Prince Charles on Human Achievement.

In 2004, Prince Charles commented on the aspirations of young people today. His comments were widely reported and were critically attacked. Many people thought he was trying to say that people shouldn't try to rise above their station, in life. They thought he was being, in some way, feudal. However, I don't think he really intended that. Let us look at what he is quoted to have said:

"What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of child-centred system which admits no failure. People think they can all be pop stars, High Court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history."

He is observing what is evident in young people in the Western world (and perhaps elsewhere, too): they seem to think they are going to be great. By this, I mean, that a typical teenager believes he or she is going to be one of the things that Prince Charles refers to: a pop star, a TV personality, a High Court Judge, a Head of State. One could extend the categories: a film star, a footballer, a millionaire (a billionaire), a model...etc, etc...Young people of today think their success is assured. They think that they stand above others now and ever will in the future. From the perspective of an experienced adult, who has actually seen the world in action, such an abundance of exuberant ambition is sobering to witness. It is sobering precisely because it is unrealistic.

What Prince Charles was grappling with is the simple fact that all of these aspirations that the children hold, require something most of the children will not have: natural ability, for one, and often a degree of willingness to work hard towards one's goals. For instance, any child can kick a ball. Many a child can dream of being the next David Beckham - but how many of those children actually have a significant athletic ability? How many of them have signicantly greater an athletic ability than their fellow children? How many of them, furthermore, are willing to hone their skills and their bodies through long years of training? Very, very few, indeed, I expect. They see the glamourous end: the famous footballer jetting about the world, from game to game, enchanted fans in hot pursuit. What they don't see is what that footballer had to go through to get there. They are able to envisage the beautiful life they would have, as a famous footballer, but not the life that is actually led to reach those goals.

Prince Charles was much criticized for his views - but I don't think that people were right to do so. I think that the media, in general, failed to understand what he was trying to say. He was saying that the youth of today had aspirations beyond their ability to achieve them. They aspired to be famous film stars, when they couldn't act and were not beautiful. They aspired to be pop stars, when they could neither dance nor sing, and did not delight the eye. They aspired to be High Court judges, when their academic prowess was only mediocre at best. His view is that the children had unrealistic expectations. His view was that the school system, which never chastised the children for mediocrity, never used the word "failure" in their general direction, did not acquaint the children with the idea that failure was possible. While this is good for self-esteem, it may lead to children who have unjustifiably high self-esteem. These are children who really, really, really, believe in themselves - but who really, really, really, lack justification for that self-belief. It was Prince Charle's implicit view that this situation was not rare, but common. Most youngsters of today fell into that trap. Most of them thought of themselves as great people, for whom great success was assured. Sadly, of course, almost all of them are going to fail. Statistics alone guarantee it. If you have a nation of 60 million people of whom 20 million aspire to be film stars and that nation only has enough room for 20 such film stars in that generation...how many are going to fail in their aspiration? 999,999 out of every 1,000,000. Only one in a million will see their dream come true. It is the same for all their other aspirations. So many people will be aspiring to their positions of success than there are places in those respective realms. The result is, of course, that almost all of them are destined for failure in their primary goals. Almost all of them will have to revise their goals, along the way, and settle for something else.

This is the reality of which they are unaware that, I think, Prince Charles was trying to awaken them to. The modern media world has conditioned people to believe that great success is available to all. The modern media creates stars out of nobodies, through reality shows. The modern media creates the belief in people that celebrity and wealth and a life of ease, are available to all, when in fact that they have always been and always shall be available only to the few. This is the "lesson of history" to which I think he refers. Great success has always been a rarity and always will be.

Prince Charles is not saying that people should not rise above their station - as some media criticized him. He is saying that they should have a realistic understanding of who they are, so that they might aspire to something they can actually achieve. A life spent chasing pop stardom when one doesn't have the requisite and multiple, native abilities, is going to be a life wasted. What if that person has, instead, other skills that might be better employed as a nurse or a doctor? Then that person really should look at the medical field. It is a question of finding a good match, in terms of career, for who you are. Too many people waste their lives aspiring to dreams that have no realistic possibily of coming true, simply because the people in question lack the requisite abilities.

