COLD SHOWER NO. 4 (Part One) -- WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED "GENIUS"?

Cold Shower™

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED “GENIUS”?

No. 4 (Part One of Two Parts)

PART ONE

COMPARATIVE OR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IS NOT GENIUS


James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 4, 2008

This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial /organization psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern professional workers everywhere. His latest book captures the fixation of the times, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).

Question: What is your take on genius? I get the impression you are cynical of the whole idea. Let me quote from one of your books: “B. F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud considered themselves geniuses and so they could moralize about whatever came into their heads with the assurance it would be taken seriously.”
Do you not consider them geniuses? I would also like to know where you see yourself. You write about yourself in your books, but never about genius and you.

Dr. Fisher replies:

Before I attempt to answer your question, your comment refers to chapter VII in “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007) where I write about the interesting role of the outsider who goes against the grain of established cultural practices.

Outsiders are often moralists. The irony in trying to explain the world as they see it, or themselves as they feel themselves to be, they touch a cord or perhaps many cords of insiders. Sometimes this is quite by accident, but more often it is an obsessive quest to be insiders, and “voila!” They become the darlings of insiders.

They seek to create a reputation and some claim to fame. When they succeed, they are inclined to manage their image with the care of a Hollywood celebrity.

Then, of course, there are outsiders that never bother themselves with image making. As a consequence, they remain on the periphery of general consciousness. I am thinking of such existential thinkers as Rollo May, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who, incidentally, refused the Nobel Prize for Literature. They had their devotees, to be sure, but they are not as familiar as names such as B. F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung. What you refer to appears as follows in my book:

“Skinner, Freud, and Jung make philosophical statements on the human condition, but claim to be scientists with philosophy outside their discipline. Yet, it is the nature of their work that has created the gulf between observer and subject that has drawn attention to this inconsistency. Meanwhile, outsiders they scorn take advantage of this intimacy with the subject, seeing their role as being part of the story.

“Freud advised Jung to ignore his critics, while Skinner chose to brand them neurotic or psychotic. Skinner sees himself beyond criticism, especially by people outside the discipline. Another conviction Skinner holds in common with Freud and Jung is that he is a genius. The mere fact that he would be of such a mind suggests he considers genius a rarity when actually genius is quite common.” (A Look Back To See Ahead, p. 59)

We are in the age of media dominance and media like to toss around such words as “genius” with whimsical insouciance. They are in the business of creating icons. Media have worked in concert with such self-absorbed individuals and their coterie to establish the mystic of genius.

Albert Einstein knew and understood this game long before it was an established industry. He confessed, “Why denigrate oneself? Others take care of that when necessary.” He also said, “People flatter me as long as I don’t get in their way.” Once his reputation was established, and he could coast through life, he also said, “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer. I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious.” This is a man who changed physics and the modern world.

Einstein was ahead of the celebrity curve as well becoming the equivalent of a “rock star” of science by his admirers, who found it of slight importance that they had only the vaguest notion of what he had accomplished. I find it interesting that he seemed to delight in feeding this public idolatry and that fantasy. Yet, it would be remiss not to consider Einstein an extremely gifted man.

My point, and one you quote accurately, is that I think genius is common, not rare, and that there are all kinds of geniuses:

(1) There is a genius in animal intelligence found in athletics where the athlete intuitively and instinctively does the right thing in the blinking of an eye.
(2) There is emotional genius where a person maintains self-control under the most extraordinarily demanding of circumstances.
(3) There is intellectual genius in the ability of a writer to capture the essence of his ideas and distill them in a manner that they having meaning and moment to others.
(4) There is the genius of physical beauty as Nature’s hand has touched a person’s sculptured and textured self with incredible kindness.
(5) There is the genius of personal service to others well above and beyond whatever could be expected.
(6) There is the genius of having an eye for organization putting people and purpose together to comparative advantage. Organization genius finds a person creating from little a viable, functioning, progressive and effective association. Once organized, it carries forward on its own power.
(7) There is the genius of doing nothing and appreciating everything, using this brief moment of life to grow in wisdom and knowledge and awareness of those things that cost nothing, and are free to enjoy, while being unconcerned about accumulating anything.
(8) There is the genius of taking people alienated by hostility, dissolving their differences, and forming them into a collaborative coalition by showing them how much more they have in common than what divides them.
(9) There is mechanical genius with the ability to see machines in three-dimensions and to visualize their working parts as if they were functioning separately.
(10) There is the genius of love that shines its light in the darkness of hate, which carries people out of the cave of their despair.
(11) There is the genius of acceptance, which means you don’t own other people’s problems, but will help them solve them if they but have the will.

