[lit-ideas] Re: Einstein

Andy:  I want to know why Einstein is synonymous with genius when
he did what every other scientist with a breakthrough did.
Rhetorical question.

Eric: Don't forget the MacArthur Genius Grants. Some time ago, I
posted a snippet from an article by a guy who had analyzed the
traits of the MacArthur Genii. Apparently, if you live in NYC or
SF, you stand a much better chance of being one of the geniuses.

The better angel of the term is admiration. That's only half the
story, otherwise we'd have the MacArthur Foundation's
Wow-We-Really-Admire-This-Person Grants. On Saturday, I heard
Christopher Taylor play Ligeti Etudes at Columbia University.
Christopher who? Yet this particular pianist certainly is a
Wow-We-Really-Admire-This-Person. The audience was packed with
famous musicians. They certainly knew that Christopher Taylor was
a Wow-We-Really-Admire-This-Person. But the average classical
music audience? Christopher who? This guy tends to play difficult
modern or unusual repertoire, the Messiaen, Boulez, Webern stuff,
and he avoids or is not considered for the big promoter events
that make record deals with Sony. He's out of the "Three Tenors"
League, the publicity cycle that exults players like Manny Ax or
Uchida. Will he ever transform himself from a cognoscenti's
Wow-We-Really-Admire-This-Person to a full-blown promotional
machine's Wow-We-Really-Admire-This-Person? And does it matter?

The devil of the term "genius" is distance. Sure this genuine
self-actuating Wow-We-Really-Admire-This-Person's-Work is
noteworthy, but who would want to emulate them? Parents, warn
your children against becoming a genius! They'll be odd, won't
fit in. They'll wear dork clothes, get slapped around by stud
muffins in cool clothes. They'll be outcasts.  They'll have hair
like Einstein's and probably bad breath too. They might go mad.
End up like Tesla on a park bench talking to pigeons. If your
child becomes a genius, they will be unloved and they won't be
able to talk to you. They'll be too...well, genius...to have
normal relationships. And because they are a genius, they'll be
particularly clueless about normal human motives. They'll be the
idealist scientist who befriends the evil space alien out of
curiosity. They'll be the patsy of Nazis patrons and will never
question where their funding comes from. Or they might even
become an "evil genius" who builds a
Planet-Smashing-Cyborg-Nanomachine to get even with the stud
muffins in cool clothes who kicked them around in high school.






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