| | Kelly,
I fully agree with you about a person being the one who decides what to do with his/her inborn talent, regardless of the degree or type. I do think you were a bit harsh on Hong though, because in context, she did not necessarily mean any moral obligation to use a talent.
Those who possess a specific talent and happen to passionately love the same field can't help but strongly feel gratitude to nature/God/uga uga, whatever, for being created a cut above ordinary mortals. Because of their love, they feel an obligation to fully use and train the gift they were born with. (I use the term "gift" colloquially, in the sense of having something most others do not have.)
This feeling of gratitude is very real and falls into the category of the "marvel at nature" emotions that come with simply existing as a human being (but which many rational self-interest practitioners seem hell bent on expunging from their soul). It is a powerful and proper emotion, but as your arguments hint, it is not for everyone.
Talent without love equals blind duty, and we all know what to think of that.
I am especially sensitive on the opposite scale of what you wrote about. I was an artistic producer in pop music for a number of years in Brazil. After word got out that an American producer was around, you should have seen the unending line of talentless, mediocre, horrible, stupid, stubborn, hard-pushing, God-awful, tasteless, shameless aspirants to fame and glory beating down my door. And all essentially clamoring, "Please make me rich and famous without me having to do a damn thing but smile!"
It is nearly impossible to convey what seeing a spark of talent means in that context. I had to learn patience the hard way.
This is made worse by the entertainment industry itself. There is a product machine that churns out flash-in-the-pan one-day wonders who actually should be driving a taxi or whatever, maybe going to school for something they are good at. If they can't sing, no problem. there are professional singers who record for them and they lip sync. If they can't dance, they will be decked out with a costume and choreographed with dancers. And it goes on.
These "artists" see all this going on around them and think, "Look at my work." But it is not their work. It is the work of a bunch of professionals in a hit machine covering for them.
Then the machine puts them on public display and milks everything it can from pure hype. And these paragons of artistic splendor love every minute of it. They soak it up as their due in life.
But then these poor souls, with the taste of fame in their mouths and without the talent to sustain a career, are spit out and cast aside by the machine when their flash run burns out. They spend most of their lives thereafter trying to regain something they never really had in the first place.
I personally have met a bunch of them. I sure wasted a lot of my own precious time trying to help a few regain paradise lost. It almost always couldn't be done, except for when I interested the hit machine again. But that was really hard because the hit machine caters mostly to youth and these artists stubbornly refused to keep getting older.
So, maybe there is no moral obligation to use an innate talent, but there sure is a moral obligation to look at yourself in the mirror and see when you don't have it. Lying to yourself about anything, but especially about having a talent you don't have, is not only evil, it will make you a real pain in the ass to everyone around you (especially long-suffering tortured producers).
As a Beatle song says, "All the lonely people. Where do they all come from?"
Michael
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