From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Sun Jul 31 2005 - 15:31:21 BST
someone said:
The brujo didn't cause the demise of the Zuni society. He saved it from
demise. "The brujo had shown he could deal successfully with the one tribe
that could easily wipe them out at any time it wanted to." (Lila, 9)
msh 7-30-05:
What this out-of-context quote fails to reveal is that the brujo
could deal with the threatening tribe BECAUSE he had opened himself
up to the value-system of another culture. He was a "stand-alone"
genius only in the small pond of Zuni.
someone said:
I object, however, to the concept that I'm helpless captive of "what
everybody else thinks," and that no one ever had an original idea in
his head.
msh 7-30-05:
Give us an example of an original idea. Better yet, give us an
example of a stand-alone genius, since that's what this thread is
about. As has been seen, Newton and Leibniz are out; as are Darwin
and Wallace; Einstein is out, by his own admission. So, you're gonna
have to come up with someone smarter than Einstein. As I recall,
your idea of an original genius is Bill Gates. Shall we examine how
he came by his billions?
Or let's look at your list:
Jesus and Mohammed are religious figures about whom there is little
historical information. Their so-called greatness is a result of the
posterior fact that a bunch of people worship them. Millions
worshipped Hitler; millions worship Pat Robertson; does this make
them Stand-Alone Geniuses?
Ghandi's whole life was about people working collectively to solve
problems.
King was the figurehead of a movement made possible by thousands of
people who worked, and died, anonymously behind the scenes.
Newton and Einstein? See above.
Salk: The cure for polio was the result of an immense collaborative
effort between Dr. Thomas Francis; a dozen people working at Pitt
including Dr. Julius S. Youngner; and Harvard researchers Enders,
Robbins and Weller, to mention a few. Moreover, Albert Sabin worked
with another group of researchers to solve the polio problem, and
both teams were successful. Here's a link, in case you are
interested in investigating beyond the myth:
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=9131
I will say however that Salk was great and gracious in recognizing
our common humanity. He was appalled by the idea that he should
patent the vaccine for his own personal gain:
After it became known that the field trials had ended in success for
Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, journalist Edward R. Murrow interviewed
Salk on "See It Now." "Who owns the patent on this vaccine?" Murrow
asked. "Well, the people, I would say," Dr. Salk replied. "There is
no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2004/08/could_you_paten.html
How very different this sounds from today's bio-tech companies who
are racing to claim intellectual property rights to every bit of the
human genome, as well as the genomes of every other species on earth.
Anyway, on to the artists...
Beethoven and Monet, and every other honest artist will tell you that
none of what they have done would have been possible without the
contributions of artists before them. Besides, what's great in art
is a matter of taste, not opinion or fact, and there IS a difference.
Finally, the thrust of this thread is that there are no Stand-Alone
Geniuses, not there are no bio-level individuals So the comments
and quotes about Lila being an individual are off-point.
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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