Section 2 Opening

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.