"Group Genius" & "Genius Leadership", the former requires the latter!

"It’s Time to Bury the Idea of the Lone Genius Innovator"...really?

says Greg Satell 

( https://hbr.org/2016/04/its-time-to-bury-the-idea-of-the-lone-genius-innovator )

I would differ with Mr. Satell’s less than novel opinion, because he fails to take into account the works by actual geniuses; those who inspired tens of thousands through their undeniable originality. Such works are inspired by collective action, no doubt. However, you simply cannot ignore the significance of individual effort and its lasting effect on others. 

             You know something which is produced is entirely original when it becomes something everybody else wants to claim for themselves, but it simply can't be extracted from the originator (if the originator wishes to claim it for himself/herself). That is the crux; keeping the invention once you've created it, but why devalue significant efforts by individual innovators, and their actual achievements because of the phenomenon of emulation? Commending individual effort doesn't take away from good teamwork, it should make it better! 

Authors of great works: Einstein, Fermat and the guy who cracked his Last Theorem (Andrew Wiles), oldies but goodies like Pythagoras, new-agers like Bucky Fuller, modern day Mandelbrot(s), particularly mathematicians like these! These are the real creators. Did they rely on the works of others in their creations, of course! However, it is impossible to remove the acts of genius from the geniuses themselves. 

To steal a term from Keith Sawyer, the notion of "group genius" need not omit leadership by geniuses, i.e. the Manhattan Project. Granted leadership by geniuses tends to obsessive and compassionate, even uncomfortable, for those that are subject to it. Chaos, "storming, norming and performing" are intrinsically human; we are talking about nonlinear iterative "processes", save argumentation, which tend to address paradoxically mundane minutia that result in sudden herculean scientific advancements. Such tasks are tedious, even painful. However, one can’t occur without the other, and it is a bit of a mystery that the egg and chicken occur together. You might be able to describe what happened to someone else according to a genius' account, but if you didn’t participate in the creation of it you can’t really deduce the essence of their brilliance working to create other geniuses. "Genius leadership" is an infectious prerequisite for "group genius", see Steve Jobs, see Bill Gates.

I’m reluctant to put Elon Musk in the same category, he’s a tech fop, akin to Edison. If it isn't plagiarized (say from Tesla) then where did the idea come from, or who did it first come through? We are inspired by real genius, taking things out of context and making them more relevant, even when we are uncomfortable with it; Mark Zuckerberg.

It is fundamentally the genius of individuals contributing to group genius, the two are related, but these are separate phenomenon, separated in time and space. Group genius necessitates genius leadership. Genius is the originating seed for all future progress to sprout from; Tony Hawk. Myopic and counter-culture as actual genius may seem at first, it grows into something much larger. Is it any less genius when a things’ significance is not realized at first? Of course not, because most of us are slow. However, when genius occurs, it is first observed by those individuals who are predisposed to encounter a rare juxtaposition of reality, who then become the life blood of innovation acting upon a passion driven by new knowledge.

Innovation comes from deep meditation, deep focus on the nuances of observation and contemplation. Extreme focus, and tedious efforts are made by specific individuals (who are themselves hard working and very disciplined, although socially quirky). These traits enable genius to emerge in the individual, then others capitalize off their undeniable momentum. Capitalization of an individual’s genius is the essence of group genius, and the former is a prerequisite for the latter. Subsequently, group genius is driven by genius.

I don’t want to get into the fact that there are different kinds of genius, some of which are more opportunistic, others of which are more hermetic. Yet others are plainly lucky. There are vast arrays possible here, but don't let your ideas about the righteousness of collegial relationships enter into the sacred realm of individual genius, because without Euclid, Alan Turing, Darwin, Kepler, The Bernoullis, Newton, Franklin, Attucks, Leibniz, Russel, we'd all be living in a very different world today. These people weren’t universally loved. These individuals were competitive, arrogant, fierce debaters that criticized others widely and boldly. Were they amidst group genius, certainly! Were they significant contributing individuals as geniuses themselves, certainly!

It is not one or the other, it is one AND the other; a significant paradigm shift. “Group genius” and  “genius leadership” are of the same thing; collaboration, improvisation, intuition, competition, ego, and insightful transcending reason which inspires. Where there is genius leadership there is group genius. You can't have one without the other. At least that’s what the past has shown.

Who really knows what the future holds? We pray for a true genius to emerge. However, if we study past genius we can perhaps learn a thing or two. Sometimes the urge to be innovative supersedes the urge to be honest. Sometimes the drive to be radical is greater than the drive to be practical. Nonetheless, we must take into account past facts, and perhaps chart a new course forward. However, if old formulas still work, why “innovate” simply to deviate? That’s marketing more than substance. Well played, sir.

