A World Without Geniuses

Most people recognize the profound influence a particular genius has had on human society, whether it be technical, philosophical, or artistic. I watched a biographical film last night about Beethoven and one of the circumstances that was highlighted was the fact that Beethoven was not a member of the aristocracy, so he had to do compose piano sonatas instead of full orchestral pieces because that is how he got paid. Beethoven was lucky because his parents were musicians, so they taught him to play music when he was young. It was most likely the only skill they could pass along to him so he could earn a living. Of course, he flourished in his training, and eventually, he created a revolution in musical composition that has made him one of the most famous names in classical music to this day. In fact, there is even a Beethoven scholar--a man who is spending his life studying about the life of another man! Imagine that.

Now Imagine This:

I just plucked many great geniuses out of history. Beethoven, Babbage, Buddha, Aristotle, Da Vinci, Darwin, Einstein, Shakespeare.....all gone! Since this is just a thought experiment, we can try to stretch ourselves over two realities in which they exist and they don't exist. You come upon the feeling of what a great loss that would be to humanity to lose all that insight and creativity. It's more difficult to imagine what the technological loss would be.

My reason for putting you through this is to consider that this reality of absent geniuses is the world we live in. The people mentioned above all had some "chance" at life in the societies they were raised in. I mean they had enough financial means for them to grow their talents. Ultimately, they were able to earn a living from those talents, but they needed to start off with some opportunity to develop their genius, which is why we know about them (or their works) today.

Another Beethoven may have been born a few years ago, but sadly, his parents couldn't afford to feed him and provide him with health care, so he's dead now. Women geniuses haven't been afforded the educations they needed to bring out their talents, and even then, they had other duties to attend to. In a monetary system where everyone must compete with each other for resources, we have missed out on much innovation.

This will be corrected in a resource-based economy. The understanding that each human has a certain set of talents, grand or simple, will be valued not by how much money it can make, but because it will contribute to the health and growth of humanity. We don't feel the loss of these absent geniuses because we can't really be in two realities, but we can realize that this current system produces this absence, and we can work to disentangle ourselves from it.