Pure genius

Genius is a strange word. It sounds like Djinni, which is a magical creature that grants wishes, and it sounds like genes, which are the blueprints for our body. 

It refers to humans who are exceptionally skilled in some way. For instance, Albert Einstein is a genius of science and mathematics. Van Gogh is said to be a genius of art, and Mozart is a musical genius. Alexander the Great was a strategic genius, Genghis Khan was a tactical genius.

However, this seems somewhat controversial. As Einstein famously said: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”. It seems that what Einstein meant here was that different people have different inherent talents, so to judge a professional athlete's intelligence by his spelling proficiency is useless, and instead it should be their willpower and motivation you measure them by. But more on this later, first, some anecdotes:

When watching a sci-fi show with two good friends of mine who happen to be twins, there were scenes in which the idea of surrendering the lowest academically achieving 10% of children to an alien race is featured. The twins said to me as they saw this that they thought they would be part of that number, which instantly made me question my own ideas of intelligence as I realized that these two fully sentient, incredibly creative and smart human beings believed themselves unintelligent solely because they are dyslexic, and therefore academically challenged. So here I had realized that intelligence and academic achievement are two entirely separate things, despite often holding strong correlation between the two.

The second anecdote is somewhat different. It happened while I was on a camping/forestry expedition with my BTEC Level 2 classmates. Having spent the better part of a year feeling quite intellectually superior and rather out of place in this group, it still came as quite a surprise when one of my classmates responded to something I said (though not in response to me) with 'Why does Isaac think he's so much smarter than us?'. This was a situation I was definitely not prepared for, and luckily something else grabbed the attention of the group quite handily, leaving me a moment to reflect on those words. The first thing I realised was that he was right, I did think that, which was quite disconcerting for a few reasons: 1) He saw something about me I couldn't see myself, 2) it made me address why I even felt that way, and 3) It made me briefly perceive myself through the eyes of another. After that, I decided not to dwell on it too much, partly because it was like I had been caught in the act, and partly because I doubt I could try to not seem 'smarter' than that lot anyway without causing even greater offence. However, the reason I tell this anecdote is not to complain but to make the point that someone who I had looked at as dull, perhaps dim-witted even, had made a very astute personal observation. Though it should be said, there are multiple times when I have heard someone say  similar things along the lines of 'Why does X think they are better at Y than me?'  and I have to say usually that question is rhetorical, the reason being that the only answer can be 'Because they have reason to believe that is the case.'

The over-arching point of these stories, however, is that it is pointless for a human to look at a human and decide their approximate worth. As a creature of biology and a gently brainwashed mind, it is irrational to assume I know anything about anyone. I would claim that I am smarter than most people, but then I would say that, wouldn't I? It's very convenient for me to be able to look at people and think I am better than them, because otherwise I would likely have crippling self-esteem issues, as would anyone if they though everyone in the world was better than them at everything. Heck, I'd even go so far as to say I'm a genius, I'm just not sure what it is I'm good at yet.

And now, here comes my original point: There is no such thing as a genius. While Einstein's idea was that anyone can be a genius by their own criteria, my argument is that the very idea of a genius is just an excuse us normal people make when we realise we're not good at anything. I don't think Usain Bolt is a genius of running. I think he is a man who works almost every day of his life and shows the results. I think Albert Einstein paid a lot of attention. I think Van Gogh was simply a man whose story and passion spoke to people. Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, considered the two greatest military leaders in history are both men who were simply told that one day they would rule, and made the decision that when that day came, they wanted to be not just people, but Great People. Heck, think of anyone in your life who you personally believe to be a genius. For me, I think of people such as Bruce Lee and Terry Pratchett. Bruce Lee, who was an actor/action hero, was in his lifetime considered even by his enemies to be the greatest martial artist of our era. Bruce Lee did not come out the womb with a black belt. Bruce Lee didn't even know what Kung Fu was before he was born. The only reason he got good was that he wanted to. If Stephen Hawking had never picked up a textbook, he would just be a sad story. 

I believe it was Tiger Woods who said this: 'It's funny how the more I practice, the more often I get lucky'. For me, this rings truer than any elitist, breeding program propaganda. While I recognize that humans are animals, and there's no reason why you couldn't breed humans for specific traits in the same way we do cats and dogs, I do not believe that on a day to day basis some people are born far superior or deficient than others. I very much agree that both nature and nurture play a role in human development. I cannot agree with people attributing Einsteins prowess to his mother and father simply for birthing him, and I cannot agree with people who say Einstein (or a person of identical achievement) would have existed had even one of his parents been a different person.

When it comes to creating genius, talent is silver but practice is golden.



