Crack the Myth

For centuries, we’ve wrapped genius in myth. We’ve imagined it as lightning: sudden, divine, rare. It strikes the chosen ones, the Beethovens and the Da Vincis, and leaves the rest of us in the dark, clapping from below. This myth is beautiful. It’s also a lie. 

That myth does more harm than good. It distances us from our potential and places creativity in the hands of a select few. When I think about it, it reminds me of the divine destiny monarchs speak of when they justify or excuse their societal positions. It takes things out of our hands and puts them in the hands of fate or a magical combination of DNA. 

This seems to be more truthful: genius isn’t distant. It isn’t otherworldly. It isn’t even solitary. And it certainly isn’t perfect. Genius is flawed, weird, obsessive, stubborn, collaborative, and human. It’s not a species apart. It’s something much closer to home. Geniuses are people. 

Alain de Botton discussed in an interview that geniuses are not a different species. They are not far removed from us ordinary folk. They are not exempt from flaws, insecurities, or mistakes. They are like us, and we are like them. Another wonderful gentleman, Sir Ken Robinson, spent most of his life communicating to people that each of us holds vast potential from birth. We don’t need the label of “genius” to exist, but if it must, we should confiscate and reappropriate it. I’ve decided either we’re all genius or no one one is.

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

– Henry David Thoreau

A Human-Sized Genius

One of the first projects I worked on was Music Vol. 1 deck. I wanted to have a way to expose my kids to different music, in the same way I had been meticulously working on their taste buds with flavor combinations. Musical genius is one I am absolutely sure I do not possess, so I looked for the people who did. People who had composed such music that it changed history. Before ever encountering de Botton’s interview I found that these musical powerhouses were never flawless titans they are people.

People with tempers, bad habits, fears, debts, and insecurities. Bach was a workaholic with 20 children. Satie wrote music to be ignored, and lived alone with hardly any furniture. Beethoven’s genius came wrapped in illness and fury, yet he composed symphonies that changed music forever. He smashed furniture, punched people, and got arrested. Hildegard von Bingen had visions that many dismissed as madness or psychedelic effects from some mushroom explorations. Still, she became one of her era’s most revered mystics and composers. It is an enormous feat because we know what usually happened to women who stood out in history.

We have established that the so-called geniuses aren’t gods in disguise. The people I found were brilliant and messy. Prolific and petty. Revolutionary and riddled with doubt. What unites them isn’t flawlessness. It was a commitment; they would stay with their questions, practice, and work no matter what happened. They followed their obsessions; they explored, and they kept going.

Like them, there is something in our natures that each of us is gifted with, and this natural spark of genius has to be cared for and fanned by nurture. The nurture part can take many shapes.

Emotional & Psychological Accessibility

The myth of an unachievable genius doesn’t just create distance intellectually. It creates emotional and psychological barriers, too. It breeds shame and inadequacy. If genius is something we either have or don’t, what happens when we feel stuck, doubt ourselves, or can’t make the thing work? What happens when we think: how could I, a little regular person, compare with the greats who achieved it all?!

But genius isn’t the absence of doubt. But what we do with that doubt is critical because there is a moment when it ceases to be doubt and can become a confirmation of what we fear. Whether it is true or not. And this is when the myth that genius is rare and unattainable by choice can be disastrous.

In Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, one of the teachers says to a student, “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” It feels true, and it made something click for me, at least. Geniuses of the past and present don’t think or feel in fundamentally different ways from how we do. To bring up Alain de Botton’s interview again, he says that what genius does is that it pays attention. It pays attention to the things most people ignore. It’s not that we don’t see or feel like them; the difference lies in that we chose, or maybe we’re trained (I won’t get started on this!) NOT to pay attention to them. But there are moments where we feel that bridge between the untouchable genius and ourselves. What Bennett writes about in that moment is one of these bridges.

This is partly why I prefer the term Philomath to Genius; the super genius is the Philomath.  A person who is aware there is always something to learn, that everything is interesting if we look closer. Philomathy isn’t about achieving unmarred perfection but embracing imperfection, growing, and exploring relentlessly.

The Role of Curiosity as the Catalyst

Big reveal... Philomathy, the love of learning, is the true catalyst for genius! The catalyst is most definitely not IQ. Not destiny. Not luck. We are all born philomaths with boundless potential, i.e., genius. However, to be frank, luck does play a role because nurture matters, and circumstances make a big difference in how our own sparks of genius develop.

The bridge from the “genius” to the so-called “ordinary person” is not raw intellect or talent but curiosity. Obsession. Attention. The hunger to follow a question past where most people stop. Genius is not about what we know, iit lies in whether or not we’re willing to keep learning. It means genius isn’t a static state. It’s a direction and an active pursuit.

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

– Albert Einstein

From Genius to Scenius (Enter Brian Eno)

Picture the Genius. Is he alone: in a tower, a studio, a lab? This image of a withdrawn creative, too, is a tale. Brian Eno coined the term ‘scenius’ to describe how genius doesn’t emerge in isolation but from scenes, groups, movements, and collectives.

