THE MYTH OF THE SINGULAR GENIUS

© Jeremy D. Nickel 2013. All Rights Reserved.
Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation
January 27, 2013

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We are going to start out with a few questions:

To begin with, an easy one: who invented the telephone?
What about the automobile?
Who invented the lightbulb?
And finally, who invented the flush toilet?

Part of the myth of America is the myth of the do-it-yourselfer. The American narrative is heavily painted with stories of inventors, pioneers and leaders who created the next big thing, had the next great idea or discovered a new place no one had ever been. But this entire myth was in reality propped up on the back of a million souls whose hard work has been erased from the history books. And along with erasing the stories of all of these other men and women who have contributed to the things that have made our nation great, we have erased the truth of what it takes, what it really takes, to create something new.

Take the story of the invention of the light bulb, for instance. We all know that after working tirelessly on his own for months, Edison perfected the vacuum bulb and filament that created the first electric light bulb. But in reality, this is just the end of a very long story that began decades earlier. Several people had demonstrated that it was possible to pass electricity through a piece of metal and that if you got it hot enough it would glow, producing light. The problem was in order to make the metal hot enough to glow, it would also melt pretty quickly, making any commercial application quite unrealistic. And that is what Edison overcame. He perfected a metal filament that could burn for as long as fourteen hours, which was how long the very first commercially available light bulbs would work for. Many people helped make the next sets of breakthroughs that extended that burn time, and made the parts more economical and safer for home use.

It is a similar story with the automobile. Besides the fact that dozens of component parts needed to be perfected over time, a man named Karl Benz made a car in Germany in 1883 with his own 4-stroke engine, almost two decades before Ford's model Ts would find huge commercial success in the United States, and forever link his name with the automobile.

We have this myth, not so coincidentally symbolized by a lightbulb over your head, that invention is a distinct moment. But in truth we know this is not so. The story of the telephone is perhaps the most perfect example. In the case of the telephone, there are half a dozen men who had created similar devices as much as two decades before Bell began his tinkering, and all that previous work led to many of the breakthroughs later assembled together by Bell. One man, named Antonio Meucci, even obtained a caveat, or preliminary patent on just such a device, but due to poor English he was unable to figure out how to capitalize commercially on his discovery. When the preliminary patent lapsed a few years later, he was unable to pay the $10 fee to renew it. Shortly thereafter, working in the same lab that Meucci had left his notes and experiments in, Alexander Graham Bell perfected the telephone, and received the first U.S. patent for such a device.

And then,what a phone did remained pretty static for the next hundred years or so. It was a device connected to the wall by a wire that was used to speak to and hear other people talk. Then suddenly it stopped being physically connected to the wall, stopped needing wires at all, and the device just took off. I have a phone in my pocket right now the size of a deck of cards that has more technology in it than was used in the entire Apollo Moon landing project. And it does a few more things than make phone calls. Ideas, just like us, are alive, always changing and evolving. No one person invented the iPhone, but hundreds, if not thousands of people have contributed to making it what it is. It was a shared creation from Meucci, to Bell, to Steve Jobs and hundreds of others along the way.

I strongly believe that this shared creativity is the ultimate expression of being a created being, and that the act of creation is not actually about making something new from nothing, but rather making something new from something old. In this way I think evolution can be seen as the ultimate act of recycling. All ideas and moments of life build on each other. I think this truth has profound implications for how we should live our lives. Right now we live in a climate of ownership over ideas, which benefits a very few people. This says to me that we would benefit not just economically from moving to a more open source model, but spiritually as well. Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, who knows a thing or two about the creative process, put it this way:

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: 'It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to.'"

"It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to." I think this may be one of the most perfect theological statements I have ever heard. Our job as living beings is to partake in the shared creation of the universe, to be active participants in this process of the evolution of all things. To, in our time, grab the baton and push the ideas that resonate with us, on to their next logical form.

I think the truly good news in all of this is that you do not have to do it all by yourself. In fact, you can't. Every single one of us already stands on the shoulders of everyone and everything that has come before us. We are not only indebted to our parents and grandparents and distant ancestors, but we are connected, in physical and spiritual ways, to all of creation, to animals and insects and trees and all organic matter, but also to rocks and dirt. In the end, we can trace our physical matter and spiritual destinies all the way back to star dust, to the original elements that make up all that we know.

That is the truth, not some myth about doing it all on your own, but the simple fact that has been proven by science and affirmed by faith: that we are all connected or, as our 7th principle affirms, we promote "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."

The myth of the singular genius may sound inspiring on paper, but it does not hold up to the light of truth. Thus its false implications of the value of individualism are ultimately damaging to our souls. As we try in vain to recapture this America that never was, we further isolate and divide. The true story of these United States is that no one person has ever done anything of value in this land without the help of others. The true story of these United States is one of collaboration, of team work, of sharing and building and evolving ideas.

It is our call, our task, as the home of liberal religion in this area, to keep proclaiming this truth in the face of the myth; to continue to offer this other story: that we are all in this together.

May it be so. Ashe.

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