Why Would You Study That? People who study sexual and ethnic differences in humans are often challenged for doing it at all. Aporia plays the Basic Curiosity card. I think it would be unimportant if we didn't build so much of our legislation and government funding off false information. But once we are going to shell out large amounts for it, craft our education around it, while punishing good things and rewarding bad ones, I get interested.
We are bombarded by claims that the South Koreans educate better because they are so strict, and the Finns do so much better because the are are so laid back. Yet the PISA scores track the national IQ very nicely, including at more granular levels like Brahmins, Saami and immigrants from different countries.
We don't want to condemn a generation of Caucasians into believing that they can't ever be an Olympic sprint or jumping medalist no matter how hard they try. Why would you crush their dreams like that? Isn't it better that we feel relieved that the myth is true rather than letting them learn that being a coach, or a sportswriter (or Youtuber), or a manager/trainer/photographer/physical therapist/merch creator is more accessible? Why would you limit a child's dreams in that way.
Not recognising heritability is ultimately cruel. You just didn't try hard enough. You don't have the character for that. The Man is keeping you down. How is that better for a kid?
4 comments:
An aphorism I like, said to come from Martin Luther, is that "Humanity is like a drunk on a donkey. Having fallen off on the left side, he will be sure to fall off next time on the right." Since time everlasting, people have been gung-ho about heritability, until the Enlightenment reacted against it—too far.
Accepting the influence of heredity is both humbling and liberating.
It is humbling when you realize that a lot of what you accomplished might have been due to (or at least enabled by) inherited talent, as much as to all the hard work you put in.
It is liberating when you realize that, no matter how hard you work, you will never be as good as the guy who was born with great talent in sports, or math, or music, and the fact that you will never play shortstop is not due to lack of effort.
I once watched a program on twins separated at birth, who were reunited. One pair was a couple of young women. One was an excellent athlete, who had trained all her life and was, as I recall, approaching Olympic levels. The other had never been interested in athletics, but when she met her twin, decided to give it a try. In a few months, she was almost up to the level of her twin. The first twin was somewhat miffed, because she had trained so hard, and it didn't seem fair somehow that the second twin could get there so easily.
An excellent example. If you want to be very good, then figuring out what you might be good at - which your family, especially a twin might provide - is the primary point. If you want to excel, be world-class, be an Olympian, then you need that obsessive drive and hard work.
I may have told you that I ran cross country and track in high school and college. It taught me everything I needed to know about nature and nurture, and this obviously contradicted what I was taught by my teachers in high school and college. Nature decides your potential and nurture (training) decides how much of that potential you realize. Some gifted runners were not gifted with pluck, or grit, or whatever it is that gets one out of bed and on the road at five a.m. But getting out of bed and on the road at three a.m will not compensate for physical limitations.
Post a Comment