Genius And Why Americans Are Afraid Of It - The Myth Of Social Equality

Lorraine Anderson was born and grew up in northern Minnesota.  Her grandparents were Norwegian immigrants who had settled in Minnesota in 1915, farmed a living in a land very similar to the remote region of northern Norway from which they had emigrated.  It was not unusual that there were so many Norwegians in Minnesota - with the marginal choice they had as poor economic refugees - it was no surprise that they settled in Minnesota and not Florida. Ford's Landing, a town whose name had nothing to do with Henry Ford but the fjords of their native land had been their stopping place, inhabited as it was by others from the same town in the old country. 

Lorrie's parents like their parents before them were farmers, and had learned over the generation how to make the best of an unforgiving climate and to make do for their family.  She led a quiet, unassuming, and straightforward farm life of milking, sowing, gardening, and cooking for her large family.  The Andersons were God-fearing Lutherans who made their way to the small church in nearby Blanton Falls every Sunday morning, drove the pastor home with them for a Sunday dinner, and never thought much about the world outside hearth and home. 

In fact the quiet, stable, and unremarkable life of Ford's Landing had been the subject of an Atlantic feature article about the heartland - a very unsympathetic tale of people leading 'intellectually sedentary' lives - lives without curiosity, interest, or ambition.  'If this immured, insular place expresses the ethos of America', the author wrote, then the country had little hope of reaching the social utopia demanded by the persistence of its social ills. 

He was going against the grain, for the heartland was very much thought to be the American idyll, a place of community, hard work, family and faith.  Although urban America had long since eclipsed these 19th century values, they were still held closely as what the country should and could be. 

As nasty and arrogant as the Atlantic piece was, it opened Lorrie's eyes.  Could it be, she reflected, that her dutiful, predictable, and thoroughly limited existence was not the vision of God as she had been told, but a retrograde, unforgiving place of harsh winters and bleak futures?

So, not unlike many young people and very much like Carrie Underwood, the fictional heroine of Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, a woman of urban sentiment but living in a town like Ford's Landing who leaves her husband and moves to New York.  Life must have more purpose than that found in rural Minnesota, she believed.  The 'idolatry of plainness' was how the Atlantic writer described Ford's Landing and he could have been describing the fictional place of Carrie and her plain, unassuming, limited husband. 

 

Lorrie fell into the Greenwich Village crowd, the epicenter of the growing social revolution of the Sixties - a culture of cafes, socialist idealism, and youthful optimism.  Nothing could have been further from the life she left, and the dramatic change of scene affected her more than her colleagues who had come more urbane and worldly places and elided rather than fell into the culture of protest and rejection. 

It was a heady time, all sailing in the same boat towards a utopian future. Camaraderie, fellowship, collegiality, and love were the expressions of a universal optimism for a genuinely just, fair, and equal society.

The Greenwich Village crowd, although drawn from different social quarters and environments, shared not only the same political philosophy but the same intellectual simplicity.  This was not a genius cluster by any means, and the readings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin as passionately as they were spoken, went over the heads of listeners.  The sang the Internationale, occupied Union Square, and defiantly challenged the police, but by and large they were uniformly uninspired thinkers. 

No one had ever claimed that progressivism was an intellectual movement.  Its inspiration - the Soviet Union - certainly had little insight into the complexity of labor and capital.  There were no brilliant theorists like those of the Scottish Enlightenment who set forth the principles of capitalism. There was none of the brilliance of Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas whose intellectual rigor and logical discipline helped define the precepts of Christianity and helped create the Church. 

The modern progressive movement, a far cry from the early days of Lafollette, Brandeis, and Gompers whose socialist passion was undimmed by intellectual seriousness, mistrusted genius if not intelligence, products of a deformed capitalist society which valued the superficial. 

Lorrie and her colleagues meant well.  They had all the right progressive instincts, marched in unison for a more equitable, verdant world; but collectively, they were subpar thinkers, drawn to the movement exactly because it required little thought. 

Lorrie maintained her commitment to socialist idealism throughout her years, and as an older, mature woman, was thought of as a leader in the current revolt against the conservative resurgence.  Again, while she had never read Hayek, Friedman, or Adam Smith and had no patience for the considerations of Sowell or Clarence Thomas she dismissed them out of hand.  What was more to know than the unabridged manipulation of the poor that capitalism had always signified?

The era was characterized by a genius cluster as impressive as that of the early industrialists where Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan all existed within the same time frame and revolutionized the American economy.  It hearkened back even farther to the Founding Fathers - Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Hamilton men of incredible intellectual talent and vision all of whom worked and lived during the same period. 

Gates, Huang, Altman, Brin, Pichai, Musk, Zuckerberg and others were all recently invited to a White House conference to discuss America's tech future in an AI age - a powerhouse of talent, genius, business acumen, and social savvy.  'America has not lost its mojo', wrote one commentator, impressed with the country's undiminished reserves of brilliance. 

At the same time Lorrie Anderson and her colleagues were accusing these men - almost all of the White House invitees were men - of arrogance, superciliousness, greed, and unmitigated selfish ambition.  Their so-called 'genius' was a fiction, an expression of white supremacy, the insularity and unconcern of the wealthy, and a show of ignorance not brilliance. 

Despite the fact that Elon Musk, CEO of Space X and Tesla and also a pioneer in high tech solutions to persistent problems of health, energy, and economic productivity is at the leading edge of the tech avant-garde in the nation, Lorrie and her fellows hate him for his unalloyed conservative capitalism. 

They give no reasons for this, stymied by Musk's job creation, propelling innovation, workplace and family diversity, and  unalloyed patriotism.  They hate him because genius is always suspect, for how could it not be, so exclusive a club?  There were no black men among the White House invitees, none in the genius cluster, none among the history of genius. In all the years of the Nobel science prizes none had ever come from Africa or the African diaspora - 'genius' was nothing more than a cabal of white men with pretentions of superiority. 

Within the progressive canon genius is ipso facto to be criticized, creativity dismissed, and innovation a matter of collective contribution only.  The Deconstructionists provided the foundation for this idea.  In their view every work of literature could be reduced to the sum of environmental influences. The work of writers, poets, dramatists simply reflect the influences of society and culture; and only if one looks through the lens of race, gender, and ethnicity, can one observe reality. 

John F Kennedy, hero of Camelot, and assembler of a genius cluster to advise him - 'the best and the brightest' drawn from the best families, the best schools, and the best patrician, aristocratic traditions - has been dismissed by Lorrie and her group because of JFK's elitism and intellectual remove.  Genius like beauty is simply and artificial confection. There is no such thing, only false imaginings of it. 

There can be no equality unless all the shibboleths of genius, superior intelligence, classic beauty, elegance, and social brilliance are destroyed.  Uniqueness has no place in the progressive canon.  Outstanding is an outdated concept.  Only inner compassion and collaboration matter. 

The reason why progressivism is being dismissed in America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America is because citizens have finally seen the emperor without his clothes.  They have seen the emptiness of the idea, the lack of substance, the fanciful assumptions, and the complete historical ignorance.  There is such a thing as excellence and it should be valued and promoted.  There are cultural values which are superior to others.  Intelligence like everything else is subject to the bell curve. The time to favor the best and the brightest over the the worst and the dimmest has arrived. 

Lorrie went to her retirement happy that she had given her all and that a utopian future was still most definitely in the offing; but that was because of her limited intelligence, collective mentality, and unfortunately persistent idealism.