“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them”
5th May 09
Posted in creativity, design
Have just finished a fantastic article in the New York Times, on “Searching for Value in Ludicrous Ideas“, by Allison Arieff. It covered, in wonderful detail & with generous illustrations, the uncategorizable work of Steven M. Johnson, a kind of hybrid planner, architect, designer, futurologist, inventor. He comes up with crackpot ideas such as this, the “Nod Office”. Brilliant; reminds me of Douglas Coupland’s sketches of ‘veal fattening pens‘ in Generation X.
I found it inspiring, exciting and instructive all at the same time (I fully recommend you go and read the whole thing, I won’t even attempt to do it justice here; Arieff puts it together superbly well and ensures Johnson is the hero of the piece).
And it got me thinking . . . about the value of mavericks. In a world of frenetic recycling, mash-ups, re-tweeting and outright imitation I wonder how we can find more left-field thinkers and, as importantly, allow them to flourish when we find them? Does the sharing of everything, all the time, with everyone, combined with the sheer volume of stimulus that assaults us, result in the lobotomizing of the renegades, the free spirits, the natural geniuses? The natural evolution of average. Not survival of the fittest so much as survival of the most popular.
Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion House Prototype (c.1945)
Buckminster Fuller, referred to throughout Arieff’s piece, and without question a misfit and visionary some decades ahead of his time, once memorably proposed, “everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them” (even his use of the word ‘de-genius’ is a maverick move). Wonderfully phrased but also, surely, terribly sad?
(Thanks to Tim Geoghegan for the heads up on the NYT article to start with, and the awesome addition of the Supertramp video).
10 comments on ““Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them””
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Ben Malbon
I recently visited ‘The Henry Ford’ museum in Michigan–Bucky’s dymaxion house can actually be toured there ( http://ping.fm/prktg ).
I like the “living de-geniuses them” quote… With age, some people succumb to seeing all things as fixed, when creativity is dependant on identifying the potential for variables ( http://tinyurl.com/cuo5kk ).
Consider the effect of sharing, recycling, re-tweeting and mashing on the stupid and clueless. It may elevate their consciousness and awareness to the level of average. Which is a comparably positive outcome to a few more geniuses out there.
I think Ken Robinsons talk at last years TED covers this nicely. How in general we all have “creativity” taught out of us by the school system, not de geniused, but more de-created…A prime example is kids who mark make/graffiti etc.. instead of being encouraged and directed into art, they’re demonised, criminalised and made to feel what they do is generally worthless.. yet it’s used to sell everything from cars to property.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
well, in direct response to the article, I second the link by Martyn with the Ken Robinson presentation. Still an all-time fav TED talk. Furthermore, Mr. Brooks wrote an interesting piece the other day over at the Times that basically surmised that the way “left-field thinkers” aren’t so much what to search for, but rather we should activate talent and passion early, providing an environment and example of what these young geniuses can one day become. Basically we need role models - and this links back to all the talk about cherishing and rewarding good teachers and programmes that allow young minds to flourish (as spoken about by Robinson, Obama, etc)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Anyway, a tangent if I may:
I think the “sharing of everything, all the time, with everyone, combined with the sheer volume of stimulus that assaults us” actually can help move forward new concepts quicker and better. Its like distributed computing (SETI@Home stuff), but with brain processing power. What I mean is, you see these big time columnists putting forth thoughts (as you do here) and using powerful thoughts from reader comments to improve and revise ideas.
Now, in the old days of newspapers it was pretty much one way communication, maybe an editor was there on staff to help, but now we are beginning to see op-eds turn into running dialogues; indeed they are evolving ideas.
Anyway, what I’m saying is I’m not sure the evolution of average is happening with this realtime spread and access to information as we feared it happened with TV and movies (content that eventually started to cater to the LOOOOOWEST common denominator). But rather, its opening up pockets of intellect that could never have been accessed before, not to mention at this speed. Distributed computing power of our brains, connected by the net, through common interest points. Except most of us keep much more eclectic areas of interest than ever before, rather than the more generic groups of interest we were involved in before.
/ramble
Interesting, provocative post. Fuller’s line is great In my darker frames of mind, I prefer Beckett’s grim outsider fortitude (”We can’t go on. We must go on. We’ll go on” or Kafka’s bleak optimism (”Of course there’s hope. Just not for us.”) And I cite those two example for a reason; lots, many, if not most great artists and thinkers are unrecognized or even scorned during their lives. Germany didn’t got over failing to appreciate Mozart, until they had bigger things to be ashamed of. Truly original artists and thinkers tend to challenge the status quo. Not within the systeem–doing a viral campaign rather than a TV effort–but by absolutely refusing to work in the system at all. Justice Souter comes to mind. How many men or women would hav the balls to tell the Supreme Court to screw themselves, describing his seasonal time on the supreme court as his yearly “intellectual lobotomy”? Most of us love the rewards and satisfactions collegial respect, success, money, etc.(myself in included) too much to gamble everything on our kooky personal visions. And these guys and gals tend not to be very good “team players,” as they say in the trade. It’s a deep structural problem which your post calls calls attention to, reflected in our culture of commentary and constant recycling. And it’s one that all creative industries (basically all industries now) are facing: How do we balance the needs of organizational efficiency and structure with the freedom to include really loopy geniuses (who are very hard to distinguish from the merely loopy anyway). My own sense is that real outsider thinkers (Fuller, Gould, Pynchon) will never play along or play for long enough to help a business achieve its goals without causing all kinds of collateral damage. That’s why we love them right? As the post above says: we want to be inspired by them; but do we want to work with thim. Google’s famous 20% time model is one way but not someone like Fuller would show up at the office one week. But great thought provoking post. Thanks
Talk about sloppy creativity: that posted before I intended. Apologize for the typos and screwed up links.
When I was a kid, my small, upper middle class community was full of Mensa kids. Divorce struck many of those families, when those kids were tweens. Over the years I checked in with many of them. Those whose lives became inundated with stress while in their tweens all failed to reach the potential we were supposed to have….. I believe several were bonified geniuses. What a loss to the world’s collective thought
Lots of people talk about embracing the mavericks and the outsiders, but in practice they rarely do. Typically–and this applies to everyone from banks to advertising agencies–the people in organizations wind up hiring and consulting and associating with people who already fit into their network, which is often signaled by where they went to school, who they know, where they’ve worked, and so on. That’s understandable, but if everyone’s the same, you can’t very well call them “different” and hope it means your network is diverse.
Of course, as we’ve figured out by now, people like what they know and almost instinctively (and perhaps unconsciously) gravitate towards it. So in order to do what you propose, everyone would have to make an effort to disrupt their thinking.
Not easy, but totally possible. And ultimately, pretty simple. The hardest part is sustaining the change…
Thanks for the comments Brad. Absolutely agree on the gulf between saying and doing. As you say, we’re hardwired to want to spend time with people like us. We have to fight our instincts not to do that. Ben
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by BBHLabs: Yup @adamcl, reminded me of this: “Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them” - http://j.mp/iKcij...