Well done, Bruce. I look forward to reading it and hope it goes well. When I was a child in the 70s I'd hear it said a lot regarding such and such a high-achieving child (seldom myself)that "he'll grow up to be a genius." A genius was something to be looked up to and aimed for in those days. I don't think you hear that kind of talk today. Geniuses, if they're ever thought of at all, are seen as rather odd and almost certainly sexually unfulfilled - in short, nothing to be looked up to. Even, on the rare occasions when genius is admitted it's hedged around with all kinds of qualifications and references to "standing on the shoulders" of those who came before and so forth.
Contemporary society, in my view, hates and fears genius and constantly looks to undermine or belittle it. I know you've written less than enthusiastically about Kenneth Clark's 'Civilisation' series in the past, but this is precisely one of the things that makes it great for me - its active championing of individual genius.
And that, of course, is exactly what we need today, especially with regards to the prospects for religious revival in the West - the reanimation of the religious impulse which propelled our culture for so long. And that, I'm sure, is why there's such a hostile animus towards genius among today's opinion formers.
So yes, congratulations and all the best!
29 January 2016 at 13:10
Edward Dutton & Bruce G Charlton. The Genius Famine: Why we need geniuses, Why they're dying out, Why we must rescue them. University of Buckingham Press: Buckingham, England. 2016
"The Genius Famine, my new book, is now published"
2 Comments -
Congrats, Bruce!
29 January 2016 at 01:25
Well done, Bruce. I look forward to reading it and hope it goes well. When I was a child in the 70s I'd hear it said a lot regarding such and such a high-achieving child (seldom myself)that "he'll grow up to be a genius." A genius was something to be looked up to and aimed for in those days. I don't think you hear that kind of talk today. Geniuses, if they're ever thought of at all, are seen as rather odd and almost certainly sexually unfulfilled - in short, nothing to be looked up to. Even, on the rare occasions when genius is admitted it's hedged around with all kinds of qualifications and references to "standing on the shoulders" of those who came before and so forth.
Contemporary society, in my view, hates and fears genius and constantly looks to undermine or belittle it. I know you've written less than enthusiastically about Kenneth Clark's 'Civilisation' series in the past, but this is precisely one of the things that makes it great for me - its active championing of individual genius.
And that, of course, is exactly what we need today, especially with regards to the prospects for religious revival in the West - the reanimation of the religious impulse which propelled our culture for so long. And that, I'm sure, is why there's such a hostile animus towards genius among today's opinion formers.
So yes, congratulations and all the best!
29 January 2016 at 13:10