Nourishing Genius

“Don’t look at the sun or you’ll go blind!” I can still hear my mother’s voice echoing in my mind every time my eyes get within 10 degrees of the sun. Little did I know this was all thanks to Isaac Newton.

When Newton was a young man, he performed one of his lesser-known experiments. Notebook at the ready, he stepped outside and looked directly at the sun to find out how long he could stare at it and what would happen.

Much to his surprise, he was rendered completely blind for 2 days.

When he regained his sight, he recorded the groundbreaking results in his notebook:

“No one should ever look directly at the sun.”

My daughter and I giggled about this for days.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” she said with a grin, “but were they really that…stupid back then?”

This seems so commonsense to those of us in the 21^st century. But in Newton’s day, people didn’t even understand the nature of light. The conventional wisdom was that objects gave off their own light, as opposed to reflecting the sun’s light. This experiment challenged those beliefs, and raised new questions, leading to further hypotheses and experiments.

The “intelligence is genetic” myth commandeered the American mind in the beginning of the 20^th century, sparked by Darwin a generation earlier. It was packaged as “scientifically proven” when the IQ test was invented in Germany as part of the eugenics movement.¹ The test was quickly adopted in the US, where it was used in schools to keep the social classes separate (and in their place), and poor test results were deemed legal grounds for forced sterilization. Thousands of poor, blind, deaf, and mentally ill people were successfully sterilized, often without their knowledge, right here in the United States of America.²

Although forced sterilization is now illegal, many of us still define genius as a genetic intellectual capacity; the only alternative to the belief that “You can do anything you put your mind to!” which is also a myth.³

I’m advocating for a new definition of genius; one that acknowledges that genius may manifest itself in an infinite number of ways; that it starts out as a tiny seed inside each human being born into this world. If this seed finds fertile soil, and receives adequate sunshine and water, it will grow, of its own accord. Our job is not to force the seed to grow, but to discover what kind of seed it is and provide the right kind of environment for it. Blueberries prefer acidic soil, peas need a trellis, and tomatoes need extra calcium.  When the environment meets the needs of the individual genius, it will produce fruit (or shade or beauty) to give to the world. Each of us has a unique mission in life that will change the world if we choose to nourish that seed of genius in ourselves and our children.

The seed can be planted at any time; it’s never too late.

I choose now.