believe that we are all made by our surroundings. These two things are different merely because they look at people from two different directions - the personal and the societal.

I know how malleable people are, and that if you train them to act in barbaric ways then they will tend to do so, and so it's vital to change the environment that trains them to do so. But I also also know that individuals cannot change without taking responsibility for their actions, because if you don't believe that you control your actions then you're never going to put in the huge amounts of work that are necessary to effect personal change.

Comments

[andrewducker]

The majority of people don't even read, let alone write. And this is true across all kinds of creative endeavours. There are huge swathes of people out there who are not at all creative.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

But that isn't about talent or lack of talent so much as creativity or its lack, I'd say.

For example, with the European Championships on at the moment there are all these footballers who have a talent they get stupid money for, but they aren't necessarily creative. (I wouldn't count football as an artistic form here, since at the end of the day victory always goes to those who score the most goals, not who play the most creatively or whatever.)

"Having a talent is not enough: one must also have your permission to have it — right, my friends?"

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

Unless you consider the playing of a game as the appreciation of an art form, which is then further made strange as that makes the football game itself the work of art, and the players not only the creators but the audience.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Well, you could say that football is like performance art in this sense, but I don't think I'd quite accept that because it's still somewhat rather more goal directed (excuse the pun) with clearly demarcated criteria for success and failure that the art work tends not to have.

Typically I'd say the players are more focused on winning the game than reflecting on whatever they might be creating moment to moment or of establishing a theory to interpret their performances, descriptively or prescriptively.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine turned me onto the idea of 'game players as art appreciation' when we were discussing whether or not video games could be art.

Or rather, whether or not a game itself could be art.

We never really settled the argument, but tentatively, I really like the idea of considering game a form of art, a very strange form of art with funny rules.

Additionally, since art can arise in unusual ways, and not necessarily with the creative urge...and I don't know where I'm going with that.

However, I understand your reservations about criteria and what not. I just think it's possible that it could be a form of art. Although now that I think about it, that might be a way to all-inclusive description of art.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Replying to both andrewducker and khbrown:

Reading and writing aren't good surrogates for being talented. There was a huge swath of prehistory when everything that was invented (and there was quite a bit) was invented by illiterate people. Even now, illiterate people are at least making language and music.

As for sports, I strongly recommend Moneyball-- it will show the original thought that can go into baseball, and I'm sure other sports are no different.

More generally, I'm not sure what's meant by talented and untalented. Is the idea that untalented people don't have the harmless pleasures of doing things well, and therefore spend their lives on making trouble, or is it that lack of talent tends to lead to getting so little respect that untalented people are available for destructive social movements?

Or maybe it's a combination....if a person has low status and can't make their own fun, they're available for thuggery.

[andrewducker]

There are lots of people who have no particular interest in self-realisation. There's nothing they want to _do_, no talent they want to work on. They may have skills, but that's not the same as having something that drives you.