Right Kind of Genius

To my way of thinking we are living in a era where the cultural empire is creating a fast narrowing path to survival. The empire is ultimately self-destructive. There are historical precedents; the Roman empire, the Mayan empire… analyze these structures of power any way you like, from any disciplinary perspective, spend countless hours discussing what little we actually know of how they actually grew and died off, intellectual discussion doesn’t change that they existed, grew and disappeared but for built form. They were what they were, no matter how we analyze and categorize and philosophize.

The descendants of meek members of those cultures remain, healthy and strong. It seems a bit biblical really, the meek have inherited the earth many times over during written history and who knows how many times in the vast ages of human history before the written word.

Many times over the weak have inherited an earth much diminished by the unnatural growths of powerful structures that fed like parasites on a balanced system.

Here is where my thoughts on genius intersect with my thoughts on culture.

The right kind of genius would put the weight of its talent behind a balanced structure of human habitation and community. Since the beginning of written history the right kind of genius has not been culturally favoured. Genius instead has been siphoned off and poured into the foundations of imbalance, the gathering of resources into the hands of the few.

An example is Christaller, whose theory on central place was used extensively by the Nazi’s to create, among other things, a network of internment camps. Christaller’s contemporary, August Loesch, see also, was comparatively ignored; I wonder if this was because his intellectual integrity was not as useful to political and economic strategies. Dr. Loesch did not join the Nazi party.

These are names of people who carried genius. Much of the built form in our present day-to-day lives, in Europe and North America, has been shaped by the product of their minds in the hands of the powerful.

In spite of the successful efforts of this towering structure of wealth, that reaches towards the heaven of its own desires, the right kind of genius remains, germinal, a force of nature, not of culture. And that is as much “human nature” as is greed and competition; more so in my view.

I wish my world were an ancient tale, a sleeping beauty and I a prince to kiss us all awake, in time to live the lives we have been given.

May those who carry the seed of genius with integrity live happy and fulfilled lives. If they can, then we will. Thank you for existing.

What can I say, I am like this in the mornings.

Worldly Distractions

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Quote

“I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.”
Bessie Coleman

From the movie The Matrix
Lock: “Goddamnit, Morpheus! Not everyone believes what you believe!”
Morpheus: “My beliefs do not require them to.”