Thus there is wisdom, not foolishness, in Prince Charles' advice.

Aim for what is a reasonable choice, for you. Do not aim for iconic cultural roles such as footballer or film star - unless you really have what it takes to succeed in such fields.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and six months, and Tiarnan, twenty-three months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Precocity, child prodigy and achievement.

What advantage is there to be being a child prodigy? Does precocity imply greater ultimate achievement? These are important questions for a society, for it helps to know who best to nurture, for the greatest beneficial outcome.

Two Chinese scientists have already answered this question, through their research.

The paper, "Life span and the precocity of scientists", by Zhao Hongzhou and Jiang Gouhua, the former at the Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Beijing, (People's Republic of China) and the latter at the Beijing Research Center of Science, Beijing, (People's Republic of China), addressses this issue.

The key observation of this paper is that scientists who embark on their career early and make their name by the time they are 25 years old, eclipse their older counterparts, greatly. Using this selection criteria alone (that of an early start), the precocious scientists exhibited a 44 per cent increase in lifetime achievements and a 1.7 times "life efficiency" index (meaning as it seems).

Now, I can't, at this moment clarify the meaning of the life efficiency statement, because I do not have full access to the paper. I once read the whole paper - a long, long time ago - but have not seen anything but abstracts since. I suppose I should have downloaded it.

Yet, the intent is clear: precocity, at least in scientists, but presumably in all areas, leads directly to greater lifetime achievement.

I recall something else from my original reading which is telling. These scientists were precocious - but not by much. They were only a few years ahead of their peers. They were not in the prodigious range - they were mid-teenagers or so, upon going to University - yet even this advantage of two or three years or so, led to a great difference in lifetime output.

I wonder, therefore, how much greater would the lifetime achievement of true prodigies be: with their many year advantage over their peers?

So, for those who question the value of precocity: there is your answer. A precocious scientist is worth a lot more, in terms of real achievement, than a non-precocious one.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and nine months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and two months, and Tiarnan, nineteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

A life of achievement

I live far across the world from where I used to. A couple of days ago, I spoke to my mother in England of our recent doings, here in Singapore.

I mentioned that we had met Singapore's oldest living person, Teresa Hsu, who is reportedly 110 years old - a supercentenarian (according to Channel News Asia and herself).

My mother didn't seem very impressed. "Oh, we had one of those here, too, recently: 108, she was."

"They are very rare." I pointed out, to her, perhaps hoping to elicit an enthusiastic response. "We brought Ainan.", I went on, exposing my wish to let her know that I was trying to provide interesting experiences for him, as a father. She appeared not to notice my intent.

"Yeh, but a lot of them are very ordinary people...they don't do much."

Now, I understood. My mother did not think that the length of a life conferred any merit on the person - only what they had done with their life, had the power to do that. My mother measures the value of a life by what is achieved, not by how long it is lived. For her, the life of achievement signifies that you have striven, overcome and excelled: that you have, in fact, "done something".

This called to mind, my childhood, in a parental home that only measured results. By this I mean, the only thing that mattered was how well you did. This attitude is one that has advantages and disadvantages, which I am not going to go into. Yet, it was revealing for me, to see the same attitude applied to the life of a centenarian. To my mother, if the centenarian had not ALSO achieved something remarkable in her long life, then the long life, itself, is not to be considered remarkable. Simply living long has no value for her.

Is she right? Is it more important to achieve much, than exist long? I suppose, in one sense, for sure, she is correct. The lives of many geniuses of the past, were not long - but their reach through time, by their influence on mankind, is long indeed. They changed things. They "made a difference". Such people did not become remarkable by their tally of years, but were remarkable by what they achieved in the, often short, time allotted to them.

My mother, though she has probably not thought the thoughts of the paragraph above, being, as I believe, not interested in geniuses, she has thought the global one that what matters is what gets done - how "successful" you are - in whatever way success is measured.

Very few of us will ever be able to look back on a 110 years of life. As I have noted before, there are only 78 verified such people alive today. So, in that sense, supercentenarian status is rarer than genius (at least, I hope it is, otherwise there is not much hope for us on the genius front.)

