Ever wondered if your lack of artistic ability was due to your parents’ mathematical-minded genetics or their refusal to sign you up for after-school art classes? Or how your friend was a piano prodigy despite her dad barely being able to play a note?
Some believe that hereditary factors are responsible for one family producing generations of musical virtuosos, while others suggest that our cultural and environmental surroundings play a larger role than genetics.
Human nature is a broad term that encompasses many qualities. Creativity is less a general or amorphous quality and more a very specific capacity to exercise a specific set of skills. Is everyone born with the potential to develop these skills?
It’s true that in some environments, the practice of creative skills isn’t encouraged and may be actively discouraged. In some places, schools may present such environments.If parents can provide more opportunities for this, that would help.
They were both Chinese immigrants to America—my father was a mechanic and my mother took care of the family. They taught me to work hard, take opportunities, accept responsibility and eschew cowardice, less by explicit direction and more by implicit influenc
