This is not quite so controversial as you think Samuél—I agree with you much more than you think I would. 🥰
1) I totally do rely on other people's thoughts to come up with my own. It is one of the greatest critiques I have of my own work and I frequently wish I could just come up with an original thought without reading what everyone else in the world thinks about it first.
The truth is I have a lot of ideas but no ideologies. I will read one book and be fully convinced by it, only to read an opposing view and be fully convinced by it. I think it's because when it comes up to dreaming up a better future, we can't possibly know if something will turn out to be good or bad. And even then we'll argue about whether it is good or bad! Will AI usher in the next renaissance or will it be our ruin? Only the future will be able to look back and make that judgement. Even then we won't agree.
2) Agree the internet/media/social media is largely a net negative for society.
3) I don't want to keep our conversation about genius alive because I agree it is already entering absurdity. But I do want to continue the anti-tech conversation. (No anti-aging, no autonomous vehicles, etc.). There are ways in which technology has greatly improved life and ways it hasn't, and I want to understand the luddite perspective. I have a stack of books I'm reading on the subject and maybe then I'll resurface with an essay that quotes a million essays, provides an idea about the optimum balance, and yet still provides no ideologies to speak of. My mind will forever be changing, I'm afraid.
4) I will remain an optimist. I would still rather live today than any day prior and that's why I must imagine the future will be even better, even if it will have its faults!
5) Thank you for the wonderful conversation. I could have a million of these with you!
Utopian Dial-up Dreams sounds like a poem title I would have written... Salty Samuél you're becoming even more of a doomsayer than I am.
The optimism of my teen years in the 90s, the EU project, the Chunnel, the potential of the internet, feels like it's being drowned out by noise. I like to think this is just a result of the disruption that the Internet laid at our feet, but disruptions are by definition temporary. I like to think technology can save us, if only because it was technology (sticks, fire) that lifted us from the animal kingdom in the first place (for better or for worse, here we are). As Elle mentioned in her stellar essay, geniuses are so commonplace today that we don't even call them that.
A genius (or team of) invented the internet, electronic voting, decentralized currency, AI, that telescope you mentioned... A genius will figure out a solution to space debris. Another to cheap desalination, fusion, 3D printed pharma, sustainable everything. These will be bottlenecks for only so long. But the only way to ensure that is to give smart people something humanistic to work towards, like the dream of a better world even in the face of impossible odds. We've been doing this since the Enlightenment, and on a long enough timeline, that trajectory is still there under our feet even if it's not a straight line.
I studied transcultural communication aka translations. I never read more ridiculous academic books than during that period of my life. They were full of quotes backed by other quotes to prove the point of the first quote. And the topics they analyzed bordered with the ridiculous.
Years later I attended a few courses at the agricultural university in the study of landscape architecture and I was mind blown 🤯 I continued learning and reading about the topic long after I finished the courses and the ideas still impact the way I see the world.
Education does make a difference. But it has to be the right kind of education. And it might even give birth to genius. And genius should be used in the service of society. I actually wrote a fiction story in response to Elle’s prompt about cultivating genius: https://claudiabefu.substack.com/p/welcome-to-gulmohur
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 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 has 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, accept 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 15th 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, its 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 21st 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.
This is not quite so controversial as you think Samuél—I agree with you much more than you think I would. 🥰
1) I totally do rely on other people's thoughts to come up with my own. It is one of the greatest critiques I have of my own work and I frequently wish I could just come up with an original thought without reading what everyone else in the world thinks about it first.
The truth is I have a lot of ideas but no ideologies. I will read one book and be fully convinced by it, only to read an opposing view and be fully convinced by it. I think it's because when it comes up to dreaming up a better future, we can't possibly know if something will turn out to be good or bad. And even then we'll argue about whether it is good or bad! Will AI usher in the next renaissance or will it be our ruin? Only the future will be able to look back and make that judgement. Even then we won't agree.
2) Agree the internet/media/social media is largely a net negative for society.
3) I don't want to keep our conversation about genius alive because I agree it is already entering absurdity. But I do want to continue the anti-tech conversation. (No anti-aging, no autonomous vehicles, etc.). There are ways in which technology has greatly improved life and ways it hasn't, and I want to understand the luddite perspective. I have a stack of books I'm reading on the subject and maybe then I'll resurface with an essay that quotes a million essays, provides an idea about the optimum balance, and yet still provides no ideologies to speak of. My mind will forever be changing, I'm afraid.
4) I will remain an optimist. I would still rather live today than any day prior and that's why I must imagine the future will be even better, even if it will have its faults!
5) Thank you for the wonderful conversation. I could have a million of these with you!
Utopian Dial-up Dreams sounds like a poem title I would have written... Salty Samuél you're becoming even more of a doomsayer than I am.
The optimism of my teen years in the 90s, the EU project, the Chunnel, the potential of the internet, feels like it's being drowned out by noise. I like to think this is just a result of the disruption that the Internet laid at our feet, but disruptions are by definition temporary. I like to think technology can save us, if only because it was technology (sticks, fire) that lifted us from the animal kingdom in the first place (for better or for worse, here we are). As Elle mentioned in her stellar essay, geniuses are so commonplace today that we don't even call them that.
A genius (or team of) invented the internet, electronic voting, decentralized currency, AI, that telescope you mentioned... A genius will figure out a solution to space debris. Another to cheap desalination, fusion, 3D printed pharma, sustainable everything. These will be bottlenecks for only so long. But the only way to ensure that is to give smart people something humanistic to work towards, like the dream of a better world even in the face of impossible odds. We've been doing this since the Enlightenment, and on a long enough timeline, that trajectory is still there under our feet even if it's not a straight line.
I studied transcultural communication aka translations. I never read more ridiculous academic books than during that period of my life. They were full of quotes backed by other quotes to prove the point of the first quote. And the topics they analyzed bordered with the ridiculous.
Years later I attended a few courses at the agricultural university in the study of landscape architecture and I was mind blown 🤯 I continued learning and reading about the topic long after I finished the courses and the ideas still impact the way I see the world.
Education does make a difference. But it has to be the right kind of education. And it might even give birth to genius. And genius should be used in the service of society. I actually wrote a fiction story in response to Elle’s prompt about cultivating genius: https://claudiabefu.substack.com/p/welcome-to-gulmohur
Coming in late...
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 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 has 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, accept 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 15th 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, its 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 21st 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.