Genius, Arrogance and Honesty
You do not have to think you are bigger than the game to notice that we are playing a small game and that we deserve a much larger one.
Thank you for your courage to read this through…
My first encounter with Albert Camus came through the book The Outsider (L'Étranger). Also called The Stranger, the novella written by Camus, was set in Algeria and published in 1942. I learned only later the book had been popularized more recently (1978) by English alternative rock band The Cure, in their debut single “Killing An Arab”. Incidentally “The Outsider” was also Camus’ debut novella.
The Outsider revolves around a misadventure of the main character, Mersault, who by all accounts who exhibits the characteristic impairment of social and personal behavior of Asperger's syndrome. We learn this initially through his seeming lack of emotion around the passing of his mother and reinforced later throughout the short book. The fulcrum of the story turns a scene where the main character Mersault, already in some distress about earlier events, disoriented and on the edge of heatstroke, shoots an Arab who flashes a knife at him. The story is divided into two parts, presenting Meursault's first-person narrative before and after the killing.
As with many of Camus’s stories, the plot is not particularly deep and the character development is functional rather than engrossing. One is reminded of the plays and short stories of Anton Chekhov; Similar to the works of Chekhov which are often accused of having “zero-endings”, that is to say anti-climactic, Camus’ novellas carry more weight in a kind of ambivalent moral or philosophical observation than story.
Still, something struck me about the depth of perception of Camus, and how he could notice and articulate so subtly, something that is in plain sight in humanity, but which is rarely acknowledged or even articulated. In him I sensed a kindred intellect.
As a 17 year old, Camus was my first door to philosophy -not the academic kind, of names and theories and epistemology- but just the raw reasoned observation of human behaviour and motivation. “The Outsider”, for me was less about the moral implications or character of Mersault, but rather how we behave and expect each other to behave in society.
In the second half of the story, Mersault is arrested, incarcerated and eventually put on trial, and what the trial centers around was most fascinating to me; For almost a year, he is confined to living in a small prison cell, while he waits for his day in court.
Meursault never denies that he killed the Arab, so, at his trial, the prosecuting attorney focuses more on Meursault's inability or unwillingness to cry at his mother's funeral than on the details of the murder. The prosecutor portrays Meursault's quietness and passivity as demonstrating his criminality and lack of remorse and denounces Meursault as a soul-less monster who deserves to die for his crime.
At 17, I recognised something in this story that I understood about people, and knew that it was something I would be unable to discuss or explain easily with any of my own peers, and I knew with a sense of iron certainty that I was right. I knew that the story was about the confusion in society, whereby people expect certain behaviour of conformity and propriety that eclipses the actual costs of what we do.
The prosecutor, the peers and the courtroom were more incensed by Mersault’s dispassion, than they were about the life of the man that was cut short. They derived their moral conviction of his guilt based on a lack of “show of remorse” rather than that he killed someone. We are left to conclude that he would have been shown leniency if he had been remorseful and perhaps even tied his actions to that which occurred with his mother’s earlier death and an attack on his friend which had been the reason he was stalking the beach with a gun in the first place.
People are like this. They care more about a show of guilt, shame and remorse than they do about the action and its cost.
It is by a similar kind of logic that we frown upon anyone bold enough to recognise their own genius.
As a society, we laud self-awareness, we appreciate geniuses, but paradoxically, we condemn geniuses who are self-aware enough to recognise their own genius.
What is Genius?
We often are only able to qualify something by how we can measure it.
I provided ChatGPT with the prompt: “what is genius?”. This is a pruned summation of the answer I received back:
“The concept of genius is somewhat subjective and depends on cultural and societal contexts. Genius isn't solely about high IQ or raw intellectual capability; it often involves a certain uniqueness of thought and perspective, combined with the drive and ability to manifest those ideas in the world. The scientific understanding of genius is that it's likely a combination of genetic factors, environmental influences, and personal drive, although the exact recipe differs from person to person.”
One of the ways we identify intelligence is via IQ. In practice, qualifying for Mensa means being evaluated in the top 2% of IQ, which is to say, scoring 132 or more in the Stanford-Binet test, or 148 or more in the Cattell equivalent.
