We probably already have several ‘Mozarts’ at any one time, but due to the class system and the lack of opportunity they’re probably working in some alienating factory trying to scrape by without the time or money or access to learning and materials to engage in their creative endeavours. It’s one of the greatest tragedies of capitalism; the wasted human potential.
Objectivism’s free-market faith completely betrays it when we realize just how many exceptional people are lost because we as a society pummel them with menial labor, or dismiss them as ‘the help’ based on their gender or skin color.
A giant part of Mozart’s genius came from his early exposure to just monumental amounts of music. As it turns out, giving a child perfect pitch and training them to play the violin before they can read the alphabet are rather mechanical endeavors that we can now do pretty reliably given a very early start, the money to pay for the programs, many of which aren’t super expensive, and access to venues that will make that child’s abilities useful. It has little to do with proclivity or genetics. Some will take to it quicker than others, but most kids can do this.
The fact is that most such child prodigies do not go on to be master composers or even professional violinists, but those that do have a huge head start on mastering what would normally take someone until much later in life to pull off.
We probably already have several ‘Mozarts’ at any one time, but due to the class system and the lack of opportunity they’re probably working in some alienating factory trying to scrape by without the time or money or access to learning and materials to engage in their creative endeavours. It’s one of the greatest tragedies of capitalism; the wasted human potential.
IMO this can become bad thinking even though it’s true
A person or group of people need not have the potential of Mozart, or Ramanujan, or Terence Tao in order to justify their emancipation
Objectivism’s free-market faith completely betrays it when we realize just how many exceptional people are lost because we as a society pummel them with menial labor, or dismiss them as ‘the help’ based on their gender or skin color.
A giant part of Mozart’s genius came from his early exposure to just monumental amounts of music. As it turns out, giving a child perfect pitch and training them to play the violin before they can read the alphabet are rather mechanical endeavors that we can now do pretty reliably given a very early start, the money to pay for the programs, many of which aren’t super expensive, and access to venues that will make that child’s abilities useful. It has little to do with proclivity or genetics. Some will take to it quicker than others, but most kids can do this.
The fact is that most such child prodigies do not go on to be master composers or even professional violinists, but those that do have a huge head start on mastering what would normally take someone until much later in life to pull off.