It may be that leaps of progress in an alien civilization are only possibly through the intervention of what might be called 'great individuals'. This theory, called Carlyle's Theory of Great Men, says that major events are originated by one of a small number of very capable people. Whether it is true or not, Earth's history is often written as the record of what a certain few individuals did. They may have been generals, monarchs, scientists, inventors, explorers, writers, or another leading role. One way or another, they managed to move history in the direction they wanted, or perhaps, history took a turn because of their actions, whether they predicted it and desired it or not. It could very well be in many situations that once the 'great man' did his specific action or actions, others responded to make the large changes that resulted. Either way, the question of great individuals being needed in an alien civilization seems like an interesting one, meaning, that if for some reason, they did not sprout up there, the civilization would reach some dead end, and never get to the stage of asymptotic technology and star travel.
It is often asked, in the generation of great individuals, is it nature or nurture? In other words, is it a marvelous combination of genes that is responsible for great individuals, or can any above-average set of genes, with the addition of quite exceptional child-rearing, training, educating, mentoring and maybe more lead to the great individual? This is a very common question and many have weighed in on it. But it seems that the question is incorrect; an incorrect question is one which makes implicit assumptions which are wrong. Nature and nurture are not independent events, meaning that any individual born on Earth goes not get to participate in a double lottery, one to get good genes and another to get a good upbringing.
Suppose we have a winner of the first lottery, an individual with great genes, all of the ones needed to become a great leader of some sort. Whoever is raising the child, assuming they are the parents and share these genes, perhaps some in one parent and some in another, would be intelligent enough to recognize the talent of the young alien and adapt their raising techniques accordingly. So, the genes themselves evoke the upbringing needed to allow them to reach their potential. Of course, it might be possible that some young alien with these qualities is brought up in a harsh environment, cruel, degrading, restrictive, or in some other way limiting, and therefore he does not reach his potential. The point is not that there are bad environments, but that good environments have a flexibility that can be used to adapt to the great capacity and potential of the child, from very young to much older, and provide the nurturing necessary to allow him to grow into a great leader.
There is more to this adaptation. Often the best learning that a child receives is that which he obtains for himself. Recall the insights of Montessori, who started off the training of children with a hands-off, rich-environment arrangement. Even without any special environment, a great child can seek out the information he needs to expand his intellect and develop his capabiities for some special vocation. This goes on, on a daily basis, while the child grows. With each addition to his capabilities, his ability to find more learning opportunities, and his capability to extract learning from opportunities that others would pass by increases.
When other aliens become involved with the exceptional alien, they might choose to devote some effort to assist the parents to raise him, or better said, to allow him to educate himself. Thus, there is a large feedback effect which continues to grow. The more exceptional the young alien, the more opportunities he will find and others will open up for him, in the area of learning or specializing in some profession or vocation which will produce something memorable and possibly history-changing. This means that some alien who is born at the top of the genetic ladder will have a good chance of grabbing the learning he needs to accomplish some great task. Thus, the division of the world into nature or nurture is hardly possible. A great child would have fairly great parents to begin with, and in the possibly more usual situation where they both are involved with the raising of the child, they would start the process of separating him from the rest of his generation in capability and ability. When he became older, he would strongly act to continue this process, and when older still, others would be impressed with his capabilities and take actions to continue it even further. Many individuals might enjoy serving as the mentor of an exceptional youngster.
Does this feedback effect happen for other individuals than only the exceptionally gifted? One way to discuss this question is to remember that different types of great individuals have different talents and abilities, and great in one field does not mean great in another field. Exceptional individuals somehow find their own direction, where their unique abilities might flower. So, exceptional individuals, capable in different ways, would still have the feedback effect happening, but they would travel different paths through their lives, leading to different categories of great individuals.
The other way to answer this question is to assess whether the feedback effect will provide better-than-average nurturing to better-than-average children, and average to average, and below-average to below average. If there is a sizable amount of correlation here, then the question of nature versus nurture is totally incorrect, not only for the exceptional but for an entire generation of children. It is quite possible that some alien civilization would have child-rearing arrangements that are different from those hypothesized above, and where, for example, specialized child-rearing agents took care of all children. Then, if they took no action to single out exceptional individuals, and possibly limited the attempts of any exceptional individual to seek out mind-expanding learning, there would be no such feedback effect. If so, this civilization would get nowhere, unless Carlyle's theory is totally wrong. This means that the feedback effect would be operating in any alien civilization that was progressing through the different phases, and so as long as the alien gene selection process allowed mostly great members of one sex to mate with mostly great members of the opposite sex, technological and social progress will continue.
Another way of looking at this is to say that alien civilizations that lose the genetic combination game, by not encouraging the intersection of good genes with other good genes, do not get to travel to the stars, and ones which win it, by whatever social customs they espouse, will at least have a chance to spread beyond their home solar system. Similarly, those alien civilizations with no way for an exceptional gifted child to get the learning he needs to become great, will flounder.
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