One of our adjuncts talked with me about James F Watson of DNA Double Helix fame and gave me information I didn't already know. Since becoming a professor, I have defended Dr. Watson against spurious accusations of professional impropriety, but now I learned about the rest of his story and the unspoken reasons why Watson did and believes as he does. Bernie's major professor in graduate school was a classmate of Watson back in the 1950s who described Dr. Watson as a "veritable horndog" who would chase any woman any time for any reason. As we talked, I realized that many of the people we consider to be genius in their field were also debauched to the point of almost moral bankruptcy, which explains their concomitant ability to do whatever it took to succeed. In fact, isn't that who we usually consider to be elite- those willing to do whatever it takes? Along the way, everything else is important only for the moment it remains in focus, as these geniuses focus single-mindedly on the only thing that actually matters to them- whatever makes them great.
Michael Phelps
Like most athletes, Phelps got into drugs and women as a consequence of his catapult to stardom. However, he doesn't really care about any of that. What he really cares about is swimming. He wanted those medals. Everything else was coincidental and consequential to his athleticism. If you spent six hours every day swimming, you would probably also be as attractive and find yourself surrounded by beautiful women. Of course, none of them mean anything to him, which is why he didn't spend more than a single night with them and essentially regards them as immaterial strangers since more will come. If you swam that much, you would probably be ravenously hungry too, but Phelps apologized for smoking pot, not because he found it immoral, but because it put his athletic career and olympic prospects at risk. He quit something bad only because it threatened the only thing about which he actually cares.
Albert Einstein
Everyone knows the unkempt, frazzled-haired genius who described the behavior of matter and energy in the universe. What they may not know is that in describing our universe he destroyed his own. Albert had at least one son and one wife, both of whom he essentially abandoned in order to pursue science. Along the way, he also had a series of illicit affairs and fathered other children, but none of them really seem to mean anything either to him or the world. The state of chaos associated with his desk attests to the fact that he really didn't care about learning to tie his shoes, drive a car, cook, or clean up. Those things detracted too much from his scholastic research. He even had an escort to make sure that he didn't wander out into oncoming traffic, so focused was he on his "genius".
Franklin Roosevelt
Although largely deserving of gratitude for helping America roll back the Axis powers, a lot of the methods used in arriving thereat come under question regarding their morality and expediency. Many of you know that Korimatsu v. United States deals with the illegal incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent as dissidents. President Roosevelt was also a pathological liar who led America to believe that he was perfectly fine when in fact he was a cripple. What kind of an example is that for the handicapped in America- a man who would not confess his and excoriated others for theirs? He was also somehow a bully, who threatened judges to comply or be replaced in their Supreme Court seats until he bludgeoned them into compliance. Held up as a great humanist, it was his idea to develop and use the atomic bomb on our enemies. Imagine if he were a Democrat today! His target might be Trump Tower.
Rosalind Franklin
One of the reasons Watson was able to "steal" Franklin's work is because she was in a relationship at one point with James Watson. Her only interest was in X-ray diffraction, and so when Watson asked her associate Wilkins for access to the image, Wilkins complied. Franklin didn't care what they meant; she only seemed interested in creating them, which eventually lead to her death from exposure. She was marginalized by Watson who excluded her from credit for the Double Helix model, but to my knowledge she never officially protested. It was simply ancillary to her work creating images of things you could not otherwise visualize, and once the pictures were "taken" she seemed completely disinterested in their disposition.
Benjamin Franklin
Well known liar and womanizer, Franklin was never educated, but he convinced France that he was an American Doctor and inventor. True, he had a keen mind, but if you ask Thomas Jefferson, who has his own skeletons, Jefferson couldn't stand working with him because he would entertain the attention of every woman in France, married or not, and had incestual relationships at least allegedly with several. Franklin was incontinent in some ways, rarely exercised, ate decadently, and engaged in all sorts of immorality, then he helped write a Constitution fit for a "moral and ethical people". Paradoxical. I had more difficulty embracing him as a Founder and Framer than any other of the men of '76.
Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg not only dropped out of college, but he became rich for creating a website meant to track who was currently having sex with whom. The entire premise behind Facebook as a part of Harvard life was to keep track of who was available to hook up for a fling. I guess so many people are driven by hormones that it caught on, grew, and somehow grew profitable. Now it's a means by which to become famous, albeit for a moment and albeit sometimes for embarrassing reasons, it encourages people to waste time on feelings rather than anything substantive and encourages and enables debauchery. Facebook censors conservative commentary, but if you want to spread child porn or advertise for Muslim extremism, Facebook will leave your page alone in the name of "free speech".
Errol Flynn
Renowned womanizer and heavy drinker, Errol Flynn died young at the age of 50. If you watch "Don Juan" you can see him shortly before he died, apparently and acutely aware of the consequences of his choices, but still unwilling to abandon the largess that lead to his ultimate demise. Did he ever quit? No, and his only known son followed suit but died as a war correspondent during WWII probably at the hand of Japanese soldiers.
Nikola Tesla
Often lionized by those who feel slighted by his marginalization in favor of Edison, Tesla was no paragon. He was addicted to billiards and rarely ever slept. He was exceptionally critical of people who were overweight, openly calling them out and in mean fashion. One wonders what he might have thought of Ben Franklin... Although some reference his belief that women were superior to men, they seem to forget that in later life he was extremely critical of women whom he perceived willing to trade feminism for power. Paradoxical since Tesla sought so much power. He was obsessive compusive, and demanded dinner precisely at 8:10 PM. He was also rude, one time calling a friend in the middle of the night for an audience while he talked out a problem with a theory after which, once solved, he promptly hung up. He believed in eugenics and selective breeding, but I never hear his fans mention his similarities with National Socialists. He disdained religion, but claimed that he would see visions and flashes that inspired his work. Tesla was essentially a man of vision who saw no real purpose in receiving them. In essence, he was two-faced.
William Shakespeare
Prolific playwright, Shakespeare abandoned his family in Stratford on Avon to work in London, having a series of alleged affairs, which may be the muse behind some of his more famous works. Before winning the patronage of Queen Elizabeth, he routinely bilked patrons by using their money for drink and debauchery and writing plays for other people to whom he was in arrears for work, the funding for which he already squandered. In fact, Elizabeth probably spared him from the shank or the gallows, and at the very least from debtor's prison, but his behavior didn't really stop. It just changed venue.
One thing is consistent about the people considered genius. They found their niche. If not for that, they would largely just be schmucks. What unites most of them is their debauchery- that most famous and powerful and rich and influential people are morally bankrupt in their debauchery, and we only know about them because they got lucky. If not for the chance to become famous, they would just be more schmucks who gave in to the natural order of instinct and followed their emotions and hormones to do whatever they liked when they felt like it because they could. As the Bard wrote, "the evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones" and President Lincoln once said that "If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it you surely will." Genius is nonsynonymous with virtue, and in fact it seems that in order to be a genius one must essentially eschew a life of virtue. Unfortunately, people only seem to look for the evil in people they don't like and see only the good in people they truly do like. Perhaps that is the truest genius...
No comments:
Post a Comment