My father was a talented artist but he had a very difficult childhood. We often hear of great thinkers and great artists suffering from one affliction or another. I am wondering whether anyone has proposed a link between Talent and (what i can only think to call) suffering?
Watching shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” brings this question to mind. What makes these kids so special? What drove them to become so unbelievably good at what they do? Fear? Escapism? Powerlessness? Or is it simply Love, devotion, and strength? Perhaps a mix of both. I’ve always had questions about talented/gifted people.
I’m not familiar with that silly little dance show but I believe suffering causes one to look inward and in doing so finds the source of certain perceptions and potentials…I also think this is the case for humour too…i.e. absurdism.
Read Kierkegaard’s “Diapsalmata”. It’s in his “Gospel Of Our Suffering”.
Persons I admire have stated that they could not trust anyone who claimed never to have known suffering. Personally, my own creative efforts seem to be a bonus after episodes of severe depression.
In suffering we are humbled enough to understand and employ empathy and compassion. Philosophies and religions devoted to obliterating suffering neglect these deflations of human hubris in favor of some singular, personal here or hereafter reward. But, it is only in what makes us realize that we are all brothers and sisters “in the same boat” that we can see how self and other complement and how suffering is ameliorated by knowing that others also suffer.
1). Don’t use t.v. as an example for a connection between suffering and artistic quality: producers (and, I suppose, by extension audiences) love a sob story and will go out of their way manipulate the contestants.
2). Some variant might be at work in this generally. People who have relatively boring childhoods might just not get talked about - skewing the overall impression of the data. This seems intuitively plausible: That it might just seem like there’s a connection because we only focus on the interesting stuff.
3). You have to distinguish between ‘creating’ and ‘selecting’. These two are not clear and distinct categories, it’s about the blanace of causation, about which parts play the greater role. So, does sufering bring gifts out, or within an average member of society does it force us to look for options, more creating us. I suppose this is a variant of the nature / nurture question, but more specialised (since both sidces have a bit of environment on).
Personally, I suspect that, if we suppose that there is a creative drive that is quite common in humanity, putting people in conditions where some will seek escapism is a possible impetus for artistic development. Also, speaking from personal experience, the times when I’ve felt the most driven to write have been when I’ve a). had something relatively traumatic happen and b). had serious restraints on expressing this. Not that it’s ever been anything particularly unusual or THAT bad - but we contextualise our own problems within our lives, generating subjective rules of bad events.
There’s also the final question, that maybe it runs the other way:
All creativity comes from “gut” (visceral) reactions to experiences of flux and change. If insanity and creativity are in any way related, it is so in an existential probe into the matters of being, becoming and belonging, all of which in our time are problematic because we live in a narcissistic society.
If pain can become poetry, if doubt can become affirmation, creativity will remain alive and well.
Interesting history on Roman attitudes towards “genius”, but that talk really did turn into something nauseating*.
I know exactly what it’s like to be hit by inspiration, and it really does just come from nowhere. To quote the opening words from a Smashing Pumpkins song, Soot and Stars:
And later on in the same song, some more words:
Talent is presumably just a “gift” - given to you… when visited by genii? Or by other people, your parents - transferred by genetic inheritance? But then nothing is genetics on its own, without environment, and yet no specific events seem to be happening to cause inspiration - except maybe general calm. But other than that, I can’t say any explanation is particularly compelling to me at this point. All I know is that I sometimes get it and people have also called me talented, and these are probably related events.
I am ridiculously introverted, and very receptive and open to bursts of creativity, but I’m not so sure it’s suffering that has made this happen. I am privileged enough to have only started suffering after a point where it was already notable that I was introverted. Thus I am inclined to conclude that I am not talented because I suffered, but it does seem that I suffered because I’m talented in the way I am.
A side note - the tangible experiences of inspiration described in the talk seem to very much resemble the symptoms of schizotypals.
*(The following tabbed bit is just a rant, really:)
[tab]It’s not so much the substituting of “genetic transmission of predisposition”, or “genii” with “God” that nauseates me, it’s the appeal that doing so seems to make to others who share the same belief, as though affirming the belief or affirming one’s popularity or acceptability amongst those who share the same belief - and the tangible reassurance that follows in the faces of those who do so.