Measuring IQ
How to contextualise what that means, is to imagine you have two games to play that test how smart you are:
In the first game, created by a man named Alfred Binet, you have to solve puzzles and answer questions that make you think really hard. This game is like schoolwork - you might have to solve a math problem or remember a story. This game gave us the idea for IQ tests, which are used to see how smart someone is compared to other people their age.
The second game, created by a man named James Cattell, is different. Instead of hard puzzles and questions, this game tests how quickly you can see or hear something and react to it. For example, you might have to catch a ball as soon as you see it or press a button as soon as you hear a sound. Cattell thought these fast reactions showed how smart someone is.
So, the main difference is that Binet's game looks at how good you are at solving problems and thinking deeply, while Cattell's game looks at how quickly you can sense something and react to it. More technically, the Stanford-Binet method focuses on higher cognitive abilities and practical problem-solving skills to measure intelligence, referenced in the Binet-Simon scale which became the basis for IQ testing, while the Cattell scale advocates for psychometrics based on sensory processing and reaction times, emphasizing more basic mental processes.
The folks at Mensa believe genius is something that can be measured in this way.
The Poetic Take
I have come to regard poetry not as something flowery and cute, but as a necessary lens onto the human psyche, an accurate and revealing journalism of the human experience; Language as David Whyte puts it, for which we have no defenses.
For a start, I refuse to accept that genius is so narrow as high score of intelligence alone.
In his book Consolations - The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, David Whyte writes:
Genius is both a specific gift and a possibility that has not yet occurred; it is not a fixed internal commodity to be exploited and brought to the surface but a conversation to be followed, deepened, understood, and celebrated. Genius is the meeting between inheritance and horizon, between what has been told, what can be told, and what is yet to be told, between our practical abilities and our relationship to the gravitational mystery that pulls us on. Our genius is to understand and stand beneath the set of stars present at our birth, and from that place, to seek the hidden, single star, over the night horizon, we did not know we were following.
Excerpt from Genius, Consolations by David Whyte
Whyte argues that the concept of Genius, in its ancient and original sense, is akin to the unique spirit or character of a place, shaped by the interplay of physical elements and specific geographical characteristics. The concept of human genius resonates with the notion of personal geography, the confluence of our bodies, spirits, identities, and inherited aspects, forming a unique signature in dialogue with the world. Living out our genius involves a dynamic conversation between our individual, inherited physical existence and the broader world's bodies and elements, following the seasons of our lives and acknowledging our distinct joys and sorrows. Genius is an evolving dialogue, a meeting point between our past, present, and untold future, a journey under the stars towards an unseen yet sensed destination.
My own conviction is that Genius is the distinctive ability to perceive, analyse, create, inspire, and communicate in novel and profound ways that resonate deeply with the essence of human experience and how these might relate to meaning. And I believe it is only possible via a sense of embodiment and expression of those talents.
I believe Genius cannot be ranked only by talent or intelligence, but more so in the way it can increase the value and meaning of life.
I quite like the interpretation from Arthur Schopenhauer.
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
The trouble with Schopenhauer’s definition is that, arguably, if one aims at and hits what others cannot see, it could also simply imply delusion.
Everything is down to our predictive models, that is to say what we believe to be true about the world and how accurate that happens to be in relation to how the causes and effects are actually arranged. It also implies our sense what is right or wrong, better or worse to do, in accordance with what we believe to be true about the Universe.
The fact of being human is that we can have skewed predictive models. We can believe the Earth is the center of all creation around which the stars and planets revolve, and we can arrive progressively at a clearer understandings that produce enormous paradigm shifts.
For far more curious reasons we can find ourselves believing, as some people do, that the Earth is flat. Religion is ample proof that humans can believe outlandish things and be fully convicted in their certainty. We have many religions after all, and they cannot all be right. That means some of them by definition have to be wrong, regardless of what we discover to be true later on. There was a time where people prayed to Poseidon for safe sea voyages, and by the rational and standards of that time, to not do so, would be considered a madness.
