Just to revivify this discussion, ostensibly about "Genius", I would like to add that I believe the word "Genius" does not float much meaning anymore except as a SOCIOLOGICAL category or label. It is synonomous which such labels as "intelligent", "smart", etc.etc. There is no essential metaphysically-discrete unit which one can use as an indicator of "Genius". In genealogy the word originated as a term for spirit, usually the spirit of a place. It indicated a sort of creative, or formative potential...not really an abstract, mind-like entity. I think it best now to drop this argument about the 'label' genius and to have everyone turn for themselves into an inner-experience of thinking. Is not all thought, given attention and allowed to express itself in consciousness, an expression of creativity? What is called thinking, for that matter? Do we not experience, in our 'problem-solving', breakthroughs of reorientation when some pattern, or meta-pattern has seized our consciousness, illuminating the phenomena-as-a-whole? How do we phrase this in terms of predication, of cause-and-effect? Is it I created this thought, thus, or this thought created I? Can one say that it is both, and still maintain that 'intuitive' sense of knowing- does it account for the phenomena at hand? If we are to speak of I, do we not need a more implicit recognization that is not a static, metaphysical entity?
And finally, to deconstruct this grammar still more: Is it not an error of grammatical predication that we assume that some 'appearance' requires behind it that 'which-is-appearing', or the creator-in-itself (i.e. does the chain of causality, conceived in our prevalent usage inevitably lead to the trap of the Causa Sui, or the final, or original Cause, from whence the notion of the creator deity arises?)?
If one slowly reflects on the above, and in the spirit of experimentation enters into their own experience of thinking, it will bring about the beginnings of a reordering of linguigrammaticosemantic- there's a word for you-- awareness which can lead to the beginnings of freedom and liberation in thought and experience. I firmly believe, as a matter of my own experience, that the riddles of that elusive nature which we deem "genius" begin to manifest from that freedom. The creative potential liberates itself from unconscious conditioning.
For a better world,
Kristoff Olafsson
