Charter Bus you have been reported for piggybacking a sales link. That is a no-no. You must pay TRuth Dig for it!

Genius; however defined, comes first from within, then it needs an environment for expression and some kind of nurturing. Or at the very least the freedom to continue with it without negative feed back. It is a combining of factors not just one single type of factor that makes up genius.

The Protestant work ethic was displayed so well in how the Indians and Angolan blacks of Africa were systematically worked to death in the sugar cane presses when first Columbus and later the Spanish and French etc used it. If it hadn’t been for the Guilds in Europe and later the Unions in the USA we would still have men, women & children laboring from sun up to sun down 7 days a week living a short unhappy life. We still have it in many parts of the world including the USA. Major corporations are behind it keeping it alive. Put that with the “nobility” of suffering and you have a perfect mixture for the “well born” to live such a good life on their backs and miserable lives. Religion had much to do with that psychology and still does. That and wealth it generates.

The reply generator isn’t working for me anyone else? I am not being notified anymore.

The absolute work ethic is an unhealthy condition of life.  It excludes
care for others and excludes care for the earth, but essentially it also
excludes care for the self.  It offers only a dreary existence.  It is
remindful of those monks who self-flagellate because of some
perception of committing sin.  It is pathological and antisocial.  Better
to not sin in the first place, which really means to not be immoral.
What is moral then becomes the question to be answered. 

This disease of the mind was and is uniquely perpetrated by the
Christian view of existence based on the idea of original sin.  Judaism
actually rejects a belief in original sin and teaches that humans are
born with freewill.  The idea of original sin was the first imposition of
power by the Church to frighten its members into submission.  IT is an
evil tyranny.  The Jewish faith that the universe was created out of
chaos is close to the scientific view, but other religions have that view
as well.  Of all of the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism is the most
reasonable. 

It is what the Jews did with their written tradition that becomes
problematic such as the notion that they are a ‘chosen’ people, is an
inherent racism that is unsupportable. Being a people who have been
persecuted from time beyond recorded history, it is understandable for
them to have developed a story that gives them courage.  Further,
though, there is no evidence to give justification to their mythic account
of creation.  Most Jews today, though, see their biblical stories as
purely mythological, but in spite of it, they still carry on their religious-
based rituals as if the world actually came into being according to the
Tanakh.

John Ellis such “ungodly fiction” has nothing what-so-ever to do with the state of the world at this time or anytime. Such blindness in the face of reality, governed by ideology as you are, is sad and all too common to behold. And as for drudgery it is fine too. But wouldn’t it be better to have machines do it so you and I can act upon our creativity? Like in keeping humans from being immured by such drudgery? Planting is good, nothing wrong with it so where’s the beef? But then such creativity of “idle” minds would be a danger to your mindset wouldn’t it? Pity.

you need good healthy food from healthy soils

  a good public education system that also incorporates
  a good exercise routine, not a jock image for
  parents of the chosen few.

  a great liberal arts program and civics courses
  starting from the very first grade.

  making young ones aware of who really controls government.

Henry L. Menken said “Time is the great equalizer in the field of morals.” 
I would say time is the great equalizer in the field of genius.

To think intelligently about genius it would seem to be important to
think of the way the human brain developed, for whatever evolutionary
reason.  We are unique among animals in a number of ways.  One of
those ways is the capacity to acquire and retain an immense amount of
information throughout our lives.  Learning and fine tuning a great
many skills includes developing a complex language and using it in
speech and interpreting what is said.  It is theorized that the earliest
manifestation of human creativity came in the form of storytelling and
this extended into the various artforms, visual and performing with
body decoration one of the first expressions.  I think it is safe to
describe human creativity as a capacity to combine several ideas in
novel or new ways first in abstraction, mentally, then in physical
interpretation from any immediate environmental stimulation as
sensed.  Music, a unique artform involving sound, as theorized by
Theophrastus, arose as physical artistic articulation from emotional
response combined with the sense and expression of sound but had its
origin in sounds made by animals during the season of “courtship.”
Imagining how things could be other than they are is thinking
creatively.  Genius, on the other hand, as a word has a particular
implication. 

