I just pulled that assertion out of the entire composition, because it’s a neat topic. :)

Since I don’t know those authors, and am not familiar with their work, I don’t really know if they’re lit snobs or not. That one assertion about learning is definitely part of the lit-snob Anti-Learning Brigade though, most definitely!

“You can’t learn it” is one of the most useless statements anyone can make. That’s ANTI-KNOWLEDGE. That’s an invitation to stagnate and stop trying to improve. And that makes me sick.

I’ve built my life and career around ignoring malicious assholes that say that. If I’d ever listened to them, I’d be nowhere, and I become absolutely livid when I see them discouraging people that are trying to actually learn and improve. I see it as a moral crime.

And it’s more than just that simple assertion in this book… I did read the summary, but Eric’s right. This sentiment is disturbingly widespread. The artsy-fartsy intellectual elite love to lord the “you’re just born with it, it can’t be learned” party line over people to gain a feeling of unearned superiority and to stifle honest competition.

I call them the Anti-Learning Brigade. And I think they should be hogtied, thrown into a the back of a rocketship and launched directly into the sun. And the world would be better for it. :)

We can’t hide that fact, or mask the nature of a statement like that. Yet it is presented as an opinion based in some kind of fact. But what facts? No facts that I know, certainly not any based on our knowledge of the human brain. If want to talk about facts, the idea that something can’t be learned goes in complete contradiction to what we know about the plasticity of the brain. In other words, it’s a theory proposed by some lit types that contradicts most of known science on the topic of learning.

Well if I have to side with scientific facts, or high-minded literary opinions, it’s not difficult to see what camp my feet are planted in. ;)

Aesthetics? Well, that’s taste, isn’t it? And I would agree that taste can’t be taught. But we’re talking about writing, not taste.

And I hold my question… if a thing cannot be learned or taught, then why do we bother? And how is it that even the Hemmingways of the world manage to learn to read and write? Surely they weren’t writing novels as a baby, or from the time they were born? So how did they ‘magically learn?’

Maybe some people ‘have it’ and others ‘don’t have it’ – but again I find this often to be more obfuscating for the elite to hide behind. How can you determine who ‘has it’ or who ‘gets it’ and who ‘doesn’t get it.’ And dare I suggest that people simply enjoy thinking in such terms because it lets them think they too are part of this elite class, and since there is no hard definition of what ‘it’ is in the ‘getting it,’ then that means they can never be questioned fully and we will never get to the bottom of ‘it.’ And that sir, is the copout that most of the lit and artsy elite hide behind. You either have it or you don’t and if ‘it’ can’t be taught, well then… [insert haughty laugh] then you’re just out of luck then!

It’s almost borderline… mystic theory of talent. It’s all just magic, or something.

I call B.S. on that. ;)

It’s not inscrutable… it’s not obfuscated. The human brain is pretty well known at this point. It has a high plasticity. With an open mind, a wide number of average individuals can learn just about anything they set their mind to…

If they are unable, it’s because they won’t rather than can’t. Now maybe, just maybe… this definition of skill/talent is referring to the “won’t,” but more often than not it’s framed from the elitist point of view of “can’t.”

Who is to say that somebody ‘can’t’ do a given thing? Since when did other people become the experts of your capabilities?

That’s where the real motivation behind that thinking comes in for me. It’s simply a shoe-in for others to decide what you can or can’t do… or to have the power of judgment over you within a community.

I don’t buy any of that nonsense. But if it’s your cup of tea, great!