How to Think Like a Genius 37-Pluses and Minuses
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Rick Rosner)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/15
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the plus and minus?
Rick Rosner: Let’s talk about smaller organization that are paternalistic and sororital, well fraternities and sororities, that provide security and enforce comformity and safety. I was in a frat. It is easier to hook up with somebody if you’re in a frat and if you go to a frat or sorority party and you’re already vetted and are not too much of a weirdo, supposedly, because you’ve gone through the recruitment and pledge process, and there’s safety in normal behavior.
So, you have the Rotary and Shriners. These are things that flourish more in the 20th century more than in the 21st century, but local chambers of commerce. People working together to maintain a traditional friendly business environment. And those things do better when there’s not disruption. Disruptors can be weird. They can be angry. They can be annoying. They question people’s motivations and assumptions.
And they may in some cases, especially in the arts, point out the hollowness of traditions and normal life. If you look at the great books of the 50s like Revolutionary Road is a book that takes a look at complacent post-war American life and finds the desperation lurking underneath it, and that’s kind of been a literary theme running ever since the novel was invented and before that, the Greeks and Romans with satirists. Genius takes a look at normal life, breaks it down, and finds out what sucks about it, which is annoying if you’re trying to live a normal life.
It boils down to jocks versus nerds. Normality versus disruption and innovation, and normality has ways to defend itself, and one of the ways it does is via majority. We are all going to behave and think this way and if you can’t or won’t then you’re going to be ostracized, and then way that genius wins are just by being better. You can try to innovate, but if you suck you’re going to get squashed; if you’re really good at it, normality will grant you the title of genius.
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