Genetic determination of all giftedness

Genes are the foundation of all our attributes. This may seem like an obvious statement for many - but for some, it is controversial. This is the core of the nature-nurture debate: are we born or made?

From everything I have read, seen and understood in life, I am firmly on the side of nature. I have seen so many instances of people with abilities and attributes that show familial inheritance, that it could not be otherwise. The gene is all: at least, it is most of the story.

I have posted elsewhere about the remarkably strong relationship between the IQ of the parents and the IQ of the children, once they become adults (a correlation of 0.8). Intelligence is not the only strongly inherited characteristic - our height, our health, our immune systems...everything is there, in the genome. Though many may dislike it, we are very much a product of our genes (though these genes interact with their environment).

I am moved to write about this, today, because of my recent encounter with a supercentenarian. Many react to such a person by asking: "What is their secret?" They believe that there is some environmental quirk which led to such a long life. Well, I have to disappoint you. Teresa Hsu, is presently reputed to be 110 years old. That is interesting and amazing in itself - but what do you think about its cause when I tell you that her mother lived to 104? It begins to look rather like another case of genetic inheritance, doesn't it? Well, how about this: her mother's grandmother lived to 103. Thus Teresa Hsu, far from being possessed of some behavioural secret, is the product of a long-line of female centenarians, in her family. It is an attribute of her family, as much as blue eyes are the attribute of other families. It is a genetic inheritance.

All human giftedness, in my opinion, backed by both observation, and reading of much scientific literature, is founded in the genome. This applies to all ways in which one person may be special compared to another. If you look at them closely enough, you will almost always be able to pinpoint a familial cause: they are the product of their inherited genes.

We should not be concerned that so much of what we are is genetically based. That actually is a cause for celebration - for everyone of us is unique (barring twins etc) - and possess a set of attributes and dispositions, given to us by our genes, that no other person in history has ever possessed or will ever possess. We are all, by genetic definition, completely unique. I find that refreshing.

(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, and 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, genetics, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, 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.)

Teresa Hsu, Singaporean Supercentenarian

Yesterday, my wife Syahidah, my son Ainan, 7, and I, went to meet the oldest living Singaporean.

It was a curious meeting. Teresa Hsu has a stated age of 110 years old. Officially, there are only 78 such people in the world. 71 of them are women and 7 of them are men. I do not know whether she is one of those officially listed. She herself says she came from an era before documentation, so we are reliant on her, for verification.

She is an alert, witty and apparently amiable person. Throughout the talk she laughed frequently and I found myself laughing, too, at her unexpected jokes. That she could have retained such a strong sense of humour so long was refreshing to witness. Ainan was very interested in seeing her - for he is not unaware of the rarity of one of such an age. However, he kept fairly quiet throughout and just listened to the adults speak.

She was of modest height, her skin was relatively unwrinkled, being less so than many aged people I have met - and she had a full head of silver hair, which she showed no signs of losing. She did not seem so old as one might expect, looking perhaps no more than 80, or so. I have seen younger people, who looked older.

Her memory for her early life was very clear, being able to tell stories of her childhood and early working days, with clarity and ease. What, however, was also clear, was that her memory for recent events was not so fresh: she had seen a friend of mine the previous day, but evidently struggled to remember the details of the meeting, somewhat. That, however, was not surprising, given her age. In general, she was very together, and responsive and able to discourse at length and interest about her life.

She was born in China to a poor family. At 16, her mother tried to arrange a marriage for her - but, so opposed to this was Teresa Hsu, that she ran away from home, to live in Hong Kong. There she made a living cleaning floors while, in the evening, she studied secretarial skills, becoming a stenographer in due course.

In time, she made her way to Singapore where she acquired a primary school level education at a Convent school at the age of 27. Later on, in her forties, she moved to the United Kingdom, where she trained and practised as a nurse. In her sixties, her sister gave her a large sum of money, which she used to found a home for the Aged (next to which she lives to this day) - and purchase some flats for the elderly to live in.

She has since worked to help the elderly poor have a better life, raising funds for them - and assisting them with food donations.

What secrets of longevity does she have? Well, I would say that key to her continued health this past century, is her ever present laughter. She laughed many times throughout our meeting, finding humour in most things. Then again, she confessed a love of ice-cream - which points to taking pleasure in the senses. Indeed, when asked whether she had ever had children, she remarked: "No. You see if I had had four children, I would have had to share my ice-cream five ways.", she then laughed.

We talked for two hours in a room surrounded by books of all kinds. There are over 2,000 books on those burdened shelves. Her recent reading has included Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie - as well as Dan Brown's entire oeuvre including the Da Vinci Code. She particularly enjoyed that - and was unable to put it down until she had finished it.

She has no truck with the modern world. She cannot use a computer. She does not watch television. She uses no modern electronic devices, referring to them as "boxes".

When I asked her about what life was like before the airplane, she said: "Simpler", but then was interrupted by her constant companion, Sharana Rao, before she could expand. He had the loudest bass voice I have encountered in my life and would repeat everything we said, so that she could understand, being as she is, rather hard of hearing. (The lower frequencies would tend to dull last - the higher frequencies being lost first, so this makes sense.)

She has practiced Yoga, for much of her life (about the last forty years or so) and, indeed, Sharana is a Yoga teacher and osteopath, himself. He looked rather biblical with a long flowing white beard - and spoke with great intensity. In all they made an interesting pair.

Ainan enthusiastically relayed news of his meeting to his brothers: "110..." he began, as he entered the house, explaining his visit to them. To a 7 year old, I suppose, such a number seems vast indeed. To me, though her life is long, it is not eternal. Even 110 seems too short a life, to me!

One day, perhaps, 110 will become a common age but at this time, the ratio of non-supercentenarians, to official supercentenarians, is 77 million to one. Those are long odds for anyone aspiring to live for 110 years or more.

It was a strange meeting. For Ainan is a rare scientific child prodigy - and she is a rare centenarian. Both are exceptional in different ways. Ainan is the youngest of his kind - and she is the oldest. There is a kind of poetry in that.

I hope Ainan remembers the day he met the oldest living Singaporean - and that it gives him a better perspective on life and its possibilities.

I think it was a rich lesson for him, to meet someone reputedly born in the 19th century. The time for when such meetings are possible is rapidly passing. By the time Ainan is adult, there will be no more representatives of that era, remaining. Yet, when Ainan is an adult, he will be able to recall the day he met such a one - and listened to her jokes.

It was a worthwhile visit - and we are thankful to Teresa Hsu and Sharana Rao, for affording us - and Ainan the privilege.

Long may she live.

(If you are interested in learning more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged 7 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 adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)