In simple terms, genius is a many faceted, multi-colored, multi-perspective, and multi-dimensional entity. Genius is before our eyes every day, but not always recognized or celebrated as such. One of the ironies of human nature is that we don’t know how wonderful or gifted we are until someone tells us. The human tendency is to take what we have been given for granted, as if everyone else is equipped with the same gifts, the same talents, and the same capacities, when we know this is not true.

Sometimes, as a result, we flaunt our gifts, or prostitute them with a devil may care attitude, squandering our special talent until it no longer exists, as Lord Byron did, as Malcolm Lowry did, as many others in the arts, athletics, sciences, and in the public arena have. In my own ethnicity, two Irishmen, Timothy Leary in psychology and F. Scott Fitzgerald in literature come to mind.

It concerns me the way people are cavalierly labeled brilliant, gifted, or, indeed, genius. It indicates the patronizing malaise of comparing and competing.

Comparing focuses on the talent of others or what others have at the expense of focusing on our own talent, what we have, and what we might do with it.

Moreover, there is no greater cultural disease than competition.

When we compete in an effort to match the talent or genius that others possess, it enslaves and degrades our minds to be synthetic copies of what others are and have achieved. That said “being competitive” is one of the most prevalent and certainly most destructive forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if it becomes obsessive, we turn into dull, imitative, and an insensitive person to our own unique gifts. Mediocrity is the price we pay for this mania to measure up to someone else’s talent, which results, ultimately, in burning ourselves out.

Often people stereotype us by saying, “You are just like Dick/Jane.” By doing this, they assist us in this debilitating competitive and comparative programming.

Parents, friends and peers can induce us into the competitive process until it becomes habitual behavior. We go out for sports or for the band or glee club or this or that activity with little insight into our uniqueness. Likewise, we launch ourselves into a career in medicine, science, engineering, accounting, or law with little enthusiasm until one day we find ourselves locked in to it for life.

Then, being competitive grows into a habit. We leave initiative, imagination, originality and spontaneity behind in order to fit in, while convincing ourselves this is what I always wanted to be, when we know it is a lie. We have only this one life to live. Yet, without a second thought, far too frequently, we will our careers to the highest flatterers. Meanwhile, our secret love atrophies in the closet of our mind.

Those that we construe as genius have another agenda:

(1) They don’t focus on what is “in” or “out” or what is the prescribed orbit to get ahead.
(2) They do not contaminate their aspirations to be everything to everybody and nothing to themselves.
(3) On the contrary, they follow their bliss.

Unfortunately, the habit of competing is so widespread that many people firmly believe it is the “Law of Nature.” Competition is frequently praised as a great virtue to be developed by everyone. This lies at cross-purposes to breathing life into one’s own unique talent and frustrates relationships with others because of the envy of what they are and have at the expense of developing one’s own gifts.

The moment our focus is on imitating and emulating the model of others is the moment we move away from our own genius. I am a writer. I have been a writer since I was a little boy of five-years-old, a dreamer, a wonderer, an idealist; a person who often wrote little notes on envelopes, margins of books, magazines or newspapers of my thoughts and feelings, perceptions of how everyday things influenced or provoked me. I have even gone to the very dangerous and questionable business of putting these ideas into print, flawed as they are, as imperfect as they are, sometimes as supercilious as they are, inaccurate as they might prove to be, and, indeed, as repetitive as they often are. Yet, I do it. Why? That will be the subject of the second part of “genius.”

See Dr. Fisher’s books and articles on his website: www.fisherofideas.com.