Take, for example, The Bauhaus; it wasn’t just a school; it was a movement shaped by artists, designers, architects, and different kinds of creatives bouncing inspiration off each other. The Harlem Renaissance flourished in cafes, salons, and parties, where writers and musicians inspired each other daily. The Impressionists painted side-by-side and had salons where they spoke about what art meant to them. They critiqued each other’s work and the world of art at large. The salons didn’t keep people who practiced one art form separate from the rest; musicians spoke about painting, writers talked about philosophy, painters had an opinion about sculpture, etc. Laurel Canyon in the 60s birthed a sound and a sensibility that came from the community. Jazz clubs, punk squats, zines, and discord forums all remind us that community and experience shape geniuses, not the other way around.

Behind every great mind or great talent, there is a great crowd. A group of people who challenge each other, borrow, remix, argue, influence. Genius is a social phenomenon.

To learn, we don’t need more stories about isolated geniuses. We need real stories about who they spoke to, how they learned new things, and how they were exposed to new thought processes. To develop our sparks, we must have more lively scenes where we can forge connections and challenge each other. (Next up will be an Ode to the Libraries and The Third Space) We need a creative soup we can all swim in – no genius without community.

The Value of Practice and Iteration

Often, we admire the output of genius but forget the (interminable) inputs: the long walks, discarded drafts, failed experiments, and relentless editing. A professor once said to me that the process is the product. I find it amusing that my first exposure to this thought was at grad school for architecture, and my most recent was through learning more about the Montessori method (while researching education for my kids). Either way, beautiful things can happen when you reframe the goal as the process rather than the output.

It makes room for the idea that genius is not inspiration, it’s iteration. It’s the will to return, to tinker, to be okay with making something bad, and then making it better or at least different. It decenters perfection. 

The genius isn’t the one who shows up once and dazzles. It’s the one who keeps showing up with playful discipline.

Multiplicity Over Singularity

Another part of this myth worth shattering is that genius is narrow. One domain. One talent. One pursuit. But philomaths know otherwise. Genius thrives in multiplicity. In cross-pollination. In hopping fences and making connections others don’t see.

You can be a genius in a spreadsheet, a garden, in the kitchen, or a conversation. You can be a connector, a translator, or a synthesizer. Genius doesn’t always look like a Francisco Goya masterpiece, sound like a Papa Haydn symphony, or read like an Emily Dickinson poem. It cannot take just one form. Genius is more of a disposition; it can be scattered, inconsistent, and most likely interdisciplinary. The door is wide open.

Why This Matters (a Lot)

Why does this analysis of the title of genius matter? Because the genius myth as it exists keeps us passive. It tells us that brilliance is reserved for the anointed. Unless we’re exceptional from the start, we should stay in our seats; there is nothing to do about it. 

But if we recognize that genius is human, if it’s flawed, social, and something we can develop, then we all have a stake in it. We have agency. We get to participate. We get to create.

When genius is participatory, not prescriptive, everything shifts. This shift in mindset isn’t just empowering. It’s urgent. Because when genius is redefined as participatory, we start showing up differently, as collaborators, not just spectators. We stop waiting for inspiration or validation for that external stamp of approval. We don’t need it. We show up with our questions, our weirdness, our trying.

This is what Super Genius Society believes. Philomathy is the catalyst, and curiosity is the bridge to genius. People grow into their genius if they are allowed.

We believe genius is not a rare flame but a spark inside everyone.

We believe curiosity is the compass.

• We believe learning is not a path to a destination. It is the destination.

• We believe in many kinds of brilliance: the quiet kind, the messy kind, the late-blooming kind.

• We believe that collaboration shapes geniuses.

• We believe genius grows in conversation, contradiction, and community.

• We believe play is serious.

• We believe that a question asked with sincerity is a creative act.

• We believe everyone belongs in the studio, the lab, the library, the rehearsal room.

Welcome to the Society.

So let’s leave behind the genius on the mountaintop and embrace philomathy. Let’s look for each other in the studio, workshop, kitchen, and street corner. Let’s talk and share our drafts. Let’s make a mess.

Because genius isn’t someone else’s birthright, it’s a gift everyone can develop.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

– Maya Angelou

Further Reading & References

• Alain de Botton, The School of Life: An Emotional Education

• Sir Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

• Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

• Brian Eno, discussions on Scenius, as noted in A Big Serious Book interviews and Edge.org

• Alan Bennett, The History Boys (2004)

• Maya Angelou, various interviews and speeches
  

• Albert Einstein, quoted in various sources including Einstein on Cosmic Religion (1931)
  

• Montessori Education Method – foundational works by Maria Montessori

• The Bauhaus School – see Bauhaus: 1919–1933 by Magdalena Droste

• The Harlem Renaissance – see The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader edited by David Levering Lewis