Thank Baby-Boomer-Capitalism for Spreading the Zombies

The “undereducated” multitudes in “underdeveloped” countries embracing a new found faith in capitalism and materialism as they enter the "middle class” of modernity, I would argue, will have profoundly negative effects for our world. The continuation of business as usual, as embodied by both East and West, especially for generations younger than baby boomers, will dupe the unwitting into an empty life which lacks meaning but which is full of materialistic fluff, because mass production of commonly consumed middle-class products causes environmental degradation. The end of all of this newfound lust for materialism will not end in a global utopia, quite the opposite. It will expand the shortsighted throwaway habits invented by Western capitalists.

Baby boomers started in a time when the world's resources were still seen as totally inexhaustible, but that was back when the global population was a third (about 2.5 billion) of what it is today (about 7.5 billion). Conceivably, the rise in human population alone would have a tangible and negative impact on things, and it is clearly evident that it already has.

The crux comes when we consider what the implications would be if we were to improve conditions for the lot of humanity to basal levels which might seem acceptable. Meeting this requirement involves extending the capacity of civil systems which most societies can't afford on their own, say by levying taxes, or bonds, etc. So, they become indebted paying loans which in effect deepens their dependence on those with sufficient cash in hand. The fundamental problem expanding civil systems with respect to their reliability is something which most sitting atop societal pyramids will scoff, because they share one common strategy; minimization of labor costs. Doing that now necessitates a global search for the lowest paid workers. This is the familiar depreciation of so-called unskilled labor, and skilled labor, caused by this sort of capitalistic plundering.

The anti-union overhaul seems to have been quite effective globally to drive down the price of labor, to the point that wage slaves exist just as slaves did hundreds of years ago. Only the difference now is that there are more of us living at the fringe of poverty with the curious observation that debtors often appear more affluent than those who refuse to take loans.

Downward pressure on wages is not limited to the bottom, any particular region or market sector. Even highly qualified knowledge workers (younger than baby boomers) have begun to shoulder the burden of increased debt and lower wages, despite what is purported by higher education. An expat from the West once seen as supreme is no longer. Global pressures have devalued the need for individual productivity, intercultural leadership is less desirable because projects are less international, while non-Western countries retain ancient notions of their ethnic identities and this is coupled with a resurgence of nationalism which challenges post WW II hegemonic legacies. We've lived in an increasingly competitive multi-polar world since 1989, and it is more competitive overseas in every way possible, more than most people can fathom. Expats from the West are less welcome than twenty years ago, because they possess no tangible benefit beyond a reputation that is now fading.

American's tend to stay at home, when they go abroad they are seen as aloof, because they are least informed about the regions they travel to. Our presumed superiority over other nations is a myth perpetuated by the lucky circumstances which placed the U.S.A. as a leading nation after WWII. That power was subsequently squandered on military blunders which caused the world to lose faith in our judgement when we exercised our might too carelessly. So, students of underdeveloped countries would rather be schooled in the UK, a country which has been more discrete in implementing its foreign policies. Military blunders are coming back to haunt Americans, especially with the advent of the Trump regime, which is looking for a violent crisis to expand its ruinous foothold in what had been the world's foremost liberal democracy. The nationalist bent will only perpetuate the ongoing trend.

Highly correlated negative impacts of a rising ‘middle-class’ due to relatively ‘higher standards of living’ being realized by more and more people across the globe are characteristic of:

• increased rates of consumption of natural resources,
• higher rates of environmental degradation,
• downward pressure on working wages in developed countries (namely, in the West),
• outsourcing of living wage jobs to developing countries (namely, to the East),
• rising income disparity between the elite classes and common workers,
• suppression of labor unions,
• elimination of civil liberties,
• transfer of knowledge by intellectual property infringement,
• devaluation of currencies along with labor,
• institutionalized suppression of working class citizens who are dis-empowered employed as the subjects of oppressive multinational corporations, and
• a moral gutting whitewashing of endemic cultures which once had a capacity to sustain indigenous populations which have now grown out of control due to a resurgence of religiously tinged dogmatism coupled with a hysteric sense of nationalism.

The West’s fixation on the spread of Globalization, for these and other reasons, has become an utter failure because people still fail to comprehend the impact on the environment that comes with people's increased standard of living, because of the products they choose to consume. Preciously balanced natural systems upon which life depends, upon which societies depend, are being ruined by careless and shortsighted acts of greed commandeered by opportunistic capitalists and unwitting consumers. The quality of nature around us is continually downgraded for the benefit of few and at the expense of all, when things like water had at one time been good to drink, free and available to all.

