GENIUS, IMAGINATION

Following the same line of changes to the meaning of “conventional” and “original”, the words genius and imagination have changed radically during the period ca, 1750- 1850.

Genius meant the spirit of something eg the spirit of a place. It did not carry the implication of radical difference from the common herd in terms of superior talent, etc. The genius of a place was indeed unique, but that did not imply superiority. It was the essential and unique character of that place. Indeed, it implied that this character was innate, inborn, but not necessarily superior.

But once ‘society’ was sufficiently broken down to allow individualism to be the dominant ideology, then it was useful to have a word that described the difference between superior individuals and the common conventional herd: they were born with an innate superiority. It seems obvious that certain abilities such as higher maths, music, superior eye hand coordination, etc have an innate basis.

But without the cultural encouragement to develop any one of these talents, they will not express themselves. And whether this makes the person with those ‘superior’ or not depends on the dominant ideology of the time and place. And even the nature of that superiority will depend on the culture as a whole.

It is a commonplace in anthropology that small scale “immediate-return” hunting societies ensure that the best hunters never portray themselves as better than others, even as hunters, even though in practice they all know who the best hunters are. How could they not? And if the best hunter says the prey went this way, most will follow that hunter. His Dane-za friends told Hugh Brody that the best of their hunters could even find the path to heaven in their dreams.

But these cultures know that these ‘geniuses’ should never get a big head and be allowed to lord it over others, acquire more wealth or formal prestige, etc. I remember Richard Lee’s famous story of how when the best ‘bushmen’ hunters return with a huge kill on their backs, the camp immediately starts to mock him for bringing such a puny beast that will hardly fill one person’s belly, and so on. He immediately agrees, and says he will just take it back and leave it in the bush as it is so useless. Then the rest of the camp say, Oh well, now that it is here, just leave it and we’ll make do with it as best we can….

But recognising the superior skills of some people does not mean to them that the whole society is dependent on them for creating the cultural skills that they use and will use. Each individual stands on the shoulders of all their ancestors who collectively created the culture they live in and by, in the present. Boas’s insight is relevant here, that a culture, a whole way of life, can be seen as work of art -created indeed by individuals, but individuals working together, within conventions, customs and languages of that culture.

By the end of the 19th Century Imagination had also changed its meaning to almost exactly the opposite of its meaning in the 18th Century. In the 18th Century, it meant the ability call up the ideal images of ultimate reality, and these were vaguely Platonic - that is timeless and perfect versions of imperfect temporal ‘reality’. These images would be essentially the same no matter who called them up. By the end of the 19th Century, imagination meant something close to fantasies dreamt up by an individual, characterised by novelty and difference from other individuals’ fantasies.

This seems to indicate a drive in modernity towards solipsism in its worst sense, much worse than Lebniz’s monads which at least reflected the rest of the universe even though they did not connect to the rest in any causal way.

Intellectually, this loss of faith in an unchanging, underlying truth was signalled by Hegel’s evolving spiritual essence, and then Marx’s evolving historical essence. Both seem to me self-contradictory - one needs a foundation of true principles of perception/conception to see changes in the truth of reality.This set the stage for Postmodernists’ rejection of foundational truth. This insane idea in turn set the stage for what has been called wokeness - a mental hall of mirrors that lacked a real person who was reflected - Baudrillard’s hyper-reality, simulacrum etc. Signs and symbols that referred to nothing but themselves in a crazy merry-go-round that fashion-following liberal arts academics jumped on with glee by the 1990s, because it meant they could say anything as long as they dressed it up in ‘Pomo-Speak’. Sometimes it was pure gobbledegook, sometimes blatant truisms and cliches camouflaged in idiotic jargon. (see Stephen Katz’s ‘How to Speak and Write Postmodern’, https://www.newyorkartworld.com/commentary/SpeakAndWritePostmodern.html).

This is not to deny the impulse behind this, which was to point to the ineffable (impossible to describe or express with words) truths of life in a language that was itself unintelligible. The so-called pygmies that Louis Sarno lived with would say to him that the most serious songs addressed to what we might call the divine, ultimate reality could not use words as they were inadequate for the task. Oh the songs of the Postmodernists, so cacophonic, so unharmonious, so ugly! One hopes their divinity is either tone deaf or very forgiving!

But the obvious culprit here is the nearly final and complete destruction of true communities in the white heat of capitalist industrialisation and bureaucratisation that now extends its poisonous proboscises into every nook and cranny of our world. What Mumford called the megamachine - and interestingly along with Ellul and Heidegger, Mumford posited that machines themselves had to be preceded by the organisation of humans into large machine-like operations of bureaucracies, work forces, military forces etc. where each human had to act in accord with a complex plan devised by a power-elite to increase their status, wealth and power over others. These human ‘machines’ became the proto-type for ‘mechanical machines’.

The older sense of imagination pointed to the past if you like, or to truth that is already there. The newer sense pointed to a future truth not yet realised. Both seem to me necessary. The present is clearly not adequate, let alone ideal. So we have to imagine something new in the sense of different from the present. But this different world may exist as a memory or archetype, or ideal image of what could be based on what is inherent in reality but not yet expressed.

And thus we arrive at some kind of messianism. If the Abrahamic religions are right, this future will be in this temporal world, to begin with. But even Paul of Tarsus implied some doubts about this. In Cornthians 13 he might seem to imply that this ideal world only exists after death: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”