Even though a genius may not live as long, their actions will have much more effect upon the world, than a supercentenarian - unless that Methuselah is also a genius - or gifted in some way. The ideal, of course, would be for a genius to also be long-lived - for then their body of work would be all the greater and the benefit to mankind, so much enlarged.

My mother wasn't talking about geniuses though. She was talking about the everyday efforts of people who strive and become, achieve and do. She was talking about professionals and businessmen - about the doers of the world. Those are her ideal. Yet, her remark applies to all kinds of achievement.

The long-lived person contributes in many ways that a shorter-lived one cannot. They may educate the generations that come after them - if they were foresighted enough to have children - or the young of others, if they were not. They provide perspective on the modern world, which no history book can do so vividly (for they are often surprisingly clear of mind and early memory). If they had a life-long purpose, or project, or organization that they were involved in, they can contribute so much the longer and so much the better for their experience and wisdom. There are certain things that it takes a long lifetime, with its global perspective, to truly understand.

As my mother pointed out, however, many long-lived people have lived quiet lives. Their contributions seem of a modest kind. It is these that she does not respect. Perhaps she feels that they have wasted their privilege and opportunity in having thirty or forty - or more years - than other people generally have.

I would agree with her, that it is a pity to have lived so long and not made the greatest contribution that one can. Yet, this might be assuming too much. People vary in their gifts. Perhaps that modest looking contribution IS the greatest contribution they could have made. We should not, therefore, take a stance of censure.

The lesson here, is that one should strive for a life of achievement, no matter how long one is fated to live. If one aims for such a state, then the life that results will be of merit and worth - no matter how long and short it turns out to be. That would be a life lived well.

None of us know how much time we have - whether it be long or short - so make the most of it and do something worthwhile, with every year of it. Be, as my mother would wish, "an achiever".

Best wishes all.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eight months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and one month, or Tiarnan, eighteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted children and gifted adults in general. Thanks.)

Delayed gratification and achievement

We live in an impatient world. A world in which everyone wants everything done yesterday. Yet, is such a world a world in which greatness can thrive?

I would suggest not. Greatness comes from great effort over a long time. No significant project of human creativity happens without determined effort. Novels don't write themselves. Scientific revolutions don't just happen. Works of art don't just appear on the canvas. In all forms of creation there is the inescapable fact that someone must have put a lot of time into their art or science. This is the time it takes to learn the art, or science; the time it takes to find a worthy project; the time it takes to come to a solution to the problem or artistic expression - and the time it takes to make it happen, to make the art real, the science solid. None of this happens without a hidden factor: patience. This is the ability to simply endure while all this painstaking work takes place. There is too little of this ability in the modern world. Everyone expects everything to be immediate - and yet, without this ability to patiently endure while the slow process of creation unfolds, nothing worthwhile can ever be created. Only the trivial can happen in an instant.

So, does the modern love of instant results make for a shallow modern world? I believe so. Very few people of today have the quality of lifelong endurance that characterized most of the great geniuses of the past. People today want a life of instant luxury founded on the least effort possible: they want, in brief, instant gratification. Yet, it is a truism, that if the pleasure is immediate, the reward is slight. The greatest rewards come to those able to wait.

Yet, all is not lost. Some children show this nascent quality of delayed gratification - and its consequent possibility of great achievement - in their earliest years. One example is my son, Fintan. I can't help but note his ability to buy some chocolates - and simply hold them, without eating them, for several hours, until his older brother Ainan has returned home, so that he might share them with him. That shows the quality of delayed gratification most clearly - but also the quality of selflessness - for Ainan would never know if Fintan had simply eaten the sweets without a thought for him.

I look therefore at Fintan and note two things about him. He likes to draw - and has a gift for it. He also shows the ability to delay gratification. Putting these two attributes together one could conclude that he has the basic dispositions of an artist.

We will see what he eventually turns out to be and to do - but, at only three years old, it is quite straightforward to see foundational psychological attributes at work, in him, that could give rise to an interesting life to come.

(If you would like to read more of Fintan, three, or his gifted brothers, Ainan Celeste Cawley, seven years and six months, or Tiarnan, sixteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children. Thanks.)