Sometimes the wrong puzzle pieces seem to fit.
Do it, but don’t say it.
Calling yourself a genius, makes anyone who is sane, still significantly uncomfortable, even if they might legitimately be a genius, not necessarily because the claim is unfairly made, but because of the company you now keep both for the better and for the worse. It is not only the super-sane that venture to make such a claim; Sociopaths, fools, and the insane happily do this. For very different reasons, but ultimately to the same calamitous outcome, fools will do it, and what is more they will boldly do it again, with only the briefest pause between misadventures. And the narcissists and the insane, well, they won’t even stop to waver.
The other problem is where the genius instead does see a real target and is struggling to hit it squarely and their efforts and assertions are discounted by everyone else as foolish or arrogant, because no one else can see it.
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
Arthur Conan Doyle.
This brings up the question of Arrogance.
The implications to this is that we either back ourselves and pursue our target, or we compromise ourselves and submit to the will of the crowd. And where we get our permission, is where we get our power; If we wait for the permission of the crowd, we all remain small. Had every voice kept silent for fear of being called mad or accused of dissent, the human race would still be eating raw meat and living in caves. Every step forward ever required first a dissenter and a rebellion from the old way.
Where we get our permission, is where we get our power; If we wait for the permission of the crowd, we all remain small.
Had every voice kept silent for fear of being called mad or accused of dissent, the human race would still be eating raw meat and living in caves.
This leads to the question that I believe to be key, which is, “Is the genius we encounter equal to the arrogance we perceive?”
Certain societies like Australia and New Zealand (and Sweden), are infamous for a cultural bias enshrining the virtue of modesty and sameness, and they are uncomfortable with social courage because of how it shames the conformists -Tall Poppy Syndrome. While this is extreme in Australia, it is universal to our global and online societies.
Social media especially has a weird identity crisis about this, idolising really low-brow influencers with not much to say, provided they impute the image of glamour or success, and at the same time uncomfortable with anyone who can recognise the value or the uniqueness of their own genius and the ways they choose to cultivate and express it.
As a society, we laud self-awareness, we appreciate geniuses, but paradoxically, we condemn geniuses who are self-aware enough to recognise their own genius.
How curious.
And when we fail to do this, when we deny our own claim to the contrary of these ‘proper’ commandments of modesty and humility, we become complicit in saying: “We are sick, please will you also be sick, we are so used to hiding in the dark, please to not shine your light and hurt our eyes.”
What is Arrogance Exactly?
Arrogance can be seen as the opposite of humility. The word is often an implied accusation, implying the subject believes themself better, smarter, or more important than others. Arrogant individuals are those perceived to disregard the opinions or feelings of others, consider themselves exempt from rules that others should follow, or devalue the accomplishments and abilities of others. Steve Jobs did this exactly. There are innumerable examples of Jobs' dismissive and condescending behavior, due in part to his attitude of not caring what other people thought, which was due in turn largely to his firm belief in his own genius.
Another famous example of this kind of arrogance was the famous cynic philosopher Diogenes who allegedly humbled Alexander the Great by being utterly dismissive of him.
Alexander having recently conquered Corinth, was being petitioned by all the influential people of the city. Notably absent was Diogenes. Alexander sought out Diogenes and asked him what Greece’s greatest ruler could do for him, Diogenes famously replied, “Stand a little less between me and the sun .” To Alexander’s credit, he was duly amused by Diogenes as the anecdote claims, and recognising the power of self-permission, said to his supporters of the incident “But truly, if I were not Alexander, I would wish I were Diogenes.”
This brings me to my favourite insight on arrogance by author Criss Jami.
“There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you're wrong and you can't face it; the other is when you're right and nobody else can face it.”
Criss Jami
Jami also adds this perfect insight to the question: “The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care, criticize when necessary. Those who envy, criticize the moment they think they have found a weak spot.”
Honesty > Modesty
Our genius is part of our gift to the world and to our communities, and in many ways we are expected to hide our light under a bushel to spare others the embarrassment of their unwillingness to explore their own.
Our genius is part of our gift to the world and to our communities, and in many ways we are expected to hide our light under a bushel to spare others the embarrassment of their unwillingness to explore their own.
