For the most part, I have little good to say about the future King of England, but in this he hits it.
Key quote: "People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history."
When I first saw something in a headline about 'keeping to your station' I thought what has this idiot said now? But in the context of what he actually said, he's right.
If you want to be a fine guitarist, singer, writer, if you want to be a judge or whatever, you will have to work for it. And with all the work in the world, there's no guarantee you'll get where you want to be.
Talent is something you're born with, an innate ability to do something well. Skill is how you develop your ability to do something. I've known people with amazing talent, who never developed the skills to use that talent. And I've known people with no real talent for something, but they worked hard to develop the skills involved, and were pretty damn good. Talented people who aren't that good at whatever are fairly common; so are people who have no real talent, but work so damn hard that they're pretty damn good at it.
To reach the highest levels of most any field requires some degree of innate talent for it. And schools do not do kids any favors by telling them they can do anything as long as they wish it hard enough. They need to be taught that anything worth doing is going to require work- usually lots of it. The fact that they so often don't teach them that is one reason for a lot of the problems we have now.
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