EDIT: I like to write about my thoughts, and most of my thoughts concern me, but I do sometimes worry if sometimes I write about information too personal for the reader. I've had people say to me a couple times I should take more care when making personal statements and things such as this but in those situations I mostly just felt as if it was more of a problem for those people then it was for me. For instance, I recently told a group of 14 people that I thought they were all just taking part in a massive 'circle jerk', essentially massaging each others egos. While I did find it embarrassing to use a somewhat vulgar metaphor, and it was on my part a 'face threatening act' in that I literally stood up and told 14 people I thought they were out of line, afterwards I was approached by some others who witnessed the event from the outside and cautioned me to be more careful in what I say to people and how I treat people. I did see their point, I definitely should have handled my emotions better and I could understand they were more worried I was going to drop myself in it one day somehow, but at the same time, I very much knew the consequences of what I was about to say, and was prepared for (and maybe even trying to achieve) a negative reaction, but felt I needed to say it anyway. However, I suppose my point is, I wish people would stop worrying about what I say, because I already do that anyway. On the other hand though, feedback from other people is the most useful resource for a developing human being, and it's good to know how other people want you to act, so that you can both consciously and subconsciously accommodate them.

Gender Theory: Deficit theory and more

Way back in 1922 even the most credible scholars were usually more ignorant than today's average 11 year old, at least when it comes to matters of being fair and equal in your treatment of other human beings. Certainly if a 1920s man saw the state of society now he would cry out and curse the heavens, shocked at how women are no longer just expected to be child bearing servants . However, what we need to understand is that although today it all seems a lot more progressive, in fact we are only really one lifetime removed from the 1920s. My great grandmother was around during those times, and then she had a child who had a child who had me. That it is not a large amount of generations inbetween.

But anyway, today we are discussing language, and gender. As I said before, we are not at all far from the year 1920 even now. Back in 1922, a man named Otto Jespersen wrote a book about language. One part of that book was his evaluation of the differences between 'menspeak' and 'womenspeak'. Due to the times, the language Otto used to talk around this subject is these days rather inflammatory, but it is not his use of 'sexist' language and ideas that we are looking at. It is the points that he made that matter, not his personal opinions on the subject. Roughly speaking, Jespersen argued that the 'male' sociolect is superior to the 'female' sociolect, in that it is more dominant, more commanding, more authoritative, whereas the 'female' sociolect is far more tentative and subordinate. He believed that manguage is akin to vanilla ice cream and that womanguage is mutant vanilla ice cream, an altogether far less pleasant sounding option. The reason the theory is known as the deficit theory is because Otto believed woman's language to be deficient, objectively inferior to male language. Interestingly, I even found a website that attempts to distinguish the gender of a texts producer by analyzing the lexical choices: http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php which even correctly identified from a Jespersen quote the man's gender, and quite convincingly so, at that.

Having researched Jespersen in some depth now I feel as if I can understand why he thinks this way. Firstly there is the societal norms of 1922 as mentioned above, but I also uncovered some more little tidbits of relavance. Firstly, is that Otto Jespersen seems to have spent very, very little time in the company of real human beings, as many of his examples are merely anecdotal. Sometimes he seems to just toss in statements of opinion and presents them as fact most apologetically: ‘She thought in blanks, as girls do, and some women’. However, Jespersen makes good points, and at the end of the day this is what should be remembered: not the somewhat embarrassing ignorance and chauvinism, but instead the language theories that remain relevant even after almost 100 years since it was written.

By looking at some examples perhaps we can clarify some of the features and techniques Jespersen identified by looking for them ourselves. In Japan, there are certain differences between men's spoken language and women's spoken language as well, but the Japanese made the effort to give this a name. Twice: onna kotoba (女言葉, "women's words") or joseigo (女性語, "women's language").

Even this is an example of the deficit/dominance/difference theories, for example there is no phrase in japanese for 'mens words'...

http://atp.uclan.ac.uk/buddypress/diffusion/?p=736 for quotes

Texts C, E and F: Dualogs

Texts C, E and F are all dualogs. Text E is a transaction in a newsagent's, text F is an extract from an online chat log between and Text C is a conversation from a fictional children's novel. In texts E and F the speakers are using informal language and colloquialisms such as 'gonna' and 'yeah'. In text E this is likely result of certain sociolects or idiolects possessed by the speaker. Text F features non standard grammar far more, and interestingly resembles a transcript due to it's lack of punctuation and standard grammar. This is possibly because when communicating with a keyboard, the text producer wishes to balance speed with eloquence, which means they will sometimes use abbreviations and colloquialisms in an attempt to communicate more swiftly while still preserving meaning. Text C, however, is a far more formal dualog, with the two men using impeccable grammar and form while talking to each other. 'As you and I know, it was morning.' is phrased in a very 'proper' way. This is probably because as a novel for young children, the writer wished to use clear and simple terms but still aim to teach literacy and social conventions by example, whereas in the other examples it was simply two real people trying to communicate as quickly as is reasonable, whilst Text C is almost a sort of educational book intended to be extremely clear, without any motivations to rush things.