My own conviction is that if we can simply hold our shit together, sit with discomfort, entertain paradox, concede our death-clutch on certainty and rise above our fear of being wrong or inadequate, we open the door to a wealth of the fruits of genius all around us.
My take on Genius is that it is the distinctive ability to perceive, analyse, create, inspire, and communicate in novel and profound ways that resonate deeply with the essence of human experience. Again, I believe Genius cannot be ranked only in talent or intelligence, but more so in the way it can increase the value and meaning of life.
Genius on its own is a always a treasure, especially if it is found in someone with the courage to let it shine. Genius when paired with true Leadership, is sublime and almost always feared, derided or despised.
The begged question is how much more beautiful and incredible could life be with a flourishing of art and creativity that isn’t incentivised to have more? Really reflect on that. Because in our modern western capitalist mindset, that is precisely what we invest our ingenuity and effort into now, completely missing the opportunity we could be investing in, pursuing this question and its answers, which fill our souls.
“How much more beautiful and incredible could life be with a flourishing of art and creativity that isn’t incentivised to have more?”
Furthermore, it is simply a fact of distribution within any population that we are not all created equal. We just aren’t. This does not and should not ever mean that anyone deserves less chances at fulfilment or actualisation according to their own measure and authenticity. But is does mean that we are not all equally wired for genius in the same way. It means that every kind of genius can exist, physical, artistic, communicative, behaviouristic and every other kind for which we have human talents.
I believe we all have genius within us, but we do not all have the same intuitions or innate calling to leadership. We are not all wired to lean towards greatness, but those few, those that have not embraced the challenge of their own greatness, are beaten not by better men, or even by lesser men, but by themselves.
It is quite simple mathematics: some people are one in ten, some are one in hundred, some one in a thousand, some, are one in a million. If you are getting your permission from the crowd, you are the million.
I know exactly where my arrogance comes from.
I am self-aware enough to know that I have genius, and I am simply honest enough to be clear about the extent and limits of that genius. My genius is in obscure and atypical expressions of perception, analysis, prediction and creativity. What my genius affords me is many gifts and talents, the chief among which is an eye for spotting opportunities for improvement in any kind of system, process or exchange. This is a rare gift, but also a kind of curse whereby I can see the shape of where we are headed. I am able, for better or worse, to perceive the outline of an opportunity we are missing, one that if we really understood, we would immediately drop our bullshit and attend to. I was not popular with management in corporate for this reason.
I cannot simply switch this ‘eye’ off either. I see the problems everywhere and I am constantly looking for the most important root cause. I also dabble in innovative solutions which are usually orthogonal to conventional thinking. I don’t care about being right, but I really do get a kick out of seeing it made right, and I’m always, as a point of enthusiasm, looking for ever better ways. This means I am not only okay with being wrong, I am always sincerely open to new ideas for further refinement. But this also means that I inevitably cast that same critical eye across everything. Including our society and it’s norms of belief, government, exchange of energy and control.
For my sins, I can read, clearly, like weather charts, whatever I’m paying attention to, and discern the kind of troublesome storm heading our way, which our norms and institutions are not equipped to deal with, and for which all our usual forms of distraction and politics simply lack the scope to adequately address.
When the village is destroyed by fire and every last thing we cherished is lost, and the people who remain are united in their chorus lamenting “if only we had known...” But travel back in time one day with the taste of ash still in your mouth to plead and sue for precaution and you will be told of the more rational application of attention and of buckets.
To say I am a genius, or certain fruits of my work is genius, is to automatically court at the very least a concern about hubris or shadow. At worst it is to court personal criticism and outrage.
Arrogance is often the implied charge. The often unspoken question is: “Who do you think you are?”- A rhetorical question implying I have overstepped some boundary of humility and modesty. Almost all modesty is false-modesty. To my mind, modesty is a habit we need to rethink, most of the time it is simply another form of piety and hubris, a virtue-signalling, dressed up as humility. All that is required, is honesty.
Honesty and self-awareness get us everything we claim to want from modesty.
