Genius By choice
To me, someone exhibits genius when
they stir up a stagnant pool of thought. Think Cubism and Picasso, Relativity
and Einstein, Apple and Steve Jobs. What each of these examples has in common
is the reevaluation of a commonly held understanding of a subject ultimately
giving way to explosive progress in their respective fields. These sterling and
novel concepts did not happen spontaneously of course. They were mulled over,
chewed on, spit out, smelled, smeared, stamped, thrown, picked up, burnt, glued
together, magnified, lubricated and, with every transmogrification,
scrutinized. And while each of these geniuses had intelligence, their
creativity is what granted them access to unclaimed territory. While the
developers of genius ideas are often intelligent, they are most certainly
creative. And, as I’ve alluded to, creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There
is a process involved, and to use a food analogy, it’s like beef. Whether it
becomes a meatball, frankfurter, or burger depends on the processing of the raw
meat. In this comparison, to create a new beef product, a general knowledge of
some meat-manipulations is needed. Breaking away from the analogy, to be
creative, it is important to be knowledgeable in a specific field and also to
be aware of other paradigms of reasoning.
In Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk,
she approaches the Greco-Roman belief of people having a genius, instead of
being a genius. In her talk, she paints this idea of someone’s “genius” as being
some sort of guiding spirit. And to me, this makes sense. If you consider your
“genius” as a combination of your genetic disposition and past experiences,
than your “genius” is sort of out of your control, perhaps a separate entity
altogether. Unless you could choose what you got to experience. And you can,
for the most part, although it may be a bit trickier than you think. Bringing
in the Radiolab on choice, what difficulties could someone encounter when
deciding to try something new? In the last section of the talk, there is a psychological
experiment where people had to choose between cat posters and more
sophisticated impressionist posters. If you recall the experiment (the group
that had to describe their decision vs. the group that didn’t), it reminded me
of a very interesting facet of adolescence. The experiment, done on kids,
reminds me of myself getting dressed for school. My conversations with myself
would go something like, “I want to wear these black jeans, but how will this
be received? How would I be able to explain myself if someone asked why I was
wearing black jeans? Do I have the reputation needed in order to convincingly
wear black jeans?” The connection between the jeans and the posters is the fear
of being misperceived and potentially isolated. Even though the kids initially
wanted Impressionist posters and I wanted to wear black jeans, we would
actually talk ourselves out of it because our reasoning was simply, I like it,
or, it’s something different, which to a kid, isn’t very substantial.
While the
fear of being different from the larger collective of people is an often-experienced
feeling among humans, fear of becoming something else and losing one’s identity
may be an even stronger driving force.
This self-image, or ego, is how we interact with the world. It is how we
make decisions. Don’t think of ego as only a limiting apparatus though, because
it is also beautiful tool that streamlines the decision making process. Instead
of analyzing every decision ad infinitum, the ego can register things on an
emotional spectrum and allow one to arrive at a conclusion relatively quickly.
However, the ease in which conclusions can be reached using only emotional
reasoning can hamper a person’s chances at growth. Instead of pursuing different and possibly
uncomfortable avenues, we tend to stay on the familiar path when relying only
on emotion. Without new experiences and challenges to gather data from, the
mind can become a fairly shallow matrix of thought.
Putting it all together, looking at
old things through new lenses can expand a person’s creativity, and one way to
gain a new lens is to try on some different glasses. If you favor bifocals, try
a monocle, and then analyze their discrepancies objectively. Drifting away from
the sea of simile and toward the shore of “please stop the metaphors, its
making me sick”, holding one frame of reference over another can be detriment
to the creative process. Genius exhibits itself in no particular way, making
what can be called a work of genius fairly subjective. So experience some new things, take risks, and
expose your genius.