Said long ago at a paper given at a Royal Society of Medicine meeting,
there is a sort of doom overshadowing the very conception of genius;
everyone who approaches it is drawn into a murky orbit of adoration
and contempt, idolatry and scorn, profundity and shallowness.”  Maybe. 
As genius these are said to be exceptionally intelligent or creative,
either generally or in some particular respect.  Do artists generally
display a passionate narcissistic identification with genius that allows
them to be praised for glory under the pretense of adoration?  And can
genius really be defined?  Those exceptional and sometimes thought to
be mysterious individuals do appear in our midst.  What are supposedly
their essential characteristics?  Supposedly-external compulsion,
unselfishness, extreme desire for survival, invention, mastery of craft,
universality of mind, depth of perception, extra developed memory,
perserverance, and prolificness are some of the features said to be of
the genius.

It would further seem that to understand the genius, a grasp of how
the capacity for genius shows up in children is the first step towards
understanding how it crops up in adults, unless one simply wants to
“make a leap of faith” that genius in adults is bestowed by some
supernatural power. 

Most likely the creativity of the genius is a natural outgrowth of the
human capacity to use their reservoir of accumulated knowledge
combined with all of their experiences as well as innate talent to
envision and fashion new and novel expressions that shows incredible
and stunning organization.  As such, it can be nurtured and developed.

However, for anyone interested a visit to the article at
http://cogprints.org/656/0/innate.htm
might shed some light on the topic of this forum.  Shown in this article
is “evidence of biological involvement in exceptional skills,” which
would include a biological level of emotional desire.  The study also
shows a counterargument to the “innate talent” theory.  It is also easily
shown that so-called geniuses are enhanced by learning, practice, and
encouragement, things that are external to any genetic propensity. So it
seems nature and nurture combine to produce genius.

Night-Gaunt,  Thanks for the wonderful comment/reply.  I was just listening to a NLS library cassette edition of Asimov Science Fiction.  Old ones that I never listened to when I was more ill (ME/CFS).

  My tech skills are still forming, slow, due to ME/CFS and whatever.  So, there are two websites that I want to refer you to, but can’t do the edit/thing.  On NotDeadYet, Stephen Drake blogs about assisted suicide and things related to disability.  He has friends with Asberger’s and has several articles on the site, linking. http://www.notdeadyet.org  There’s a good column on the right listing topics,etc so you can find them quickly (which is not a problem for you).

  Separately, Stephen Drake has a personal blog called Water on the Brain and Lots on My Mind,  about hydrocephalus with some good postings, also with links to friends with Asberger’s.  His personal stories discuss similar social stuff as you describe.  I enjoy both websites.  (I’ll see if I can leave this on preview, while looking for his url on my list of favorites….) I did it!:
  http://hydrocephalusandme.blogspot.com (If typed correctly - am running out of steam, ME/CFS.) I am one of the great networkers.

Night Gaunts are creatures dreamnt of by that great dreamer (and writer of scary fiction) Howard Phillips Lovecraft. They were used in a poem of that name & in two stories. “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath” & its sequel “Through the Gates of the Silver Key.” Both take place in the “Dream Lands.”

They are described as lean beings with six limbs four for grasping and two for flying, bat-like webbed. Their skin is like black whale skin, “bifarb stinger on the end of their tail, two curvilinear horns and just a suggested blankness where a face should be. Their mode of hunting is to swoop down in the Stygian blackness of the underworld of dream to snatch you away to tickle and sting. You may be eaten, don’t know how, or dropped into the rabid jungles below where nightmare things worm and crawl and feed upon luckless dreamers. They have one fear, of open ocean, their god or progenitor/creator is Nodens and the ghouls can call upon them as steeds in time of emergency. They exhibit a certain intelligence too. {They see through their skin.}

I have a suspicion I have some kind of disorder along the lines of Asperger‘s Syndrome which limits my ability to make bonds as to friends much less have deeper relationships. It also keeps me in part a child with some child-like interests like cartoons, movies of wild fiction etc. So I concentrate most of my energy on things like that including my own ideas.(I just am not successful in making a living off of it is the biggest difference.) It also makes me hard to be around too. I try but for me I must think whereas most just do automatically. So I can’t catch all my errors. It is much easier here because it is strictly verbal, no non-verbal communication, & I can spend time before I respond.

