Gender: Male Location: al-Jumhuuriyya al-Yamaniyya
1. capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.
2. manifestation of a high mental capacity: He writes with intelligence and wit.
3. the faculty of understanding.
4. knowledge of an event, circumstance, etc., received or imparted; news; information.
5. the gathering or distribution of information, esp. secret information.
6. Government.
a. information about an enemy or a potential enemy.
b. the evaluated conclusions drawn from such information.
c. an organization or agency engaged in gathering such information: military intelligence; naval intelligence.
7. interchange of information: They have been maintaining intelligence with foreign agents for years.
8. Christian Science. a fundamental attribute of God, or infinite Mind.
9. (often initial capital letter) an intelligent being or spirit, esp. an incorporeal one, as an angel.
Genius would be . . . godhood I guess.
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
Intelligence is a complex characteristic which appears to exist along a continuum, the high end of which is commonly referred to as "genius." That's why, if one defines "intelligence," then "genius" is easier to define, if not necessarily easier to understand.
__________________
Shinier than a speeding bullet.
I think the word is useless since people who are born without some birth defect are capable of achieving this.
Gifted athletes, singers, just happen to be celebs, and so on are treated as a means. People labeled geniuses are treated the same.
It is a fine line. I do agree with you on the fact that the people who can take what they learn and make something new set themselves apart, but the very word seems to take away from the significance of the "common" person.
This might be somewhere we agree to disagree, maybe?
__________________ "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." - Thomas Gray
Yes, it's true, genius is word that someone who isn't genius to describe one, those who are geniuses, they spent long time to figure out how is it posible NOT TO BE GENIUS...
It's definitely a godhood, or something similar...genius is a microcosms, he has connection with wide range of things, they reflect trough him, and live trough him...
"What philosopher first and last wants from himself? He wants to conquer the time in himself, to become eternal..."- Nietzsche
Same is with a genius...
To resume our previous discussion, in order to get to next step: How to become genius-like...
Popular thinking almost always make a connection between genius and talent, like a genius is highest step of talent, superlative of a talent. And that it can be achieved by summarizing various talents in men. Although there are various steps of genius, they have nothing with so called talent. Someone can be born with math talent, and be capable of very fast learning in that subject, but he doesn't have to be a genius, who is original, individual and productive...Genius is not superlative of talent, there is a whole world between them, talent can be inherited(by some ancestors) but genius never...
Every modern explanations of a genius are biological-clinical nature, like that small amounts of knowledge in that areas are enough to answer the most difficult questions in human psychology...
When we think of some geniuses, first thing we notice is their unbelievable knowledge of human characters. Just remember how many characters Shakespeare or Euripides have described...
And to be able to describe some person we must understand him. And to be able to understand him we must be alike. To understand a human being we must have him in ourselves.
"Every spirit is invisible to person who doesn't have one" Schopenhauer
So, person can understand other person if he have in himself that person, and it's opposite, so genius have a huge number of persons and opposites in him. Goethe said that in his life there was no vice or crime that wasn't burning inside of him.
And in what way genius can express his nature? Only trough art and philosophy, he can be capable in science, but nature, as previously explained, has no other way of expression but art and p.
By this act of creation, genius become eternal, his work become fundus of every being on this planet. We don't need to read Kant, everything that he can learn us, we already have in ourselves...
Now, other question must be answered: how do we become genius-like?
I'm not sure what you mean by a hierarchy, but the fact is, given most human characteristics (intelligence, strength, height, etc), there is a continuum (hierarchy?) along which these traits will fall.
As for how most people would regard an uneducated individual...well, just remember that most people are of average intelligence or less... ...or even worse: most people I come into contact with are dominated by the cultural brainwashing of having to be better than the next guy. So, yes, it is unlikely that a money/image/power-hungry PhD will consider someone with "only" a high school diploma intelligent, though in fact, that high-school guy may be naturally much quicker at information recall, working memory, innovative problem-solving, etc.
