Homo Talent

By Giorgio Maggi

Is the display of talent as we see it today, the same as one century ago? And what about two, three, four centuries ago, and so on? Which are the differences and the similarities encountered between yesterday and today? Between the past when we were hunter-gatherers looking for survival, to today when we are globalized citizens that can afford the pursuit of happiness? This is the first big step on the path of self-valorization. To ask oneself the decisive question means to seek, explore and discover the hidden dimension characterizing the archaic essence of talent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Delirium Publishing
• Release date: Apr 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301096558

Giorgio Maggi

Giorgio Maggi graduated in Sociology of professions in the University La Sapienza in Rome. He then acquired a Master of Arts in Management and Development of Human Resources in the University of Rome RomaTre. A passionate student of neuroanthropology, he basically dedicates himself to the relationship between brain functions and the display of human talent. In 2012 he has founded Talent Circle – the circle of value-talent. A scientific and innovative approach valorizing talent in individuals and organizations.

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Exlibris

HOMO TALENT

Giorgio Maggi

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Copyright © 2013 by Delirium Editions

Cover design by Lorenzo De Luca

Translation by Fabia Scali-Warner

Book design by Emily V

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission from the Editor/Author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

First Release: April 2013

Foreword

Rome. Just another calm summer night. Sitting on the terrace of my house, in a neighbourhood close to Villa Borghese, I was smoking a cigarette and drinking some rum. With me I had a blank sheet of paper and a pen on a small table, ready for every need. I had been inspired for days, but that particular night my thought stopped and became less chaotic than usual. I understood that it was the right moment for asking alternative questions on human nature.

Is the display of talent as we see it today, the same as one century ago? And what about two, three, four centuries ago, and so on? Which are the differences and the similarities encountered between yesterday and today? Between the past when we were hunter-gatherers looking for survival, to today when we are globalized citizens that can afford the pursuit of happiness?

Today we know, through intuition, many diversified forms of expression. We know how to understand, more or less, the capacity and range of an occurrence of talent; but we don’t have a clear view of it yet, because we haven’t concentrated enough on the birth of this occurrence, from the moment we identify it to its following stage of development. If I could directly speak to each reader, I would ask always the same question: what is talent, to you? Or, just to get a more bewildered look on their confused face: How would you represent it? What does it evoke? Could you give me a personal definition of the concept?

This is the first big step on the path of self-valorization. To ask oneself the decisive question means to seek, explore and discover the hidden dimension that characterizes the archaic essence of talent.

The systematic study of this typically human occurrence opens up, for the future, a series of promising opportunities. The possibility, first of all, to express our authenticity. To live to be happy. To plan and craft our existence, discovering on the way that happiness is a transient emotion that can be obtained overcoming fear. Sympathizing with it. Returning to the origins, inside the archaic brain. The oldest one we possess, according to the model of the triune brain (neocortex, limbic system and reptilian or archaic complex). The reptilian complex (or encephalic trunk) regulates breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat, hunter, thirst, hormonal release and sexual gratification. All lowly functions, you would say, performed by the system to keep on biological survival. Between life and not-life. How does our reptilian brain respond to the stimulus provided by the environment? It develops a sensation and elaborates it in its own way: in a rough, disproportionate, altered manner. It couldn’t be otherwise, since its an outpost of the brain, a region specialized in performing that particular task. Our archaic essence responds producing natural and artificial signals. Physiological signals that meet with signals from the environment. They may be visual, auditory, synesthetic, proxemic, symbolic... and more and more complex. The answer may change from an automatic response of physiological origin to an elaborate symbol of cultural origin, thanks to the prefrontal cortex which manipulates and assembles abstract symbols like numbers, words, graphic shapes, artifacts of every kind.

The archaic essence, the antechamber of the primary talent, is a rough behaviour that is shaped and channeled by the brain becoming an adaptive action or meta-capacity: with the following repeated actions it becomes a strategy of adaptation to the environment, until it takes the form of a complex model of combined actions. An innate emotion, extremely strong and almost uncontrollable like fear, may then change in a defined and acknowledged human talent.

That night I wrote the first answer I could think of and that made sense. It was illogical to think that, in the 15th century, there were displays of talent such as we observe it every day. The social ground has changed. The players have changed, modified their primary needs, more complicated and technology driven.