The book I quoted from goes in to some detail and the author looks and many very creative people from Walt Disney to Dr. Richard Feynman and many others male and female. But we still make our own way. The book is mainly for those whose creativity has been suppressed and made to conform to the consensus of general thought.

Night Gaunt, (Interesting screen name…care to tell about it? Am curious.) I appreciate the summary of the material on how to be more creative.  Not sure that I agree with the steps.  I think there a lots of ways to “see” and think.  The best way to exercise one’s creativity, in my opinion, is to do as you and I did, find some place/thing(s) to do that feel “right”.

I knew from age 10 that I was going to be an artist, but didn’t have a clue as to how to begin. After stopping grad school in Amer. Civ.(yes, it’s an oxymoron), I was encouraged by first spouse to take a class (adult class at the New School; it was different then than now) and ask the teacher if I “should continue” in art.  I did take 2 classes, as I was also teaching full time (social studies,etc). The teacher of my collage class said, “Yes, continue, of course”. And I did, but mostly on my own and with books for guides, and now online research into art processes I want to learn about. Learning goes on forever. At 24, I also took an education school test in interest and aptitude and went off the chart in art,sculpture (which I became involved with) but the psychologist evaluator said, “Since you refuse to be told what art to make and won’t be a commercial artist, stick to teaching.”.  I threw the test results into a drawer to find years later, after having begun my art career.

  Years later, I sent my first teacher, the collage artist, some of my work and kidded him about my first spouse suggesting I ask if I should continue, and he said, “yes”.  (Aside:it’s an example of pre-feminist revolution.)  The teacher/artist said,
“You would have continued no matter what I said.” Probably, but support of the creativity is important.  One thing he urged his new students,“Don’t be so quick to condemn other people’s work.”. Darned good advice, and when I was an artist-in-residence for kids, I had as one of the rules, “Everybody’s work is good.”.

And it took me about 3 or 4 decades to learn to draw on my own, after one class and books. Everything I do is to please myself.  Note that.

  Artists of all kinds, in my observation (and artists are great observers, whether visual/sculptural artists or actors), never feel a piece of work is perfect.  We know we are good artists, but nothing ever feels perfect: finished, but never perfect.  I keep encountering people who confuse artist with art: someone read my writing mentioning the line about never thinking a piece of work is perfect with the artist:a guy gave me a lecture (a nonartist, and male chauvinist).  I explained to him that he didn’t understand.

John Ellis, thank you for the short summary.  We are each examples of diversity.

It has also been shown that one does not need a high IQ to do well in the financial markets if anything it is the opposite. Which suggests other traits to get that way. One of the most important is the emotional ability to relate. For some psychopaths they get to be adept at copying it like playing a role because they have no empathy. What is missing from them which allows them to do things most others would not and that gives them an advantage over us. A dangerous one. One they seem to innately know.

However for creativity most people are born with it to some degree. In my case I was one of those who continued to draw long after most others quit. It is still with me though I have branched out in other areas like writing. I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t had a single mindedness to do it. For the creative genius their persistence not only in thinking in ways not usual but in their relentless striving to get it right. A good example in fiction is the delightful film “Meet The Robinsons” based on the a book it concerns the orphan boy Cornelius, a prodigy who is very creative and is always striving to succeed at his scientific endeavors. So full of ideas. In this case to create a device that will retrieve buried memories & display them on a screen—-to recall what his mother looked like those 12 years ago in order to find her. He fails many times but he does finally succeed.

For real true to life creative geniuses and how they work read Michael Michalko‘s “Cracking Creativity: The secrets of creative genius.”

Here are the ways to reawaken in 9 steps as distilled from the book chapter headings;
1) Knowing how to see
2) Making your thoughts visible
3) Thinking fluently
4) Making novel combinations
5) Connecting the unconnected
6) Looking at the other side
7) Looking in other worlds
8) Finding what you are not looking for
9) Awakening the collaborative spirit

Some I was already using but I needed more. He doesn’t promise you can become a creative genius but it could help in many ways to have more creativity in problem solving and just plain living better.

It has also been shown that one does not need a high IQ to do well in the financial markets if anything it is the opposite. Which suggests other traits to get that way. One of the most important is the emotional ability to relate. For some psychopaths they get to be adept at coping it like playing a role because they have no empathy. What is missing from them which allows them to do things most others would not and that gives them an advantage over us. A dangerous one. One they seem to innately know.

