A Response to a response to a response...

Cultivating Genius Part 2

Pixabay image by Ridderhof

Music to ready by - Arcana: Dark Age of Reason

A response to Samuėl Lopez-Barrantes’s (if not, Paris) response to Elle Griffin’s response to his Cultivating Genius Part 1

I felt odd reading your response Samuėl (if not, Paris), and couldn’t figure out what it was, but I know the more I read the more I tensed up. I agreed with your conclusions but for the life of me I struggled with the rest of it.

In your opening statement to Elle, you said, “…this whole discussion about genius is at risk of reductio ad absurdum,” and I agree. Discussing ‘genius’ with reference to something that happened in the past – the Enlightenment – to only men, as you did in Part 1, and making that era a guide-rule of sorts for the future, the now, as it turns out, is absurd; especially when the criterion for ‘producing’ genius (without a clear definition of what it is) is claimed the result of Aristocratic-style tutoring. The only evidence put forward for the claim rests on wild speculation and spurious statistics.

You say “We live in an age when purchasing education and regurgitating others’ ideas has become synonymous with being an intellectual.” You seem to disparage your own higher education and the institute at which you received a ‘master’s’ education, but by doing so made yourself sound like a hypocrite. On the one hand you’re saying or intimated, as you did in Part 1, that there was something ‘divine’ about the Aristocratic tutoring your ‘male’ examples of ‘produced’ genius received, making them geniuses (but providing no evidence of how that happened, other than to say that it was a direct result of such tutoring – as in cause and effect) – yet all evidence to the contrary says it is the student, the receiver of an education, any education, who turns themselves into a ‘genius’. [Watch The man who knew infinity]

And on the other hand, you’re saying that your examples of ‘genius’ never once engaged in ‘intellectual’ discourse that involved discussing what others had said about whatever topic they were engaged in, even for comparative purposes. Ridiculous! A great debate has raged ever since people had contrary views to the ones expressed in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

As someone who ‘idealised’ academia from an early age – this is not a defence of academia today – I fulfilled my childhood dream when I gained candidature in a PhD program at what I thought was a suitable institution. But I soon discovered there were no subject experts available at the institute, or in the country for that matter, and would have to make do with whoever I was paired with. A negative experience? Sure. But I stuck with it because I wanted to work in academia. I’m glad I did, but I’m also disappointed that ‘academia’ was not the space I imagined it would be – a space for ‘intellectual’ discourse. The world and attitudes had changed by the time I got there.

Reflecting on my undergrad years, I had realised that I had ignored the hints my lit theory and cultural theory lecturers had been tossing about like confetti to warn people. But what I was thankful for was their taking me into their ‘circle of academics’ to give me insights and encouragement on my journey to ‘academia’.

But what I have yet to do figure out is what the fuck you’re on about. You almost quote Hoel but credit him with saying correctly that ‘we have yet to see a glorious paradigm-shift in human affairs or human wisdom.’ A niece fantasy, but what paradigm-shift? Identitarianism has been around for millennia, not since the 2000s. And individualistic mythologies have been around since Moses – can’t get any more misguided than that. Everyone creates personal myths about themselves and who they think they are, why should this surprise you? Sure, some of these myths are downright dangerous, while others let people achieve lifetime goals. Again, the political hijacking of these important things should’ve been obvious, even predictable to everyone with an education in Derrida and van Dijk. Human nature. Shit happens.

And talking about reductionism, it’s essential to the sciences. Without it scientists cannot communicate very well – not that they always do – and humans could not live on this planet called Earth. Knowing the differences between food and what isn’t, and the health benefits of each is good, I’m all in. It turns out to be very necessary in the field of law because few people, except lawyers and judges, can understand legalese; most people need that stuff broken down to their level of understanding. So yeah, I am a strong advocate for reductionism; without it I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between shit and coffee.

The only way to protect oneself from delusions or dissociative disorders, is an education in critical analysis, including self-analysis. Being able to question everything and get at the truth; whether it’s truth with a small t or a capital T. And I can’t emphasise enough how important this in this era of disinformation, misinformation, and post-truth. A Trump Truth-burger, anyone?

On a societal level, it’s called Fascism or Totalitarianism. Both of which sound disgusting, and they are. But whatever Utopian world you and Elle are trying to envisage and see implemented, means everyone living in that utopia are of one mind, agree on everything, though your optimistic-pessimism wants opposing opinions to co-exist (?), have no need for technology, science, engineering, social sciences, and many other useful things seems an unlikely prospect. If nuclear war erupts with Russia, Sovereign Citizens will turn tribalists – until they run out of ammunition and must resort to clever engineering to make weapons to kill anyone who disagrees with them. Your Existentialism seems to be a cloaked regression to the 15^th century but have no qualms about using modern technology to share your opinions with the rest of the world, or at least those with access. To quote one of your beloved ‘enlightens’, James Baldwin: People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

You keep railing against science, it’s ability to reveal the nature of reality, and its impact on society and culture, but it makes you sound anti-science, or oxymoronic. But any good scientist knows Blumenbach’s ‘scientific’ taxonomy of ‘race’ isn’t even scientific, let alone based on science. We’ve moved on – well most of us have – and left that shit behind, and that’s progress. As for swinging pendulums, it’s probably better to say they do not swing between only two poles but between many different points on an arc (depending on the force of gravity). Genius does not lead to equity for all, this we can agree on. Thus, it’s absurd to try to link genius with a presumed, endless(?), uphill progress (minus any advances science and tech may throw in the mix), and then connect these two to some kind of eventual utopia that doesn’t include science and tech; especially in the context of creating a ‘better’ world, one better than the last or the one we are lumped with in the early 21^st century.

There are so many examples of how science and tech have made life better for humans. I don’t agree that it’s science and tech that have made the world worse or worse off than two hundred years ago. The thing that makes peoples’ lives better or worse is … other humans, ones with differing ideas and beliefs – don’t get me started on beliefs! – about what humans are and how they should live their lives.