Talent

 

                                                           Buddha

 

This afternoon I was looking at the stuff stuck to the refrigerator by my wife, Sarah. We both like to post wise sayings. The frig is her domain. “Dust Bunnies Killed My Cleaning Fairy” is a favorite of mine, but the one that really started me thinking was, “He is able who thinks he is able,” by the Buddha. It has been up there as long as I can remember, and I never thought much about it. I suppose it’s authentic, or at least as authentic as a 2500 year old saying can be, but it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing Buddha would say. He sounds almost like a capitalist. I would imagine a more Buddha like saying would be, ‘Don’t worry about losing your cleaning fairy. Just go with the flow.’ It makes me think that a capitalist took Buddha’s words and altered them to go along with more ‘modern’ thinking. 

The idea that anyone can become successful, rich, or famous, that anyone can make a significant contribution to society, is baked into our culture. I remember believing that since childhood. It inspired me to study harder, to practice long hours on my violin. When I didn’t get an A or wasn’t the best at something, I just attributed it to lack of effort. 

This attitude worked pretty well through college. I didn’t get straight A’s but I was always in the top 15 or 20% of the class, and I managed to win first chair in the All-state Orchestra in high school, and in the University of Oklahoma orchestra too. On top of that, I read books by really smart authors like Asimov, even Camus, and I cultivated friendships with really smart people, thinking that if I could understand them and if they accepted me, that would put me on their level. The fact that I couldn’t understand integral calculus, or learn to speak German didn’t put me off. I just needed to find my niche. 

I think my first suspicion that I couldn’t be the best just by thinking I was, like Buddha supposedly said, or by working hard, came after my first year in medical school. I went there intending to be among the best in my class. I thought, ‘this is going to be my profession, my life’s work, so I’m going to work hard and be successful.' I studied the material for long hours. I even started smoking a pipe because someone told me it would help me to stay alert when I was tired, but I found that wasn’t enough. In med school everyone was smart. Everyone was working hard. I couldn’t be the best no matter how hard I tried. I was making C’s. I had never been a C student, never in my life. 

So I made a decision. I marched into the dean’s office and told him that I hadn’t learned the material well enough, and that I needed to repeat the first year. He didn’t seem upset. He didn’t kick me out of school like I half expected he would. He just reassured me. He said that nobody remembers all that stuff, that all you have to do is get familiar with the subject. If you need to refresh your mind about the details, you know where to look it up. He said that what it takes to be a good doctor is the humility to realize your limitations and the interest to keep learning.  So I  stayed in school, and tried to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to be at the top of my class. 

It was the same with my violin playing. I love to play and I’ve continued to play in my spare time all my life. Sometimes I have played in amateur orchestras and chamber groups, and occasionally for small groups as a soloist. But mainly, I just play for myself. It’s a time when I can relax and reflect. During my last years in medical practice I started playing at nursing homes, and I started transcribing and arranging popular pieces. The classical solo pieces for the violin were flashy but difficult to play and so I tried to play tunes that were easier and more familiar to the patients, popular tunes from the 30’s and 40’s. Gradually I’ve come to realize that I’m just a mediocre violinist. The reason I used to think I was exceptional was because there wasn’t much competition. I was only competing against people my age, mainly in just my home town, and when I won first chair in the state orchestra it was in Oklahoma, a small state. Recently I auditioned for a seat in our community orchestra, one of several in the city of Denver. I made the cut but when I started playing with them I was surprised to find that they were all as good or better than I. I still play, but it’s only because I enjoy it. I get better with practice, but no matter how hard I try I’ll never  be exceptional. 

I have had to fight this misconception all my life, that I’m just as smart or capable as anyone. The media reinforces this idea. They interview successful people and almost without exception the story they tell is one of hard work, determination, overcoming obstacles. The truth, in my opinion, is that they just have exceptional abilities. If you interview people who are average, I think you would get similar stories. Some people are just smarter or more talented than others. 

I think it is a dangerous delusion to accept the notion that we are all equal, that anyone can be successful with hard work and determination. It makes us take on tasks or responsibilities that are beyond us. It makes us discount the opinions of experts, and credit the opinions of those with little knowledge or background. It makes people disbelieve well established scientific facts, like human induced climate change, or evolution. It enables charlatans to create followings on the strength of their personalities without any facts to support them. 

So what’s a conscientious person to do? No matter how smart you are there are millions smarter, more educated, more talented than you. Should you just give up and let others make the decisions? That obviously doesn’t work. Smart people don’t all agree. They make decisions based on ambition, prejudice, status, expectations, and the smarter they are, the better they are at rationalizing their decisions. On a societal level decisions are made by the most vocal, usually a minority - think Nazis in Germany, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Communists in Russia and China. 

What would my wise cousin Steve say? (I’ll find out as soon as I publish this post) First he’d say, “earn your oxygen.” Do things that benefit your family, friends and society. Then he’d say, “be open minded.” Listen to people on both sides of every issue, and try to understand their point of view. Most of them are just as smart as you, and they have reasons for their viewpoints, no matter how foolish they may seem, and then share your opinions. 