However for creativity most people are born with it to some degree. In my case I was one of those who continued to draw long after most others quit. It is still with me though I have branched out in other areas like writing. I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t had a single mindedness to do it. For the creative genius their persistence not only in thinking in ways not usual but in their relentless striving to get it right. A good example in fiction is the delightful film “Meet The Robinsons” based on the a book it concerns the orphan boy Cornelius, a prodigy who is very creative and is always striving to succeed at his scientific endeavors. So full of ideas. In this case to create a device that will retrieve buried memories & display them on a screen—-to recall what his mother looked like those 12 years ago in order to find her. He fails many times but he does finally succeed.

For real true to life creative geniuses and how they work read Michael Michalko‘s “Cracking Creativity: The secrets of creative genius.”

Here are the ways to reawaken in 9 steps as distilled from the book chapter headings;
1) Knowing how to see
2) Making your thoughts visible
3) Thinking fluently
4) Making novel combinations
5) Connecting the unconnected
6) Looking at the other side
7) Looking in other worlds
8) Finding what you are not looking for
9) Awakening the collaborative spirit

Some I was already using but I needed more. He doesn’t promise you can become a creative genius but it could help in many ways to have more creativity in problem solving and just plain living better.

John Ellis, Can you do a short summary of all of it?

The world could use a whole lot more
like the few that make posts here.!!!!!

I agree with all of that.

Genius is defined by the society.  IQ tests are skewered.  I can comment on creativity from my life experience.  There used to be a time, not so long ago, when only men and the wealthy could be artists. I was lucky enough to be born in a time when a working class woman could become an artist.  I am mainly self-taught.  My spouse, a scientist, thinks I am a genius.  I know that all people have creativity.  I have been a teacher. To me, the most important thing is allowing children and encouraging children, and adults who never did, to go for their
dream.  Our society is rotten to the poor. (These are my observations at newly turned 7 0.  I have just completed an art project and a major contribution to folks’ understanding of artists, by doing a work log/diary for several weeks as I did the art.  I think how an artist thinks/problem solves/makes decisions while doing art is what is the mystery to people who are not artists.)  One final note about artists, of the visual and sculpture kinds: artists are determined to do the art, however we can, ill/disabled (you’ve heard of artists who are paralyzed and paint with brushes strapped to wrists or hold a brush/pencil, etc. in their mouth - and variations).  Art is an itch that must be scratched.  Our brains “see” things somewhat differently than people who are not visually oriented. Some people are word oriented.  Some of us are both. 

It is important that all people get education and choices about what they want to “be”.  Free education.  More later.

QI’s measure aptitude and is different from creativity. Unfortunately creativity is stifled at every turn because it inevitably moves away from the established and comfortable. The consensus. But it is the only means of learning more and doing more and understanding more. Whether it is art, literature, law, science it is all comes from this. It takes a combination of timing, and preserverance and others backing it for new ideas that are good to flourish.

Studies also showed that when people of whatever color were put into better environments their IQ scores went up. It is what is called euthenics which means good place. Can you imagine of all 6.76 billion could have optimum conditions for life?

To show you the malleability of IQ, in 2006 I scored 126 on one, 2 years later I took a different one and scored 145. A 19 point rise, all without special study. Having such a number really doesn’t mean that much. I only bring it up as an example. I am a creative person and am constantly at it. Ideas always churning and bubbling up to be expressed. Did you know that the “creative genius” fails more than gets it right? But when they do they are spectacular. One can develop the same habits they do which can help to reinvigore the creative impetus within most of us.

I would be interested in seeing what he has to say on the subject.

I hope some of the pessimists and those who seem to resent “college educated elites” (or words to that effect) read this article because it justifies s neglected reason for believing in the millions of “common” people who think and try to educate themselves.  And in my belief that they may turn out to be “uncommon” after all.

We are going to need millions of people to come together and agree on ways to reinstate American democracy and take power back from corporate power and legislative boondoggling. People can’t decide what to do if they feel incompetent and powerless.  The main theme of the article bears out what I’ve been trying to say here and elsewhere:  There is reason to put one’s faith in ordinary people, many of whom turn out to be extra-ordinary when they put their minds and hearts in united efforts to do what needs to be done.