"All men are created equal"........REALLY?

And they were created equal to all men?

Prologue: In Season 1 Episode 2 House MD, Dr. House berates his fellow Dr. Cameron:

"Would that upset you, really, to think that you were hired because of some genetic gift of beauty not some genetic gift of intelligence?" 

Some are born beautiful, some intelligent, some skilled, some brave, and some just normal!

The human brain is designed to learn skills and reproduce them accurately with practice! Have you noticed the ease with which you can drive your car today as compared to when you started? You wouldn't be as alert, as tense and as consciously aware, as you were the first week, you laid hands on the steering wheel. And yet, you'd be driving more accurately absorbing all the visual cues like traffic, routes, signals and pedestrians without  exercising your grey cells even a bit. 

So is the tale for any academic activity.  If you read a lot, read comprehensively and practice regularly then you are bound to develop finesse and improve (although the degree of improvement varies). Lawyers, doctors, engineers, actors, accountants........take any profession; you work diligently, your skills improve----and that is no secret!

The great Indian saint  Kabir quoted in one of his couplets:

करत करत अभ्यास के जड़मति होत सुजान,

रसरी आवत जात ते सिल पर पड़त निसान।

 (Karat karat abhyaas ke jardamati hot sujaan 

 Rasari aavat jaat te sill par pardat nisaan.)

Roughly translated it means that with constant practice even a fool becomes wise, just as the soft rope can leave a mark on a stone if it passes to and fro over it repeatedly. 

That goes for IQ tests, too. IQ tests are never representative! Given adequate practice, any average Joe can ace any number of IQ tests!

But what is genius then?

In the words of Arthur Schopenhauer:

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." 

Yup! A genius thinks out of the box, defies convention, improves the possible and achieves the impossible. 

Take any great composer (and no, I am not talking of "music directors" who are "inspired" by other musicians to create verbatim copies that are conveniently passed off as their own work!) of the yesteryears -- Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Vivaldi, Strauss or Saint Thyagaraja; years of training cannot make a musician create the magic today, that those greats wrote. Was it divine providence, or was it unique neurochemistry that they could create what they did? Who knows? But it certainly cannot be attributed to learning! Mozart could play the piano flawlessly by age 4 and started composing at the age of 5! Most kids these days learn the alphabet at this age! Beethoven started losing his sense of hearing by age 26 and was profoundly deaf for the next 30 odd years that he lived, yet, the volume of his compositions speaks for itself! How could he still compose? Again who knows? 

Within his short lifespan of 32 years, high school educated Srinivasa Ramanujan,  (Yes, you read that right! Ramanujan never graduated from college.), had compiled over 3900 theorems and identities that most doctoral candidates wouldn't dream of in those days. And he started off as a  poverty stricken clerk in Madras Port office.

SN Bose majored in mathematics at the graduate and postgraduate level but his pioneering work was in physics (not his primary area of training). His work on quantum statistics was so profound that initially it was  not understood by many and was denied publication. It took another genius - Albert Einstein - to recognize its importance and thus its subsequent publication. That we have recently discovered the hitherto theoretical Boson attributed to Bose is known to all, but the fact that Bose was a polymath who ventured into and made pathbreaking discoveries in a subject other than what he was taught is not common knowledge.

When Tesla first proposed AC or alternating current as the mode of choice for mass distribution of electrical energy, he was scoffed at and forever undermined by Edison his contemporary and rival (whose widely accepted DC or direct current was the convention initially). The advances that human society has made since the acceptance of AC as the standard of power generation and distribution is common knowledge! Not every engineer had the will to defy Edison and convention; Tesla did! His discoveries were groundbreaking to say the least.

Opinions vary, but I guess most of you would agree, that it would not be inappropriate, to call Sachin Tendulkar, a genius! You have his contemporary great Rahul Dravid - pure talent - who worked hard to achieve his great laurels and was textbook perfection personified! But even then he is no Tendulkar - the sheer presence riled the opposing team. Many a match one has felt -- "so long as Tendulkar is there on the wicket, the Indian team still has a chance!" Sachin started out with a bang, right from his school days when he blasted a then world record partnership with Vinod Kambli. He could play every stroke in the book; rewrite many of the textbook shots and make them his own. Screw the records, majority thronged the stadiums just to watch him bat irrespective of the result! Many of his contemporaries have better averages, better win-loss ratios, better technique even -- but you'd still pay money to see the maestro!

(So let us cut to the chase!)

The point here is that if all men are really created equal then where do these prodigies come from? Where do these exceptional talents come from? Maybe God, maybe karma, maybe genetics! There is nothing concrete known to this effect! Religions preach that God created all men equal. This only quells the unrest that would otherwise pervade if the realization struck everybody, that men really are not all that equal in all respects.

Intelligence is overrated. Every man with an above average intelligence is deemed a genius by his peers. So if a nerd (no offense) pores over his books 18 hours a day, without a social life (or any life for that matter) besides his books, and manages to score the highest marks in a standardized test, it does not make him/her a genius! It is just that he/she is well read! On the other hand, another kid lives a normal life - nurtures his hobby, leads an active social life, has a creative side, is in to sports and other extra-curricular activities, studies an average 3-4 hours and still manages to score the highest or next to that---there you have the makings of a gifted child, a talent for that matter! And if he/she produces something remarkable academic or otherwise for his/her age--you have a genius in your hand!

And if indeed genius is a genetic inheritance, what is the scary aspect? Eugenics on a mass scale! Breeding of individuals with the ideal traits would further a generation of individuals with ideal traits, or so it would seem! The Nazis did it, right? Everybody vilifies them for that; but each civilization has practised the same at one time or the other! Hey! We do it selectively on a daily basis in our lives. Each time an arranged marriage is convened, the families of both the bride and groom look for family history of disease, addictions, and talent besides wealth and status (with the automatic assumption that a wealthy family of high status is likely to have individuals with better health and consequently better genes?) "Survival of the fittest" is nothing but the Darwinian approach to eugenics that occurs in nature.

But if genetic inheritance alone could explain it, where do geniuses born in ordinary households come from? (Pretty confusing as is this tirade!)

To really get an understanding of what the active practice of eugenics, if advocated, would lead to, watch the movie GATTACA (*ing Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman). It is a decent thriller with a deep philosophical message; and yes, a great soundtrack to go along as well!

Endgame: "All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others!" - George Orwell