Individuals And Opportunities

A certain kind of individual, like Nicholas van Rijn in Poul Anderson's Technic History and Pummairam in his Time Patrol series, is able to make the most of every opportunity provided by his environment. Individual aptitudes and environmental opportunities interact. Beyond the earliest stages, environment is not only natural but also social. My blog readers and I live in houses built by others, not in caves or the open air.

The nature of the opportunities is as important as the quality of the aptitudes. Pummairam's ancient Tyrian social environment happens to include Manson Everard who can be persuaded to recruit Pum to the Time Patrol! Not a usual opportunity but, with that start:

"...the purple wharf rat sped to the destiny he would make for himself." -Time Patrol, p. 331.

And, unfortunately, we do not see him again. (Barring accidents, Pum would have succeeded somehow even in a Tyre without a Time Patrol.)

I have recently learned how resourceful a friend is. Brought up in a cafe, he can confidently manage a catering business. He has worked in several other practical jobs but tends to be promoted to managerial positions and does not like that so he moves on. Homeless in London, he had enough money to buy a tent, kept clean by using public facilities and worked at the delivery end of catering until, after three wage packets, he had saved the deposit and first week's rent for an apartment. He has spent time in Australia but does not go back because by the time he had "made something of himself there," he would have reached retirement age. By contrast, I would emigrate only under duress and would not be confident of succeeding in Australia.

Some societies, valuing individuals with this ability to succeed, tend to regard the bulk of the population as passive and as requiring a lead from a gifted minority. It is certainly true that every society has leaders, who are not necessarily rulers, but leadership is diverse. Someone responding to a perceived injustice might give a moral lead once in his life and never again and every community has local leaders who may never hold office or become national/global figures. More basically, collective labor has built and maintains organized society so let's value everyone.