This article discusses the importance of both natural talent and acquired effort. It uses various examples to show that hard work alone cannot beat genius, and concludes that it’s important to live life to the best of your ability given your talents and circumstances.
Since ancient times, people have debated whether it is nature or nurture that determines human behavior. In the ancient Spring and Autumn Warring States Period, Mencius and many other scholars discussed the innate nature of human beings, and in the modern era, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote about the importance of acquired education in his work Emile. No one has yet concluded which is more important, but we can make inferences based on various examples around us.
Someone once said Genius is 99% hard work and 1% inspiration, and it was Edison, the genius of invention, who said this. It’s a cruel statement that emphasizes the importance of acquired practice and hard work because people only see the 99% effort, but in reality, without the 1% innate inspiration, all the 99% acquired effort is useless. Based on this, my argument is that, given the right environment, you can’t beat someone who is genetically gifted.
I believe that each person is born with a special talent, and it is when a person is born with exceptional abilities and is in the right time and environment that we create what we call geniuses. Of course, it is an obvious fact that people who are not genetically gifted can create talent to a certain extent by putting in extraordinary effort. However, the ability to exert effort is also an innate ability itself, and even in this case, it is often kneeling before the genius who exerts effort. There are empirical examples of how no matter how hard an individual tries, they can’t beat someone who is naturally gifted. Nowhere is this more true than in the world of the performing arts.
The movie Amadeus tells the story of Mozart and Salieri. Salieri was an Italian composer who worked tirelessly to become a court musician. Mozart, on the other hand, had a talent for music from an early age and was labeled as a prodigy, a genius musician. Both Salieri’s and Mozart’s environments were conducive to music. Salieri worked hard and became a court musician, so he was a great man. But he had a lifelong sense of inferiority to Mozart’s genius at the time. The movie Amadeus focuses on Salieri’s envy and jealousy of Mozart and highlights Mozart’s genius. The irreversible gap between genius and criminal has become so commonplace that the term Salieri syndrome has been coined since the movie’s popularity. As this example shows, hard work can lead to some level of achievement. But it can’t beat natural genius. This is a dramatic example of how nurture and environment can’t beat nature.
Even if you’re not interested in baseball, you’ve probably heard the names of Lee Dae-ho, Choo Shin-soo, and Lee Seung-yup at least once. They are three of the best hitters in Korea, the U.S., and Japan, but they all had one thing in common: they were pitchers before turning pro. Some of them were injured, others were recruited by their teams, and all of them are doing much better than those who started out as pitchers. Each professional team has two teams. If you look at the players there, most of them are hitters who have been hitting the ball since elementary school. However, only a small percentage of these players make it to the first team. In fact, baseball is one of the sports that requires the most natural talent. Throwing a ball at 150 kilometers per hour and catching it for a home run can only go so far if you don’t have good hand-eye coordination, quickness, and physical conditioning. But let’s say these people chose to study instead of play baseball in the first place. Strong shoulders, natural strength, etc. won’t help them in their studies. They chose to play baseball and were able to develop their talent because they were in that environment.
The easiest other example is singers. There are tons of famous singers out there, but they got there by honing their natural voice. Of course, there are many current trainees who are just as good as the original singers, but they didn’t have the opportunity to become singers. However, there are also many aspiring singers who practice hard but don’t have the natural voice or talent to become a singer. One of the most dramatic examples of this is the bad boy musicians who became famous on an SBS talent show. They are loved for their unique voices and lyrics, even though they don’t have any special musical training. Their natural voices and ability to compose and write lyrics didn’t come from practicing.
So far, I’ve been talking about the importance of innate talent, which, at first glance, seems not unlike Nazi eugenics in World War II or the genetic categorization in the movie Nikita. But I’m not dismissing environment or acquired influences altogether. Even a genius can achieve some level of success with bloody hard work. A child who grows up in a good environment is probably more likely to succeed than someone who has to create their own environment. But no matter how good your circumstances are and how hard you work, you can’t beat a natural genius.
Finally, the most important thing in life is to find your own unique path. You don’t have to be a genius like Einstein to live a fulfilling life, and hard work is enough for most people. Most of the people in this society are not geniuses who enjoy their work, but ordinary people who fulfill their tasks with a sense of mission and pride in their work, even if they don’t enjoy it. As each person’s given environment is different, there is no need to feel inferior to the geniuses around them, but to live their lives to the best of their abilities, even if they have not inherited natural talents. I think it’s important to be a social genius. Discovering your own unique talent, finding an environment where you can maximize your talent, and steadily walking your own path will be the true success.
