Can You Become A Genius?

With Eric Weiner, Former NPR Foreign Correspondent, Author of The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places. From Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley In discussing his latest book The Geography of Genius, geopolitical writer and foreign correspondent Eric Weiner defines genius as that person in our culture whose creativity hits a target no one else can see, thereby compelling the rest of the world to recognize and acknowledge the accomplishment, Einstein being a good example. He goes further to say that in order for these bursts of life-changing genius to occur, the cultural environment must be fertile and nurturing. He gives the analogy of a garden that needs the proper components of soil and nutrients in order to produce quality vegetables. Like the seed that flourishes in rich soil, genius occurs as a result of an idea or a discovery happening at an opportune time and place. Addressing the fact that there have been so few women geniuses, he states that women historically have been dominated and controlled by white men and therefore have not had the opportunity and the freedom to create and discover on a grand scale, dispelling the notion that genius is genetic. In addition, when the cultural environment is right, we get clusters of genius, for example, 15th century Florence which produced the original Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci. The Medici and other Florentine families understood and appreciated art; they sought out great works and were generous in their patronage. The interest and the money of these families fostered a creative ecology where genius could develop and thrive. The Golden Age of Athens is another example of a fertile environment, but a completely different one from Florence. The ancient Greeks invented the symposium, a gathering place where men gathered and drank (albeit moderately) while discussing freely and without censure the great ideas that would be passed on to future generations and cultures. Somewhat like Greece, the people of Edinburgh, Scotland were able to take the ideas of others and greatly improve upon them—the steam engine being one of those massive improvements. Edinburgh, after having lost its independence to England, was a rough and difficult place to live. The Scots’ response to this intractable environment was the merging of ideas and innovation, which came to the forefront with their advancement in medicine. The Scots were masters of practical innovation. A common denominator of these genius clusters was some sort of chaos or trauma coming before. Athens had been burned to the ground; Florence had been decimated by the bubonic plague, as examples. These occurrences shook up the established social order. The chaos happens somewhere between the breaking down of the old order and the re-structuring of another, after which comes a new social order ripe for the emerging of ideas and cultural leaps. Weiner goes on to explain the genius cluster in Silicon Valley today emanating from, strangely enough, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, after which all ships were required to have ship to shore radios on board. With a location far from the East Coast and the powerful money elite, Palo Alto, California and the area that makes up Silicon Valley had the freedom and the innovative thinking that spawned the Federal Telegraph Company, amateur radio, and other “tinkering” that led up to the tech world we live in today. To conclude,