Digital mobile devices augment reality and the power of our senses: they allow us to replay sounds, words, symbols, images, videos and even tactile sensations and smells. They are the symbolical artifacts of the triune thought, which find technological Interpretants to express themselves.

There is a returning tribalism (Maffesoli, 2009), a wish of community (Bauman, 2007), a desire to strip ourselves of clothes that don’t belong to us and discover once again the strong tie, after the long wave of the loose bonding. We are re-discovering sociality and empathy as innate modules of our behaviour. According to recent studies conducted by neuroscientists and molecular geneticists, it has been observed that greater dimensions of the region of the amygdala could explain the skill certain subjects display in developing very vast and temporarily stable networks of social relations.

In the span of 200 thousand years, our archaic essence has remained intact, always ready to grant us the basic suggestive functions for survival. Up to the point when Homo Talent discovered, today, that it is possible to live an alternative existence, happy and self-managed.

This book wants to start from that point. Discover how talent survived to this day, camouflaging in time and space, wearing masks and costumes dictated by the times.

Los Roques (Venezuela), August 29th 2012

G.M.

Introduction

An exceptional talent reborn after a long sleep always represents an exceptional event. Like the dawn of a new era or the beginning of a new exciting cycle. Yes, because talent has always been inside everyone of us. As soon as we start feeling the environment that surrounds us and answer in some way or another to its information, in that rift in space and time talent is born, shaped and developed. And yet at a certain point in life it ends up at the side, leading (almost) a parallel life. Always on our side, sometimes it pops out suggesting that we are taking roads that do not suit us, and it does so with an unconventional language that we often don’t understand, or that perhaps we ignore due to our laziness. Yet, unabashed, it remains there, on guard, like a restless spirit that just can’t wait to show itself to the world for what it is, and for what it does. And yet, it rarely shows off in all its being. The greatest danger is for it to end up trapped in the quicksands of compliance. In some cases, it spends all of its life in a cage without a chance to run free.

The expression of talent is an event of its own kind, complex and fleeting, a cocktail of nature and culture, art and science, method and chance. A product of human nature evolving along with the surrounding environment, across the ages and contributing to social, cultural and economical progress, always shaped and innovated by the very same changes it causes.

The first smartphone in history, named Simon, was designed in 1992 by a joint venture of IBM and BellSouth. Besides the normal telephone functions, it included calendar, address book, watch, calculator, notepad, email and games. It included a special pen allowing to write directly on the screen. In the last 20 years mobile devices have spread all over the world and through them all kinds of software applications dedicated to specific functions. Downloadable from e-stores, Apps allow users to choose whatever kind of service we prefer. Could we have imagined, 20 years ago, that we could develop talents in creating Apps for all kinds of users? That we could create services with a high level of added value that can be kept always at hand? Where does this human skill come from?

This is just an example of recent history, and we could refer many others, even though this isn’t the correct moment to do so. This isn’t an essay on the history of technological innovation that improves the quality of life, but on the evolution of human talent since its first display, when it takes shape and structure in human actions and artifacts. It’s about how our natural inclinations, determined by the Homo Talent species, shape and are shaped by the environment we live in. It’s about how, actually, our species displays five primary talents that represent five innate macro-areas of behaviour: communication, relation, construction, management, exploration. And it’s about how these five innate devices must take on a material shape and adapt a language that can be understood, in order to be recognized and appreciated by society. We will discover the difference between primary, secondary and professional talent. We will draw the lines of this journey in the three steps that take the innate inclination all the way to becoming a professional talent recognized by society. We will also understand that the profession in which we excel is nothing but a tailor-made dress, an instrument that is more functional than other, a perfect Interpretant that can better reveal our rough talent.

I will bring forth several emblematic examples to explain that we are not born with a talent in a determined professional activity, but that rather we arrive to it after a non-linear journey that is often irregular, accompanied at times by sudden and unpredictable changes of direction. I will try to explain, in detail, that Maradona was not born as a football talent. Nor Cassius Clay in boxing. The mysterious journey that turns talent into something exceptional and recognized passes through casual encounters with key people, with totally unpredictable events as demonstrated by the biographies of the characters. We will face the question of harmonizing the five primary talents in order to state clearly in our mind that, in order to fulfill our nature and reach personal integrity, both in our private and professional life, it is necessary to connect all