I agree with the feeling that its wrong and arrogant to assume that we are smarter today than man has ever been. One has to be very intelligent to figure out that rubbing sticks together or striking certain stones together will give you a spark to start a fire, or to figure out the wheel. We rely on both those basic inventions for almost every modern amenity we have...but are most of us smart enough to have invented the wheel. Can we really compare the genius of Tesla, Bell and Edison with Steve Jobs? I don’t say this to undermine the modern day genius, but to undermine our sense of intelligence. We laugh at early man who observed the sky and saw everything moving around the earth and made a reasonable assumption that the earth was the centre till Galileo came along with his telescope and observed something that changed that fundamental assumption. Trust most of us would have gone along with the earth was the centre of the earth theory. We know more because we came later and we’ve had time to learn from the few who actually do achieve ground breaking progression.
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| Thomas Edison |
In my waking moments I realized this as I thought about a number of things, the fact is most of humanity couldn’t invent a sharpened stick, we’re creatures of what has come before us, and here’s the challenge I tend to have with any theory that assumes we’re smarter today than we were yesterday because the observational evidence simply isn’t there. (I will grant I’ve not done a certified scientific study on this) but you see it in small things. I get plenty of credit in my place of work for problem solving and being creative…Truth is I’m not, I’m just smart enough to realize on a planet populated by billions its highly likely a good number of people have had the same problem and felt the need to post it on youtube and google. If we were all as smart as the dude who figured out how to build a fire ask yourself how come its taken 5,000 odd years of written human history for us to make the super conductor. Surely at that level of intelligence internal combustion should have been developed a few hundred years after the invention of the wheel and fire. It hasn’t because most of us are only smart enough to work with the information given (which is all you need to survive really) meaning were it not for Galileo and the people bothered to research the heavens we’d probably still be content believe that the earth was centre of the universe.
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| Nikola Tesla |
This isn’t a random rant, but rather I think we should realize having an education doesn’t give you any real right to call someone backward. Yes they may be ignorant but they’re working with the information they have as you are, because without education you wouldn’t have the wherewithal to rub two sticks together to make fire. I’m not calling modern man dumb, he’s just not as smart as he may think. On a more practical level we should show a great deal more patience with those who’ve not had the same opportunities in education. Most of all it should stop us from taking condescending positions when it comes to dealing with people. Recently they discovered a Genius in the UK who at 4 years old has 1 IQ point less than Einstien and Hawking, its interesting that most of the geniuses found by Mensa are from the west. This would make a fool falsely assume that people in the west are smarter or more prone to genius. My question to them is would the guy who discovered the wheel be considered an innovator today? As Africa our smartest people today may not be theorising the intricacies of quantum mechanics however they are doing plenty in addressing issues that close to Africa’s heart. This lot may not get the money of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates or the platitudes of Stephen Hawking however this will not undermine their contribution to humanity. After all, most of the world has no idea who Nikola Tesla is but we stand on his shoulders every time we flip a light switch.
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| Genius |