Wisdom

 

                                         Rodin's The Thinker

Wisdom is not what it’s cracked up to be, especially in times of change. According to my hero, Eric Hoffer (see my post of Aug. 27, 2024), “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

It’s not that wisdom isn’t important. It is the way we understand the world around us, but you have to be careful whom to believe. There are a lot of smart, educated, ‘wise’ people in the world, and whatever your opinion, you can find some of them who agree with you, and can make your case much better than you. Groups of people with similar views banding together and getting their “news” from the same sources is especially common in this age of polarization.

 I’m just as guilty as the next person. I have my favorites: Rachel Maddow, Larry Summers, Josh Brown, and my wise cousin Steve.  It makes me feel smart when I can find a really smart person that agrees with me. Occasionally I accidentally hear or read something by a smart person that totally disagrees with me. My immediate response is to try and pick holes in his/her argument, or assume that he’s making stuff up, but that doesn’t always work. What’s an arrogant egotist to do?

I think too often we come to conclusions first and later think of reasons to justify them.  Finding a smart person who agrees with you is just icing on the cake. It should be the other way around. Gathering information should come first, and then the conclusion.

It starts early in life. We start out with a set of beliefs given to us by our parents, by our culture, and then, as we grow older we learn to rationalize those beliefs, and we find smart people who support them. This process explains most of our traditions. It explains why most Americans are Christian, and most Arabs are Muslim. It explains why most Americans are capitalists and most Europeans are socialists.

It seems to me that there is a lot of criticism of capitalism these days. We’re taught in school that capitalism rewards those who work hard, and it enables us to find the most efficient way to do things. It’s supposed to go together with democracy: life, liberty and “The pursuit of happiness,” but just during my lifetime, communist China – Russia, not so much – has gotten about as good at capitalism as we are, without granting the other two rights stated in our Declaration of Independence.

The trouble with capitalism is that it fosters competition and a “winner takes all” culture. What’s wrong with competition, you say? Well, it leads to resentment and hostility, preventing cooperation between the people who work together. It rewards greed and punishes altruism. When there’s competition, there has to be a winner, and in a corporation the winners rise to the top, make all the decisions and more money, whereas studies have shown that a team approach leads to more innovation and diversity.

On a society level you end up with a small group of people who control the country, and become immensely wealthy, while the needs of the rest are disregarded. That is why in America, medical science is arguably the most advanced in the world, while the level of health care overall is among the worst.

In America we glorify capitalism and attribute to it our success as a country. Why? Because that’s what we were taught. It’s part of our culture. We accept it without question.     

Back to wisdom.

This way of backward thinking, where we make conclusions and then rationalize them, works on a personal level too. A sad but true expression is “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” I have made some terrible decisions in my life which seemed to make sense at the time, but in looking back, I performed the same kind of backward logic of making a decision and then justifying it. Rationalization is a dangerous mistake.

The other problem with backward thinking is the future. As Yogi Berra once said: “making predictions is hard, especially about the future.” No one, no matter how smart, can predict the future, but we have to try. We have to make plans, decisions. Knowledge helps. As one of my professors said, “You can either learn from the mistakes of others or you can make them all yourselves,” but unexpected events, and new discoveries can change the course of events. Think of artificial intelligence. Changes need to be integrated into our view of the world, our expectations for the future.

I’ve been lucky in life to know some truly wise people who have questioned some of my poorly thought out conclusions. First was my dad. I talked with him a lot, and he always patiently listened to my ideas. Once I decided that all behavior was selfish. Whether you decide to help someone or steal something, you do it because you think it will make you feel better. Helping will give you satisfaction, and hocking stolen goods will make you richer. His response was, “If you’re playing basketball (he was an outstanding athlete in high school and college) and you steal the ball, then run down the court and pass the ball to one of your teammates to make the score, you can’t convince me that’s selfish.” From that I learned not to make conclusions by manipulating semantics. And he taught me much more.

Then there was my lifelong friend, Harlan. Once I got interested in Albert Schweitzer. He was a doctor, philosopher, musician and a missionary in Africa. He was also recognized as a biblical scholar, and a psychologist. I was telling Harlan how much I admired Schweitzer, when he reminded me that he had a patronizing attitude toward the Africans. Harlan knew a little bit about everything. He was gentle but ruthless in his logic. He taught me to look at things from a broader perspective.

Then there is my wise cousin Steve. We’ve been discussing things since childhood. Now we’re getting older, declining mentally and physically. We deal with it each in our own way. He organizes genealogy and photos for his kids and grandkids on Excel. He must be one of the world’s authorities on Excel. I manage our investments and play the violin. I’ve learned many things from Steve, whether it’s earning your oxygen (see blog post of 11/23/23),  or being ambivalent (see post of 11/8/23), or the scientific method (see post of 6/10/24), to which he attributes most advances in science. We can’t get together anymore, but we talk by phone for about two hours every other week. Last week I was telling him how disappointed I was that my wife Sarah and I couldn’t travel anymore. He seemed concerned that I was getting depressed, and started reeling off all the things that we can still do. He finished by telling me to remember Pollyanna, who always found something good in everything and everyone. Steve watches the movie “Pollyanna” over and over. What can be more useful than always looking on the bright side?

I’ve been truly blessed.