All Children Are Renaissance Men: Our Society of Specialization, Imposter Syndrome, and the Downfall of Creativity
All children are renaissance men. A “renaissance man” being someone with many talents, areas of knowledge, and a powerful mind for creation.
Childhood is a blank state where one hasn’t yet experienced life. Children have no prior knowledge of the world and haven’t started consuming media, so everything is new to the senses and exciting. They live in their own little worlds created by their imaginations, illustrated on paper by colored pencils. All children are renaissance men in the sense that they have the unlimited potential to create: doodling, telling stories, world-building, and playing pretend.
In an ideal world, we can explore all the niches that gage our interest with no real, fiscal punishment. We can be the DJ, poet, comedian, painter, and fashion designer of our dreams — just to have fun — even if we aren’t good at it. However, as we grow up and enter higher education in a society focused on specialization, we develop imposter syndrome and lose the freedom to create. Indulging in a creative hobby becomes an act of privilege instead of something originally innate. For example, reading as an adult is an active choice that takes devotion, while reading as a child was pure, unsolicited pleasure. We never reach our true potential as renaissance men in exchange for survival.
Capitalism tells us that the purpose of life is success, and happiness is obtained through status and accomplishment. Thus, many parents are focused on raising the perfect “child prodigy” in order to get their kids into good colleges. My parents raised me to be a poster-child for success. From gymnastics at 6 to piano lessons at 8 to joining orchestra at 12 to art lessons at 14, I was the perfect resume for the Ivy-League common app. This deterred me from actually exploring and enjoying my interests naturally — as I was trained to be “good” at all of them. When there is obligation tied to it, the fun is taken away. If the end goal is success, the happiness in the journey is forgotten.
Creativity as an adult is accompanied by financial obligations, time constraints, and societal expectations. We lose the liberation to access our imagination that we had as a child. Shang-Chi breakout star Simu Liu is a victim to this problem. “I went to business school and I actually worked as an accountant for about eight months. It’s not what I wanted, but it was definitely a move to appease the parents. That, to me at the time, was what it meant to be a fully functional adult” (Lee).
From a young age, a college education is heavily pushed onto us as a recipe for success. Choosing a major at the onset of adulthood deeply limits our creative development. It forces us to choose a niche to become really good at, and build a career off it in order to excel in our self-imposed specialized role in society. Specialization in higher education is the root of imposter syndrome in many young minds who are still figuring out their passions. For example, a computer science major with an interest in making movies may feel like they can never be a filmmaker because they didn’t choose to go to film school. We tell ourselves that if we don’t professionally study something, we will never find success in it. The competitive individualism imposed upon us in school allows no room for failure — and even less room for fun — in order to compete in society. We give up on our dreams, thinking someone else can do it faster and better.
At the end of the day, we have to understand that college is just a financial investment. It is practical — with deadlines and obligations — and it is fine to study something that will get you a job and help you survive. College doesn’t train you to explore your full potential, it just categorizes you into a niche to become the perfect cog in the corporate machine.
Jo March’s question in Little Women sums up our loss of creative freedom as we grow up: “Why is childhood over? I’d rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.” Aging ultimately revives your inner child. Something I noticed in older people is that they become children again and rediscover the activities they loved growing up. True happiness comes from resorting back to the simplicities and boundless creativity you loved as a child.
We often realize how to be happy too late in life. The power in play is forgotten as we become emotionally distanced and disillusioned when we grow up. To prevent this, we must be knowledgeable of how societal constraints and powerful institutions affect us in order to overcome our mental blockage and reach our full creative potential.
