Again, what we would like and what is
Where do you stand? With those who say that, "given the opportunity, most people can do most anything." (See the recent Deborah Solomon interview with Charles Murray in the NYTimes.)
Or with those who say, "that ability varies — and varies in ways that are impossible to change," with the result that most people can not do most anything.
Isn't it truly amazing, unbelievable if the belief weren't so prevalent among us, that, given humanity's experience of the past 10,000 years or more, there are still legions of those who believe that people can do most anything they set their minds to.
Isn't it rather quite different? isn't it that when we see every day the real achievement of extraordinary individuals, be it the fastest 100 meters ever, the chess grand master battling Big Blue, and any number of other such feats, don't we readily admit to ourselves, that there is no way we can be at all like them, that there are in fact an infinite number of feats and tasks that will always be beyond our ability to accomplish?
This state of affairs, the discrepancy between what we would like things to be and what things are (the appearance and reality of the philosophers) is not too different from our continuing to believe in God, and in a God who loves us at that, even when we witness daily the horrible sufferings of people, and especially the suffering of children, the hardest to bear.
In other words experience, even the briefest amount of it, ought to make it patently obvious that most things are not within our reach, and that God, whether or not he is even present, is not our protector, let alone our loving father.
All of this continues to have two disastrous consequences. First of all the irrational beliefs of the true believers among us continue to be a serious obstacle in the path of science, that science which has done so much more than God and religion to alleviate human suffering (the creationists, for example, would ban evolution from the biology classroom).
And secondly, the belief that most people can do most anything they set their minds to keeps too many children failing at impossible tasks set for them by the school authorities (algebra, for example). This belief keeps too many children from working hard at what would otherwise be perfectly within their reach and within their power.
Because, and this is what I believe, all people have their own particular gifts, their own abilities and capacities, school should be in the business of helping them to discover those gifts, that which is within their reach and power.
And because God is absent, also what I believe, we should look to our own efforts guided by our own experience, by the experience and efforts of others with other gifts and abilities often surpassing our own, and by the on-going and endless discoveries of science, for the betterment of our condition.
