The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ (15 page)

2. GENES DON’T DIRECTLY CAUSE TRAITS; THEY ONLY INFLUENCE THE SYSTEM.

Consistent with other lessons of GxE, the surprising finding of the $3 billion Human Genome Project is that only in rare instances do specific gene variants directly cause specific traits or diseases. Far more commonly, they merely increase or decrease the likelihood of those traits/diseases.
In the words of King’s College developmental psychopathologist Michael Rutter, genes are “probabilistic rather than deterministic
.”

As the search for athletic genes continues, therefore, the overwhelming evidence suggests that researchers will instead locate genes prone to certain types of interactions: gene variant A in combination with gene variant B, provoked into expression by X amount of training + Y altitude + Z will to win + a hundred other life variables (coaching, injury rate, etc.), will produce some specific result R. What this means, of course, is that we need to dispense rhetorically with the thick firewall between biology (nature) and training (nurture). The reality of GxE assures that each person’s genes interact with his climate, altitude, culture, meals, language, customs, and spirituality—everything—to produce unique life trajectories. Genes play a critical role, but as dynamic instruments, not a fixed blueprint.
A seven- or fourteen- or twenty-eight-year-old outfitted with a certain height, shape, muscle-fiber proportion, and so on is not that way merely because of genetic instruction
.

As for John Manners’s depiction of cattle-raiding Kenyans becoming genetically selected to be better and better runners over the generations, it’s an entertaining theory that fits well with the popular gene-centric view of natural selection. But developmental biologists would point out that you could take exactly the same story line and flip the conclusion on its head: the fastest man earns the most wives and has the most kids—but rather than passing on quickness genes, he passes on crucial external ingredients, such as the knowledge and means to attain maximal nutrition, inspiring stories, the most propitious attitude and habits, access to the best trainers, the most leisure time to pursue training, and so on.
This nongenetic aspect of inheritance is often overlooked by genetic determinists
: culture, knowledge, attitudes, and environments are also passed on in many different ways.

The case for the hidden performance gene is even further diminished in the matter of Jamaican sprinters, who turn out to be a quite heterogeneous genetic group—nothing like the genetic “island” that some might imagine. On average, Jamaican genetic heritage is about the same as African American heritage, with roughly the same mix of West African, European, and native American ancestry. That’s on average; individually, the percentage of West African origin varies widely, from 46.8 to 97.0 percent. Jamaicans are therefore
less
genetically African and
more
European and native American than their neighboring Barbadians and Virgin Islanders. “Jamaica … may represent a ‘crossroads’ within the Caribbean,” conclude the authors of one DNA study. Jamaica was used as a “transit point by colonists between Central and South America and Europe [which] may have served to make Jamaica more cosmopolitan and thus provided more opportunities for [genetic] admixture to occur.
The large variance in both the global and individual admixture estimates in Jamaica attests to the cosmopolitan nature of the island
.”

In other words, Jamaica would be one of the very last places in the region expected to excel, according to a gene-gift paradigm.

Meanwhile, specific cultural explanations abound for the island’s sprinting success—and for its recent competitive surge. In Jamaica, track events are beloved.
The annual high school Boys’ and Girls’ Athletic Championships
is as important to Jamaicans as the Super Bowl is to Americans. “Think Notre Dame football,” write
Sports Illustrated
’s Tim Layden and David Epstein. “Names like Donald Quarrie and Merlene Ottey are holy on the island. In the United States, track and field is a marginal, niche sport that pops its head out of the sand every four years and occasionally produces a superstar. In Jamaica … it’s a major sport. When
Sports Illustrated
[recently] visited the island …
dozens of small children showed up for a Saturday morning youth track practice
. That was impressive. That they were all wearing spikes was stunning.”

With that level of intensity baked right into the culture, it’s no surprise that Jamaicans have for many decades produced a wealth of aggressive, ambitious young sprinters. Their problem, though, was that for a long time they didn’t have adequate college-level training resources for these promising teenagers. Routinely, the very best athletes would leave the country for Britain (Linford Christie) or Canada (Ben Johnson) and often never return.

Then, in the 1970s, former champion sprinter
Dennis Johnson did come back to Jamaica to create a college athletic program
based on what he’d experienced in the United States. That program, now at the University of Technology in Kingston, became the new core of Jamaican elite training. After a critical number of ramp-up years, the medals started to pour in. It was the final piece in the systemic machinery driven by national pride and an ingrained sprinting culture.