The natural world has become commodified by elites who exploit the demand of essentials, like food, while relying on unsustainable farming applying chemicals and fertilizers to maximize short term profit. The true cost of this degradation in terms of ecologic health, tainted farmland and water quality is unaccounted for in terms of economics, because the long term productivity of the environment has been totally exogenous to capitalistic considerations, until recently. Trendy use of terms like "sustainable" and "fake news" has confused matters, particularly when utilized by "climate idiots".

Sure, these are complex problems few understand well enough, including myself, but it doesn't negate the effects of unaccounted losses we suffer due to the decrease in vitality in the environs which have been beaten back by urbanization. These unaccounted losses are visually apparent to anyone with their eyes open.

Exploitation of resources and the denial of rights to non-human lifeforms are the of hallmarks "advanced" industrialized societies fixed on objectifying market economics and growth of GDP as their utmost sacrosanct tenets. These societies fail to understand their connection and reliance upon natural systems, other countries, and in a certain sense are like a disease growing upon the planet’s surface, we are the controlling stem cells; the agents of consumption acting collectively in a manner that's more than benign.

Incumbent businesses with a strong influence over government and popular opinion prevent any meaningful legislation that would pave the way for investments required to sustain new kinds of economic growth which might benefit the environment and its citizens.

There is an increasing gap between ‘what is being done’ and ‘what should be done’. A self-serving minority who is psychopathic keeps demonstrating an acute unwillingness to recognize the realities experienced by a majority of people, and that those realities are in effect tied to the health of the environment. Modernity in this sense is the state of being aloof from the fact that we are unequivocally bound to the natural capacities of the ecosystems we live within.

The perceived limitlessness of mother nature, was a primitive idea which developed at a time when the earth’s expanse had yet to be traversed and exploited to the extent it has today. This limitless bounty has now been sufficiently qualified and taken into account through the virtues of science, not politics, not religion. However, the latter two must embrace the former if humanity is to have any hope. Today we have harnessed her full capacity for short lived economic gains in a manner which fails to recognize the real cradle-to-grave cost of being narrow minded. Now this cost might condemn us to a dying planet. Human-caused natural disasters will only exacerbate the impact of natural disasters. If your belief is that acts of God will trump all of these, then very well, but it's no excuse to be utterly mindless in our habits.

We fervidly take up "biomimicry" and "carbon-sequestration" because our intuition tells us that we are witnessing the end of mother nature’s limitlessness, because her systems are breaking down. We do this rather than heed the warnings of melting ice caps by curtailing carbon dioxide. Rather we get sidetracked arguing about the ills caused by the low price of related commodities, which nobody can afford, except for the elites. Is it not this which is causing an economic downturn?

What about the related ecological downturn? Rather than stop the production of chemicals which have decimated bee populations we are audacious enough to look to technology to replace bees themselves. Rather than stop cutting down trees to protect the air we breath, we look to technology to create a replacement for photosynthesis, which might allow us to drive hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered vehicles that nobody will be able to afford, except for the elites.

Rather than looking to restore our planet we are looking to build spaceships that would enable us to populate galaxies with planets neither of which have yet to be discovered, if they exist at all, nor do we possess the means to reach the stars.

This tenuous state-of-nature which we are now enduring is finally the result of the spread of so-called "Western values" by zealous advocates of Globalization whose culturally tinged lenses have become opaque with profit. Should we refer to this as capitalism gone amok or is it closer to insensitive shortsighted and unbridled greed? Or, how about we suffice to call it what it is; a short lived baby boomer free-for-all since they are one's holding most of the cash without a clue of what they've done, or what to do with all their money next. Above are some candid suggestions of where they might stick their money next, if they wish to save their reputation for posterity's sake.

With the baby boomers holding the reins, the stampeding herd of humanity has become drunk in a sort of hysteria which shuns pragmatism and simplicity. Obsessed with inhuman complexities we turn to AI to make decisions, we look to Facebook for friends, while the data we give so freely makes us all the more predictable. We must be more robotic, or lose our jobs. They've never been more insulated or distracted from reality.

We feel morality is for philosophers and lawyers, not the common person. Normal people have to make a living...by destroying the earth, if necessary, on someone else's behalf. Are we not just like zombies fighting over scraps unable to stop our lust for this self-inflicted apocalypse?