Heredity, Environment & Genius

My NYT Comment #329.
May 01, 2009 4:19 pm

Link

May 1st, 2009 11:13 am
Heredity, Environment and Genius

There is a dynamic interplay between heredity and environment, to produce ABILITY, whether average, mediocre or at the so-called genius level. I would have liked to see included in Brooks' discussion, the 'outlier' factor developed by Malcolm Gladwell.

Part of the crucial role of environment is ACCESS to:

1.Goods (example a spinet or a Steinway)

2. Resources (a parent, a mentor)

3. Social capital -- what-you-know-is-as-important-as-who-you-know.

It also helps if you are not partly impeded by social location -- as a member of an oppressed minority or suffer other deeply stratified setbacks resulting from intolerance, bias and hatred.

On a geopolitical level, ability rising to the 'genius' level probably cannot be fostered under brutal imposition of "shock and awe."

Can SOCIAL JUSTICE cultivate more "geniuses"?
That would be a research enterprise worthy of us all.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01brooks.html
Op-Ed Columnist: Genius: The Modern View
By DAVID BROOKS
The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical take on great accomplishment. It’s not I.Q., but deliberate practice.
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Ethical Voters can EDUCATE a Progressive candidate like Obama

My response to Barack Obama speech in Clarendon County, SC

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/obama-civil-rights-and-south-carolina/

Ethical/Progressive Voters can EDUCATE a Progressive candidate like Obama
November 3rd,
2007
9:41 am

Ethical democracy and an ethical candidacy are the need of the hour.
We need ethical debate.It’s important that Barack Obama continue to speak as he did about educational inequities for Blacks and other ‘minority majorities’ of color (when we stand together we are a majority). It’s important that Obama continue to mention Jena because it has become a national symbol of continuing racial hatred/bias/prejudice by a whole new generation of whites against blacks.

The mis-education and dis-information fed to the shop-until-they-drop American public by their white-controlled media ( see Bill Moyers of PBS, on the FCC) and their government as well as some of the current candidates will no doubt continue unabated.

But candidates like Obama can speak authentically about racism and inequity even if they might have been generationally too young to directly take leadership in the civil rights struggles of the 60’s.
Maybe Obama should have said “Everybody has got a WHITE sheep in the family.” when he referred to that white supremacist and neo-imperialist Dick Cheney. That would have got the attention of his supporters and the media.
It would have reversed the stereotype and jogged people’s thinking.
People get the government they deserve. It is up to progressive voters to educate progressive candidates like Obama so that he will continue to address/offer solutions on issues of economic justice, civil rights, healthcare, housing and education, foreign policy (with the US as an ethically responsible player not a predatory one).
Chithra KarunaKaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— Posted by Chithra KarunaKaran