Genius

There are individuals gifted with particular brands of genius: musical genius, artistic genius, scientific, even philosophical and religious, I believe. And certain cultures, and certain times in history, saw a flourishing of one or more of these. I will not here speculate on how this came to be. But mere biomass is not enough. You cannot assure that a new genius will be there to continue a tradition. An era draws to its close, and the geniuses dwindle and are gone.

Modern society is shaped by an era of unprecedented scientific genius. Even today knowledge increases exponentially. But it seems to me that much of it is ordinary workers picking up the fish killed by the explosive depth charges of genius already gone. And we know not which type of genius will erupt next, or where, or when.

It is easy to get puffed up and identify with the genius whose coat tails we ride. The spirit of democracy says that we are all the same, but that would ensure a hasty decline. As Frithjof Schuon says, the purpose of a civilization is to produce saints. I would say more generally, genius. Those who can directly perceive the crack in the Cosmic egg, where the Light gets in. No quantity of mass produced doggerel can substitute.