Why did ancient Athens, Greece come up with so many philosophers? What happened to Scotland during the Enlightenment that gave birth to rapid improvement in all areas of the sciences? Is Silicon Valley the last place of genius on Earth? These questions and more come up as Eric Weiner travels around the world in The Geography of Genius.
Weiner, who considers himself a “philosophical traveler,” is not content with tackling narrow subject matter.
“I’ve always been interested in the intersection of place and ideas and to me they should be big ideas,” he says over the phone. He previously wrote about happiness in The Geography of Bliss, and this time around he was intrigued by the rise of genius — which he defines in the book as creative genius, usually people far ahead of their time.
While popular conceptions of the origins of genius seem to come from genetics (an especially dicey argument) or just the concept of hard work, Weiner says we often fail to account for the role different environments play. Through the around four years of research for the book, he discovered, for instance, that places of “paradise” seldom yield geniuses like Socrates or Freud.
“Like many people, I had this impression of Renaissance Florence as this golden age where people were lounging and eating grapes,” he says. “It wasn’t good and it wasn’t easy, and it never is in these places. Creativity is a response to a challenge. We need to be challenged. We need something to push against.” At the personal level, he said geniuses often suffered childhood hardships, especially losing a parent.
His last trip in the book looks at Silicon Valley, which may or may not be the last place of genius on Earth. As he notes, many have tried to create its culture elsewhere, but all attempts have failed so far.
“They’re destined to fail because it’s a culture. You can’t transplant a culture,” he says. “You can lay the seeds of certain ideas and certain openness.” For example, he says Pyongyang, North Korea probably won’t be the next place of genius — not because its people aren’t hardworking, but because it’s not a culture of openness. Additionally, the nature of the Internet has been continually shaping and reshaping Silicon Valley’s output, something unique to it as a place of genius.
“Everyone’s getting a vote all the time on what’s being produced and genius is more than just giving people what they want,” Weiner says. “I don’t think a lot of geniuses sat down and said ‘Give the customer what they want.’ In a way, they indulge their own curiosity and it happens to coincide with other people’s curiosity at the same time. Just responding to market demand is not a recipe for genius.”
Though he isn’t a betting man, Weiner suggests a future place of genius could be Estonia. The technology hub is the birthplace of Skype, and as Digital Journal reported recently, the city of Tallinn will be the second in the world to get 5G wireless access when it becomes available.
He says, “Estonia is interesting because it’s so small and off the map. It has a strong culture, it was never really swallowed up by Russia at least. It has a free flow of information, it’s positioned well geographically. It actually has a lot going for it.” Smallness worked to the advantage of other cities too; Enlightenment Edinburgh had just 45,000 people, while ancient Athens had a population equivalent to Wichita, Kansas.
Should a new “golden age” arrive in Estonia (or elsewhere), it may not resemble some of the creative cities of the past like Vienna and Kolkata, a change Weiner chalks up to specialization. Geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci and Shen Kuo were multidisciplinary men — Kuo, for example, dabbled in 21 different fields.
“I don’t think geography is dead, I don’t think golden ages in some form are dead. It could be some places unexpectedly,” he says. However, “I think the next golden age might not be as golden as the ones we’ve seen in the past.”
Eric Weiner will discuss his book and the concept of genius at the MaRS centre in Toronto on Feb. 2 as part of the MaRS and Ramsay Talks‘ new Global Leaders series.
