True Genius

One of my life's great concerns has been the pursuit of true genius. Much of this quest comes out of my identity... I think of myself as exceptionally intelligent, and I really enjoy any activity that promises to challenge or expand my brain power.

There is also a strange cast of brilliance that has played major roles in my life. From my mother's simultaneously absent and present consciousness to my brothers' differing intellectual sensibilities (the younger; a common sense, human truth, the older; a radical, transhuman truth). The elusive yet key wisdom of teaching, namely, that there are different kinds of intellect, is more like a day to day aspect of my life.

Happy or sad, good or bad, intellect has been a foundation of my identity from the beginning. In my younger years I felt isolated by my mindfulness. My peers seemed interested in that which was trivial, and though I had passing fancies about being a part of their world, I was grateful for being smarter than all that. (This whole thing makes me smile nowadays. Think it was my intellect, or my arrogant and shitty attitude that isolated me? You be the judge.)

By my sophomore year in high school, I fancied myself a misanthrope. I think this is the teenaged ego defense to years of being the weird one. Anyhow, I really had a pretty elaborate disdain for people, including myself. I only did good things that way people would think me a good person, and this was a deception that had worked perfectly... everybody thought I was nice... even though inside me lurked a barely checked demon (no joke, this is how I thought of myself). And other people, other people were pale reflections of their selves, projecting false identities and failing to see the true value of other people (as evidenced by my inability to get a date).

All the while I quested for genius. Though I'm not the most fastidious student ever, I learned ravenously, soaking in every subject I could. Most people had a class or two that they hated and were bad at. I may have hated a few, but I was relentless in really getting my head around every idea I came to. At one point early in my search for genius I would have defined it as the ability to learn anything.

But I quickly moved on from there. Unsatisfied with being fed truths from the bounty of past thinkers, I moved into the persuasion that true genius was not to learn knowledge, but discover it. No longer was I content to simply soak in facts and figures. Rather, I would invent schemas and theories and test them against the facts and figures. Creativity became my intellectual centerpiece.

Somewhere in my loathing of my tortured immorality (which was, in reality a twisted form of ego trip), I toyed with the notion that the evil thinker was less restrained than the good thinker. Take a moment on it. The good person can't really consider all the possibilities that an evil person can. They have a moral restriction on their creativity. True genius, it seemed, rested in amoral thinking.

Early in my college career I managed to get over my immoral overdrama. I had been "pretending" to be a good person for long enough that I figured it had finally stuck, and I no longer fantasized that my evil brain was more powerful than a good one. Now my mind was onto a new form of genius. Philosophical fearlessness. No belief was safe. No societal norm uncritiqued. I got inside my head with a crowbar, prying off all the preconceived notions I had ever had and stripping them back.

While I wasn't nearly as bitter as when in high school, I had moved on to a new form of judgement. People who accepted things without question. I was now far smarter than those people who obediently believed that which they were told. True genius was intellectual Independence, and most of the people who I passed in the halls were vessels of unconsidered ideologies and uninvestigated ideas.

That notion of intellect failed when I started actually listening to the way those people thought. Funny thing. Despite never using a mote of philosophical language or academic framing, people I had once considered as inwardly blind were strikingly reflective. It turns out "regular" people think brilliant things all the time. Talking about it at length may not be their favored pastime... and they may not struggle with these issues on a daily business... but they do struggle with them... and if you stop trying to say it your way and listen, they will talk about them.

It was about that time that my head broke open. What had been an entirely solitary process for twenty some years suddenly had many new contributors. I started really listening to lots of people. Everyone, if I paid attention to how they thought, had something to teach me. There were also divine agents at work in my conciseness. God showed me things, angles spoke to me, and the elements of the world revealed lessons about the universe.

Honestly, since that moral/intellectual/spiritual daybreak, I've worried a lot less about the search for true genius. Don't get me wrong, being a smarty pants is still an important part of my identity, and I still struggle with issues of egotism. But as I sit here tap tap tapping away at my computer, I can confidently tell you that true genius isn't a particular way of thinking. More, lots of different kinds of genius that serve in different ways. True genius, for lack of a better phrase, is a particular "why" of thinking. Here's what I mean.

True genius is love.

Think on it. Love pays attention. Love is relentless in solving problems. Real love is fearless in the face of the truth and refuses to live in illusion.

I had once idealized the evil thinker for their unfettered creativity. Now I realize that it is the good thinker that is the true genius, because their intellectual task is harder. Moral thinking demands more creativity because it requires multiplicity, an attention to many different goods. Immoral thinking isn't better... it's lazier. Someone who only thinks of them selves is free to consider all kinds of violations of others. But this isn't unique to the selfish mind. Some of the most intellectually twisted people I know are the most moral. Good people can also imagine bad things.

But where the moral thinker shows their colors is not in fixating on the many immoral paths they can take, but the many moral ones. The paths of righteousness are no less complex. In fact, right actions are far more intricate, as they weave between the simultaneous goods of all involved. You want a chance to prove your brilliance? Start acting as though every speck of the universe is holy and worthy of respect and well being, then start living you life.

Interestingly, the word genius has only meant a person of brilliance since 1649. For hundreds of years before that, the word was used to describe the guardian spirits that protected people and places.

What?

Tutelary spirits. Guardian deities. Tasked to watch over people from the moment of birth and protecting the well being of places and things. These spirits were blessings, bestowing upon their charges boons and guiding their lives. Its not hard to see how the word genius came to mean "strong leaning" (from the spirits' guidings) and "natural talent" (from the spirits' blessings).

So, if you want to be a genius in the richest sense for the word, you must be more than just a smarty pants. You have to put your intellect into the service of others. You have to define your life not by the possibilities of your brain, but the necessities of those it protects.

If you want to be a true genius, you have to do more than think well. You have to think well about the well being of others. You have to love.

True genius?

Love.