When the accusation is levelled at me, in my understanding, it often says more about their sense of propriety and the way in which they are sensitive or unprepared for the fact that not everyone arranges the world, authority and priorities the way they do.
I sincerely believe we are suffering unnecessarily, and what is more, our ignorance and apathy is not something we are entitled to when it has the implication of such severe existential cost to so many others. I can see all too clearly how small we are playing, how foolish are our projects of life, and how narrow the window of opportunity we leave for others and for those yet to open their eyes to the world.
You do not have to think you are bigger than the game to notice that we are playing a small game and that we deserve a much larger one.
From my perspective when the life raft is heading towards the waterfall, and everyone is still playing the small game, expecting piety and modesty from the person calling everyone out on their apathy and ignorance is the fool’s gambit.
The more honest you are with yourself about fairness for all, the more likely you are to be thought arrogant or impolite by those who are not. The more mature you are about prudence, the more likely you will be thought unkind by those who are not.
Who we enshrine as leaders are esoteric eccentric teachers, podcasters with platforms ‘just asking questions over here’, messianic billionaires with significantly impaired emotional intelligence. We have hyper-masculine figureheads of ‘men’ with the emotional maturity of boys, world leaders who are playing the most disingenuous, smallest of control games of status and rhetoric. Of such as these we make our heroes and our so-called leaders, and not an actual leader among them. Not a single one among them has the mind or the gall or the imagination to call out what is most important in the world right now. If they are wearing sunglasses indoors, or posing next to sports cars with gold and diamond jewellery to impute status, if they are striking mystic poses in what looks like cosplay, they are not the leader I am looking for.
We are standing on the brink of an existential crisis so large and unstoppable we cannot see the wood for the trees. Our lives are lives of myopic self-concern and apathy. We are trying desperately to be safe and to be certain. We are heading for great change and uncertainty. Not only are we blind to the obvious, we are, as Danny Kahneman said, also blind to our blindness.
There are so many problems demanding our empathy and attention, and many worthy causes that need championed. However, there cannot be a greater cause right now, than the pursuit of intervening, just enough, so that what we hold of value in humanity, of our history and legacy, existing and potential, does not get washed away in the rising storm of dysfunction and malcontent.
Our current systems, institutions and ideologies, singularly and collectively, in their current expression, are not only insufficient to the task of turning the ship about on the water, but are exacerbating an already untenable situation. What got us here, will not get us there.
If we do not act as if we can create a better future for ourselves and future generations, it will not occur spontaneously by itself. Neither the perfect time nor the perfect way, nor the perfect answers exist; To keep hoping they will show up like some kind of ‘deus ex machina’, is a child’s folly.
Now we need to just begin imperfectly and find our courage.
It is perfectly sane and courageous to be speaking boldly about the merits of waking up and taking self-ownership, and criticising both the supposed wisdom of the “normal life”, fake spiritual bullshit as well as any stance of modesty however well-meaning, that stands in the way of action.
We do not need to know how to solve the whole problem to begin treating it as a priority.
Keeping myself honest.
Still, there is always a real risk of overreach, of Dunning-Kruger effect. There is always the chance that one is wrong. We can be right about a great many things and still be wrong about one small thing. We can be unaware of that one small thing, and that one small thing can matter enormously.
This is the simple heuristic I follow:
If I know something others don’t I will speak it. If I don’t know I will simply acknowledge that or remain silent.
If I am good at something, ask me how, I’ll demonstrate, provided you have the patience and the courage to try and understand. If I’m not good at something, you wont find me making claims about things I am not, or cannot do.
If I am digging my heels in, it is because I believe in the cause.
If I am mistaken, I commit to remaining amenable to appeal or correction, but I don’t count being emotionally triggered as a valid argument.
My pointing out logical fallacies or cognitive biases inherent in any counter argument does not constitute argument on my part; it simply an insistence on a prudent standard of debate.
As soon as I know better I will do better.
So what now?
