Eric Weiner, the one who had gone in search of God, says in this talk that genius occurs in clusters. His book “The Geography of Genius” is about this. Stepping over the famous quote of Thomas Alva Edison about genius being one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration, Weiner says that the perspiration has been somewhat documented to requiring 10,000 hours over 10 years to achieve mastery over anything….that is a long time. There is a third aspect and that is the soil that nourishes them. Geniuses are grown in a certain soil…is it coincidence? Is it genetic? Or is it like Churchill is reported to have likened, booze to his Muse? “The important role alcohol plays in creative process is not chemical, it is more social…brings people together,” says Weiner
Weiner emphasizes, “Creativity is contagious, ideas spread like a virus, in a good way…a genius requires a social verdict…you cannot be a self-declared genius…..who is a genius? Mozart, Einstein...there has to be a broader social verdict to declare you are a genius.” Now Weiner links this with the place because, “There is something about these places where the jurists, if you will, the society at large, were discerning. Viennese were discerning audience, they pushed people like Mozart and were able to separate him from an also ran….at a lot of levels place matters.”
Some geniuses during their time are considered competent but not genius level, like says Weiner, “Van Gogh was considered competent but on death declared a genius…someone is a genius if we say they are…people like to believe genius is god made…they like to wonder if there is not something that is universal about a genius that is not dependent on the whims of society…I really don’t think there is…Time has to be right and the circumstances have to be right…Einstein’s secretary once said that Einstein would have been Einstein even if he had lived with polar bears. That is just not true unless the polar bears have a deep understanding of theoretical physics. Without the right condition and audience, Einstein would not be Einstein….”
Weiner talks about Hangzhou as one of the most creative places of yore, “…it was advanced in everything, science, arts, everything…a thriving city ruled by poet emperors (which is a great combination)…rich in creativity and was not a communist system…there were Confucius values…”
If you ask Weiner, “Was Florence more creative than Athens? What is the most happy place?” He replies saying, “Difficult to say what is the recipe for genius clusters. Free flow of information, intrinsic and extrinsic awards, some sort of internal conflict, tension…you need them all. These places of genius seem to have got the balance right.”
Take heart readers for Weiner applauds people like us who can only appreciate, “It takes a city to raise a genius, part of it is the support and money, a lot of it is appreciation…we don’t appreciate appreciation. We think there is the genius and the rest of us.”
If you think you can read his book and dash off to the most creative place so that you can become a genius yourself, Weiner warns you that he has not been comprehensive, “Every author is filled with a little bit of regret…I wish I could have gone to more places. I wanted to go to the Muslim world, very geographically diffused though….I was looking for places that rose to such levels that demanded to be written about like Florence and Athens but also some lesser known places like Hangzhou and Kolkata…places that experienced the golden age but readers may not know about… There have been lots of genius clusters…I tried to find emblematic places that said something different about the idea of creativity. In Kolkata, for example, it is the idea of randomness and chaos really…. the role that chaos plays in coming up with a genius,” muses Weiner
How to nurture the genius in our midst today? Honour local writers, artists and allow a little chaos, the Kolkata way…
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Web link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmZkh3ouhk