The TED talker is no exception here.
She does the exact same thing when rallying the crowd through the virtues of “doing your job”. Everyone likes someone who shuts up and works, so it becomes a crowd pleaser to adopt such behaviour oneself - so much so that you can flaunt it and be applauded, despite the smugness you can’t help but show upon doing so.
Urgh, I just can’t stand it - and yet for most of the talk she’s quite charming…[/tab]
Yes, Silhouette, inspirations come unbidden. But can you really divorce them from human drives and potentials? Can you really say they are not natural compensation for suffering on some level of awareness?
I also experience the “magic” and “otherworldly” incentives of creativity. But, for the life of me, I cannot separate into natural and supernatural what is felt and understood by creative, talented individuals. If to err is human, to create is also human. Genius is merely a degree of talent. It is ultra-human, not extra-human.
Well no, I can’t say that. But nor can I say they are natural compensation for suffering on some level of awareness for sure. I can say for the most conscious level of awareness, suffering is not necessary for inspiration.
As for “other levels of awareness”, and the notion of “potentials”, I’m kinda funny about that stuff. I class such notions as merely logically inferred explanations for the purposes of fitting in with other explanations, linking otherwise discrete empirical experiences.
What do I mean by that?
Well, if one moment we’re fine and the next we are struck by furious anger we can say “oh well, stuff was going on in the subconscious that caused it” or “the potential to outburst had reached a critical point” - and this serves to link states of consciousness that don’t seem to fit together on their own. It’s not actually based on anything empirical, it’s just theory. I don’t swallow that kinda stuff so easily, just because it makes sense of what we sense.
Maybe we can test chemicals and electric signals etc. that are going on in the brain at any given time, or even cause them to see what happens straight after, and maybe one set of otherwise discrete experience comes to seem linked with another.
But when the explanations extend outside of these bits of experience that are theoretically linked, we don’t experience these outside bits. All we experience is the physical sensation of understanding such explanations, hearing the words that constitute it etc.
But that’s all just extreme skepticism, right?
Insofar as only humans seem to experience inspiration, or at least communicate it, it seems that inspiration is human - and humans are natural. They have natural senses that sense natural particles/waves/etc. so it is only the natural that we experience. If we can’t “sufficiently” trace back any causative understandings to other natural processes, it’s often been proposed that therefore it must come from somewhere supernatural. That’s just more of the “subconscious”/“potentials” stuff I was on about though - I don’t buy it.
I think it’s sufficient to say everything is natural, and that’s all we can sense/know anyway.
I agree that the word genius is used today as a degree of talent. When I was referring to “genii” visiting you, I was talking about the linked TED talk, that’s not what I actually believe. So to me it is also just “ultra-human”, not extra-human.
Since the thread is really about “talent”, I’ve been somewhat derailing - in light of the TED talk. It’s a lot more clear cut when you have a “gift” or talent for running or something - you don’t need inspiration to do certain things, as long as you’re only doing it mechanically. Doing it differently or in an aesthetically pleasing way is another use of the word talent, and this is when it is to do with inspiration.
You’re right that doing things differently is also what you do when you make a mistake, which is human. So perhaps creativity is also just being “broken” - but that assumes that mistakes are disorderly and therefore bad, which is obviously not true. But maybe it is true that they come from a similar place? Again, more speculation to MAKE sense of what we sense (like all questions of origin - no matter how useful the speculations turn out to be).
This thread would be better named “The Origins of Talent,” as it’s too narrow to think that all talent comes about through suffering.
Also, everybody suffers. We just pay more attention to talented people and hence we pay more attention to their suffering and the link between the two (which, I’m sure, there is). But what about all the other people who suffer greatly and talentlessly?
Talent often comes about naturally without practice or forethought. Talent (as in skill) can also come about through desire.
I think there’s this whole shebang about suffering mostly because when someone can communicate theirs in a particularly beautiful and artful way, the rest of us can feel it deeply and we respect it. We respect the sufferings of others and pay homage to them. I’d say it’s worth honoring our sufferings if they have led to new strength. Otherwise it seems like vanity.