If you are struggling with another’s claim of capability or genius:
We are always happy to meet genius on its own, especially when it walks hand in hand with modesty. But if we should meet arrogance, we should expect it to be in the company of both genius as well as informed goodwill. The caution to this is that if we cannot comprehend the genius, or we cannot comprehend the level of risk or opportunity which genius points to, we have no automatic right to label what we deem, as arrogance.
All that geniuses will ask in return is for us to be able to marshal and hold together our own sanity, for long enough for them to be able to let go of theirs a little, so that their fountains can flow more freely.
If you are struggling to acknowledge your own capability or genius:
The first trick is to have the courage to have your own voice and have the conviction to accept your own truth and speak it into the world, without the need for validation or permission.
The second trick is making sure that you are in fact not simply self-deluded. We do this by checking our emotional relationship to our ideas and beliefs.
The third trick is how we do this, by allowing your ideas and beliefs to be challenged in the interests of testing them and refining them.
The fourth trick is to be discerning about whose judgement and opinion you place stock in.
The fifth thing to remember is that good people may do bad things, clever people believe stupid things, we can be right about almost everything and wrong about one small thing, and that one small thing might make all the difference.
Finally, ask and sit with the question “What does Love look like right now?”, and be prepared to revisit who you think you are and what ought to be done, based on the earnest exploration of the answers.
How small do you have to make yourself so that you comply with all the expectations of humility and propriety set by people who themselves lack the courage to step into their own power?
To the weak, boldness and conviction looks like foolishness or hubris, or a challenge. The last one perhaps is most true.
If you have something of meaning to say, especially if it is of your own thoughts and ideas, remember this:
While you are struggling with self-permission, people with no scruples, selfish, small minded people who are hungry for attention and lack all leadership values at their core, they wait for no one; they are out there giving themselves permission and taking up all the air in the room, they are hobbled by none of the self-doubt which dogs your careful steps. It is almost your duty to find your courage and to speak, make sure you have something to say, and check yourself.
To be a Leader is to understand that doing something imperfectly with the right intent; a willingness to take on feedback and commitment to improve, requires no time to get started and no barriers to starting. it should also require no permission and carry no risk of blame if mistakes are made. Actualisation is the leadership of self.
If you have a genuine willingness to listen, to reflect, to improve, that is all the permission you need. Honesty trumps fake modesty. Own what you’re good at, own what you’re shit at - That is leadership.
Fuck cosmetic humility. Be bold.
No One Else is Coming.
And fuck the weak. They will not face your regret nor sit with your defeat, they will not taste your deathless courage.
Thank you for your courage to read this through.
“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch”
Jean-Luc Godard.
Author’s Note:
There is a substack app which allows you to comment, rate, read posts and also a pretty good text-to-speech feature that turns your favourite articles to podcasts.
‘Jewellery’, ‘criticize’, ‘favourite’ etc. favour the English rather than the American spelling. It can play havoc with the AI voice feature in the substack app but I figured since you still measure in the imperial system, you enjoy a challenge.
Please comment and share if you take value from these articles. You may be reading this on email but I encourage you to visit the substack site and engage directly. Other creatives and generators will appreciate this as well. These folks need our help too. They need our discernment and our effort to engage, to promote and to value them.
I have created an online project to raise awareness about this idea, the empowerment of users to and passive followers on social media (we all do this), to take some accountability for our discernment and our effort in connecting with creators of what which we find beautiful and meaningful. Kindly visit the Project to see if you feel called to help: TheMurmuration.org
I asked ChatGPT to provide TLDR and ELI5
**TL;DR:** This person says they will only speak about topics they are knowledgeable in and are always open to learning and improving. They value understanding and logical thinking over emotions in discussions. If they seem stubborn, it's because they truly believe in their cause. They're not being arrogant, they're simply adhering to high standards in conversation.
**ELI5 (Explain Like I'm 5):** Imagine you're playing a game where you have to say true things. If you don't know something, you just say "I don't know." This person is saying they play that game all the time. They also say that they'll show you how to do something they're good at if you're ready to learn. If they seem a bit hard-headed, it's because they really believe in what they're saying. They're not trying to be mean or show-off, they just want to make sure everyone is playing the game right. And if they learn something new, they will change how they play the game.