As for being unacknowledged by history...cultural memory is often fickle.
__________________
Shinier than a speeding bullet.
I'm very irritated by competitive behaviour of most people, the only things that stimulates their mind are will to overpower, and sexual desire, which is similar...I could not turn my head and not see the arrogant attitude, and somehow everybody value this as virtue, either in active(less) and passive(more) form. I think that arrogance is contrary to self-consciousness...so the more arrogant someone is, i consider him significantly lower on spiritual scale...
Bertrand Russell
If there are among my readers any young men or women who aspire to become leaders of thought in their generation, I hope they will avoid certain errors into which I fell in youth for want of good advice. When I wished to form an opinion upon a subject, I used to study it, weigh the arguments on different sides, and attempt to reach a balanced conclusion. I have since discovered that this is not the way to do things. A man of genius knows it all without the need of study; his opinions are pontifical and depend for their persuasiveness upon literary style rather than argument. It is necessary to be one-sided, since this facilitates the vehemence that is considered a proof of strength. It is essential to appeal to prejudices and passions of which men have begun to feel ashamed and to do this in the name of some new ineffable ethic. It is well to decry the slow and pettifogging minds which require evidence in order to reach conclusions. Above all, whatever is most ancient should be dished up as the very latest thing.
There is no novelty in this recipe for genius; it was practised by Carlyle in the time of our grandfathers, and by Nietzsche in the time of our fathers, and it has been practised in our own time by D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence is considered by his disciples to have enunciated all sorts of new wisdom about the relations of men and women; in actual fact he has gone back to advocating the domination of the male which one associates with the cave dwellers. Woman exists, in his philosophy, only as something soft and fat to rest the hero when he returns from his labours. Civilised societies have been learning to see something more than this in women; Lawrence will have nothing of civilisation. He scours the world for what is ancient and dark and loves the traces of Aztec cruelty in Mexico. Young men, who had been learning to behave, naturally read him with delight and go round practising cave-man stuff so far as the usages of polite society will permit.
One of the most important elements of success in becoming a man of genius is to learn the art of denunciation. You must always denounce in such a way that your reader thinks that it is the other fellow who is being denounced and not himself; in that case he will be impressed by your noble scorn, whereas if he thinks that it is himself that you are denouncing, he will consider that you are guilty of ill-bred peevishness. Carlyle remarked: ``The population of England is twenty millions, mostly fools.'' Everybody who read this considered himself one of the exceptions, and therefore enjoyed the remark. You must not denounce well-defined classes, such as persons with more than a certain income, inhabitants of a certain area, or believers in some definite creed; for if you do this, some readers will know that your invective is directed against them. You must denounce persons whose emotions are atrophied, persons to whom only plodding study can reveal the truth, for we all know that these are other people, and we shall therefore view with sympathy your powerful diagnosis of the evils of the age.
Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.
New York American and other Hearst papers, December 28, 1932; reprinted in Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays 1931-1936, v.1, Harry Ruja (ed.), Allen & Unwin, 1975, pp. 148-149.
bertrand russel is probably my favourite philosopher. this is a very OLD essay of his dating to the early part of the last cenury. but its worthwhile to read the words of in my oppinion the greatest thinker of his time and perhaps of all time.
No one is a genius. It is simply delusion in the eyes of others. Some may see Shakespeare as a genius, but others may see him as pretentious. Some may see Hendrix as a genius, others may see him as a bloke making noise on a guitar. Because the word 'Genius' is subjective, no one can truly be a genius.
KMC Community Forums
May 15th, 2007 11:20 PM
A person who can understand what they learn and create something new.
...or even worse: most people I come into contact with are dominated by the cultural brainwashing of having to be better than the next guy. So, yes, it is unlikely that a money/image/power-hungry PhD will consider someone with "only" a high school diploma intelligent, though in fact, that high-school guy may be naturally much quicker at information recall, working memory, innovative problem-solving, etc.