Psychology was obviously a critical part of the mix.
“We genuinely believe that we’ll conquer,” says Jamaican coach Fitz Coleman
. “It’s a mindset. We’re small and we’re poor, but we believe in ourselves.” On its own, it might seem laughable that self-confidence can turn a tiny island into a breeding ground for champion sprinters. But taken in context of the developmental dynamic, psychology and motivation become vital. Science has demonstrated unequivocally that
a person’s mind-set has the power to dramatically affect both short-term capabilities and the long-term dynamic of achievement
. In Jamaica, sprinting is a part of the national identity. Kids who sprint well are admired and praised; their heroes are sprinters; sprinting well provides economic benefits and ego gratification and is even considered a form of public service.

All things considered, it seems obvious that the mind is the most athletic part of any Jamaican athlete’s body.

The notion that the mind is of such paramount importance to athletic success is something that we all have to accept and embrace if we’re going to advance the culture of success in human society. Within mere weeks of British runner Roger Bannister becoming the first human being to crack the four-minute mile, several other runners also broke through.
Bannister himself later remarked that while biology sets ultimate limits to performance, it is the mind that plainly determines how close individuals come to those absolute limits
.

And we keep coming closer and closer to them.
“The past century has witnessed a progressive, indeed remorseless improvement in human athletic performance
,” writes South African sports scientist Timothy David Noakes. The record speed for the mile, for example, was cut from 4:36 in 1865 to 3:43 in 1999.
The one-hour cycling distance record increased from 26 kilometers in 1876 to 49 kilometers in 2005
.
The 200-meter freestyle swimming record decreased from 2:31 in 1908 to 1:43 in 2007.
Technology and aerodynamics are a part of the story, but the rest of it has to do with training intensity, training methods, and sheer competitiveness and desire
. It used to be that 67 kilometers per week was considered an aggressive level of training. Today’s serious Kenyan runners, Noakes points out, will cover 230 kilometers per week (at 6,000 feet in altitude).

These are not superhumans with rare super-genes.
They are participants in a culture of the extreme, willing to devote more, to ache more, and to risk more in order to do better
. Most of us will understandably want nothing to do with that culture of the extreme. But that is our choice.

Join other readers in online discussion of this chapter: go to
http://GeniusTalkCh6.davidshenk.com

     PART TWO
CULTIVATING GREATNESS
                            

CHAPTER SEVEN
How to Be a Genius
(or Merely Great)

The old nature/nurture paradigm suggests that control over our lives is divided between genes (nature) and our own decisions (nurture). In fact, we have far more control over our genes—-and far less control over our environment—-than we think.

Are [people] conceived with the capacity to play a number of qualitatively different developmental tunes
—in other words, to live alternative lives?

—Patrick Bateson

B
y now, the reader has realized that this is not really a book about genius in the conventional sense. It is not an instruction manual about how YOU TOO can become JUST LIKE WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE! or a secret decoder to help you ferret out the hidden geniuses among us.

It is, instead, a simple call to all who aspire to achieve—in any arena and on any level. In a world obsessed with discovering innate abilities, the evidence gathered here offers a refreshing turn, away from the notion of fixed, inborn assets and toward the notion of buildable, developing assets. Now we can admire the greatest of the greats—Shakespeare, Einstein, da Vinci, Dante, Mozart, and so on—without getting trapped in an artificial distinction of
us
(innately ordinary) and
them
(innately great). The new science helps us understand how perfectly ordinary human beings grow up to do good, great, and extraordinary things. It exposes the fallacy of giftedness and the tall tales that keep it alive.

[Setting: Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts]

SKYLAR: How did you do that
? Even the smartest people I know—and we do have a few at Harvard—have to study a lot. It’s hard.

WILL: Do you play the piano … ? Beethoven—he looked at a piano and
saw
music … Beethoven, Mozart, they looked at it and it just made sense to them. They saw a piano and they could play. I couldn’t paint you a picture, I probably can’t hit the ball out of Fenway Park and I can’t play the piano—

SKYLAR: But you can do my O-chem lab in under an hour.

WILL: When it came to stuff like that, I could always just play.

—From the film
Good Will Hunting

Beethoven and Mozart would be rolling in the aisles. In truth, their ability to “see” music came only after years of intensive work—and in Beethoven’s case, after horrific abuse. Consider this more reliable description of Beethoven’s childhood:

Neighbors of the Beethovens … recall seeing a small boy
“standing in front of the clavier and weeping.” He was so short he had to climb a footstool to reach the keys. If he hesitated, his father beat him. When he was allowed off, it was only to have a violin thrust into his hands, or musical theory drummed into his head. There were few days when he was not flogged, or locked up in the cellar. Johann also deprived him of sleep, waking him at midnight for more hours of practice.