Granted that some who suffer may not be able to sublimate pain into poetry.
All illness, whether considered mental or physical, draws a person’s concentration into Self. This is natural. Narcissism, on the other hand is a Self that considers itself sufficient unto itself. It has no need for input from other selves because its self-sustaining narrative is hermetically sealed. This sort of mental condition undoubtedly has roots in an inability of a person to grow up., i.e., to develop into Self/Other interactions that both validate one’s existence and verify one’s beliefs, and societal impositions on vulnerable psyches in the form of ads and customs that dictate what one should look like in order to be accepted into that society and what one should believe. In our country much money is made on such things as cosmetic surgery and weight loss devices. These cause a person to focus mainly on self,on appearance as currency for acceptance. That, to me, is merchandised narcissism.
Granted that some who suffer may not be able to sublimate pain into poetry.
All illness, whether considered mental or physical, draws a person’s concentration into Self. This is natural. Narcissism, on the other hand is a Self that considers itself sufficient unto itself. It has no need for input from other selves because its self-sustaining narrative is hermetically sealed. This sort of mental condition undoubtedly has roots in an inability of a person to grow up., i.e., to develop into Self/Other interactions that both validate one’s existence and verify one’s beliefs, and societal impositions on vulnerable psyches in the form of ads and customs that dictate what one should look like in order to be accepted into that society and what one should believe. In our country much money is made on such things as cosmetic surgery and weight loss devices. These cause a person to focus mainly on self,on appearance as currency for acceptance. That, to me, is merchandised narcissism.
Back to origins of creativity–
Are these origins not part and parcel of genetically induced adaptative processes? Then, from that start, it may be possible to explore what this society imposes as valued. Is creativity its own reward? Is it a self-substantiation begged from accolades? Is it innate in some, but not in others? The concept of talent, which is a societal evaluation, only obscures these questions. Creativity, on the other hand, has to do with one’s ability to make out of what is, someting that is pragmatically or aesthetically seen as better than it was.
You want, if possible–and there is no more insane “if possible”–to abolish suffering. And we? It really seems that we would really have it higher and worse than ever. The discipline of suffering, of great suffering–do you not know that only this discipline has created all the enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, preserving, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness–was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?
I agree so long as creative incentives derived from suffering are seen as due to resilience of the human spirit. Maritain’s “Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry” addresses much of what is discussed here. Where I’m coming from, where I becomes We, is in finding the ontological roots of creativity, the essences of later expressions of creativity. This finding cannot include disconnects or dichotomies between physical experience and rational discussion. Our existence is a flux of extensions. All creativity begins as extensions of genetic adaptational potentials. Emotional/rational needs of self-substantiation are addressed by both the pragmatic making of human artifacts that are creative and useful and the productions of creative endeavors that “healing” as aesthetic appreciation of beauty because beauty can exist.
Clarification–
Maritain is talking about essences of creativity from a philosophic/religious perspective. I’m talking about genetic dispositions that extend where they can–about bio-epistemology and physical generation of creative essences. IMHO, we are talking about the same thing. The roots of creativity and talent are to be found in the so-called subconscious or preverbal “knowing” that relies on intuitions and instincts.
I’ve been told I have had great talent as an actor and dancer. I can’t say if this is based on ‘suffering.’ As an actor, I’ve been able to take possibly mundane feelings and recreate those feelings in order to give life to written words. This is called ‘the method.’ It kind of works like this: If the character you’re playing calls for you to project grief over the lose of a husband, father or mother–and they’re all well and happy and living in Cincinnati, how do you project that grief? You do so by remembering how you felt when you lost a dearly loved pet–or a dearly loved piece of jewelry.
As a dancer, I was once chosen to train for the American Ballet Theater simply because I felt a joy and freedom in ballet. Are either of these talents? Do either depend on ‘suffering’?
The starving poet, author or painter in an unheated garret in Paris is, imo, a myth. Talent comes from an in-depth understanding of human feeling and nature, with the ability to empathize with that human feeling and then turn that feeling into a universal in whatever way you can–words, painting, dance, acting. This may be what talent is all about–not suffering.
