The Geography of Genius

What are the conditions that foster genius? Is it in your genes? Does it come from your environment? Eric Weiner is betting on the latter as he takes a romp across the globe for a window into the past of where genius flourished. History is his story in The Geography of Genius. Seven locations are chosen. Seems like the perfect number. In Athens he goes on a tour with a guide actually named Aristotle, and he discusses philosophy with a living philosopher actually named Plato. In Hangzhou, he picks up drinking green tea and gets to interview Jack Ma (founder of AliBaba). I’ve followed him through Florence, Edinburgh and Calcutta thus far, with two more stops to go: Vienna and Silicon Valley.

Weiner is one of the most amusing authors I have read recently, and his book is a real page-turner! He has a light touch, interesting interviews, and he makes disparate connections sound creative, even as he is trying to search for the roots of creativity. An exploration of what “genius” means is a great way to start. Here’s a paragraph from Weiner that illustrates his jocular writing style.

“Genius. The word beguiles, but do we know what it really means? It comes to us from the Latin genius, but it meant something very different in Roman times. Back then, a genius was a presiding deity that followed you everywhere, much like a helicopter parent only with supernatural power… The current dictionary definition – ‘extraordinary intellectual power esp. as manifested in creative activity’ – is a product of the eighteenth-century Romantics, those brooding poets who suffered, suffered for their art and, we’d now say, for their creativity, a word that is even more recent; it didn’t come along until 1870 and wasn’t in widespread use until the 1950s.”

What is the plural of genius? Geniuses? Maybe genii? I did my own investigation to learn that this comes from the Arabic djinn – like the chap that comes out of Aladdin’s lamp and grants three wishes. None of those three, by the way, can be a wish for more wishes. The word genie comes from both the Arabic and Roman roots. I find intriguing this idea intriguing as it relates to magic. Maybe what distinguishes a Muggle from magical folk is the ability to tap into your own inner genie, and somehow control the forces of nature (my bet is via something like electromagnetic radiation), bending them to your will. The elves of Tolkien’s world would disagree with this notion. The Parliament Tree in All the Birds in the Sky tells the budding witch that “control is an illusion.”

In any case, Weiner’s plan is to explore the interplay between nature and nurture, and to see if conditions for genius to thrive can be achieved. Each chapter has a theme, although the reader will find that there is no surefire way to predict how and why creative clusters arise. There are, however similarities among the different cities when they thrived in their “renaissance” era. For one, they are all cities – meeting places of different ideas. All arose after terrible conditions, whether political or natural disasters. The historical geniuses profiled had difficult and challenging circumstances to overcome. They failed in many activities, but more importantly kept trying. Their creativity did not arise in a vacuum – visionary political leadership in the nation-states was crucial. And last but not least, each creative cluster also sowed the seeds of its own destruction.

Instead of analyzing the nature of genius (and I have not yet reached Weiner’s summary and conclusion) I have chosen five excerpts to highlight Weiner’s writing, simply because his prose is so much fun to read!

Chapter 1: Weiner is in conversation with MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship recipient Alicia Stallings who proclaims that “Socrates was the Dude.”

“Alicia is clearly using dude in The Big Lebowskian sense, which is the best sense, but still, comparing one of history’s greatest thinkers to a White Russian-drinking, pot-smoking character in a Coen brothers movie? I don’t know. It seems wrong. Look at the facts, Alicia says, sensing my skepticism. While the world swirled around him, Socrates remained an island of calm. A rock. That’s very Dude-like behavior. During his long and fulfilling life, Socrates never wrote a single word. He was too busy being the Dude. And then… just before drinking the hemlock that would still his enormous heart, Socrates implored his followers, ‘I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates.’ Not only is that statement admirably Dude-like in its selflessness – it’s not about the, it’s about the truth – it is also noteworthy that Scorates spoke of himself in the third person. You don’t get any more Dude-like than that.”

Chapter 2: Weiner is pondering the Chinese notion of the relationship between creativity and tradition.

“Tradition is not something that innovative people and places should run from. It is something they should – they must – embrace. That is exactly what the geniuses of Song-era China did. They viewed every potential innovation within a context of tradition. If it represented a natural extension of that tradition, it was adopted. If not, it was dropped. This was not a retreat from the spirit of innovation but, rather, a recognition that [according to Will Durant] ‘nothing is new but the arranging.’ The Chinese did not despair, as we might, at the prospect of a lifetime spent reshuffling the stuff of life. They knew that great beauty is to be found in arranging. Genius even. This helps explain why China’s golden age, unlike say, the Italian Renaissance, was not defined by sudden (and disruptive) leaps, but rather gradual and steady progress.”

Chapter 3: Weiner, expecting he should begin his investigation of the Renaissance in Florence with artists and poets, is instead pointed to merchants and bankers, in particular the powerful Medici family.

“As their name suggests, the Medicis were originally apothecaries – their coat of arms looked like six pills arranged in a circle – and that is, in a way the role theey played. They revved up the metabolism of Florence, like a dose of caffeine. As with many drugs, the Medici medicine came with side effects, and a real risk of dependency. But theirs was by and large good medicine, and the patient thrived.”

Chapter 4: Weiner is in conversation with the playwright Donald Campbell who is describing an example of how Edinburgh thrives on hiddenness and surprise. A fellow playwright calls Campbell and says: “Our play is opening next weekend, but don’t tell anyone.”

“Campbell laughs at the absurdity of promoting a play by keeping it secret… There are two possibilities, I realize. One is that the Scots are nuts, and this whole Enlightenment business was a ruse, an intellectual Nessie. The second possibility is they are onto something. I’m feeling generous – compensatory, you might say – so I choose the second option. Perhaps the Scots have long known intuitively that we cherish the hidden more than the exposed. That is why God invented wrapping paper and lingerie. The surprise, and joy, of discovering what had previously been hidden lies at the heart of creativity…”

Chapter 5: Weiner is writing about the influence and influencers of Calcutta’s Renaissance Man, Rabindranath Tagore.

“A golden age is like a supermarket. It offers boatloads of choice. What you do with that choice is up to you. Shopping at a supermarket doesn’t guarantee a delicious meal, but it does make one possible. By the time Tagore came of age, the Bengal Renaissance had already been laid. The supermarket was open for business. He was a regular and creative customer there. Tagore, like many geniuses, eschewed parochialism. He took inspiration where he could get it – Buddhism, classical Sanskrit, English literature, Sufism, and from the Bauls, itinerant singers who wandered from village to village, delighting in the moment. The genius of Tagore was the genius of synthesis.”

I should finish Weiner’s book in three days since I’m restricting myself to reading a chapter a day. Perhaps I will learn the secret of creativity then!