Genius

ON GENIUS

A genius goes beyond definition and well beyond how those in his field or around him conceptualize, with systems which work.

That rather conventional statement is descriptive, but doesn’t immediately tell us how the genius got that way.

Sometimes it’s a matter of stumbling into a knack, as described in my book Beyond Teaching And Learning (http://www.winwenger.com/btal.htm). This happens even when the original knack is forgotten which got that genius started. Sometimes on the smallest thing, or on one thing or another, our genius in many or most cases got on a roll, stayed on a roll, when he fell off he got quickly back on that roll, and stayed on that roll until so much of what he was doing had fallen into being part of that roll that others began recognizing him as a genius. (Or her.)

In which case, the genius is one who finds a good horse and rides it further and better than can others, even if that horse were at first merely a colt.

The parable of the talents comes also to mind as being apt in this context, as reportedly told by Jesus. (One servant buried his “talents” [coin of a type of money] in a safe place, one spent his and they were wasted, both these servants were dismissed. The one who invested and built his so that he finished with more than he started, was hailed as “thou good and faithful.”)

We can compare types of genius throughout our history. These range from the idio-savant “rainman” type, a narrow splinter kind of genius, through the popular notion of a lopsided tortured fractional genius a la Mozart or Van Gogh, to the comprehensive wholistic genius a la Bach or Bacon who is really good at nearly everything.

Studies suggest that for the most part - and contrary to the popular notion - people who are really good at one thing tend also to be good at many other things.

How do some people soar miles beyond anyone else? Is it them, or is it some little trick or knack of thinking or looking or operation that they somehow stumbled into and got started on?

If it was them, it usually wasn’t a matter of somehow-innate superior intelligence. (Indeed, fractionalized rainmen may find it hard to button their own shirts.) We all know highly intelligent and even well-informed people who definitely are not geniuses! What distinguishes genius from these?

Limbic staying power.

It is the “Fire in the belly” that theater people and professional athletes often speak about. True giftedness seems to be mainly a function of the physical appetite structures of the limbic brain.

- In fact, the times of physical appetite change - adolescence and middle age - are the times also in which we lost most of our really gifted people into being merely intelligent and well-informed. Fasting is an avenue in many different disciplines toward attaining extraordinary mental and/or intellectual effects. An association between intellectual sharpening and physical hunger makes sense in bio-evolutionary survival terms: in more rigorous times, all of us are descended from those who got sharper when hunting was poor. Also, though I’m unaware of any formal study on this, there’s a highly apparent incidence of appetite disorders among many of the gifted, which you may rather easily notice upon attending any substantially sized Mensa group meeting.

Drive and persistence, in other words, to override the usual discouragements, counterpart to how fractionated rainmen slip past inhibiting higher(?) mental functions which in their case are missing. In either instance, these are but very different ways to get past inhibiting factors. Lots of people find knacks of one kind or another, but only a few have not only gotten on that roll but stayed there and returned to there until that roll became a grand revolution. Fire in the belly. As persistent as the appetite drives which are physical.

What kind of genius? What kind of knack? - There is some room in which to find them - the undiscovered country which lies within and around every one of us:

We live in a richly holographic universe, everything affecting everything else, everything relating to everything else. So that despite all that is now known in our civilization, we are only a few steps, or a few observations, away from centuries-worth of new science and new civilization no matter what direction we turn to look.

.....win wenger, ph.d., president,
Project Renaissance
http://www.winwenger.com
wwenger101@aol.com
Feedback welcome.

www.winwenger.com/feed1.htm, www.winwenger.com/btal.htm, www.winwenger.com/books.htm, www.winwenger.com/CoreBooks.htm, ImageStream@Yahoogroups.com

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