The myth of genius and the sociology of privilege
Taking a step back from the dizzying headlines, Elon Musk has fallen for the oldest, biggest planet-killing myth of them all - the myth of his own genius.
Not content to regard founding PayPal as an act of genius rather than a stochastic effect of privilege, Musk believed his own brand of magic powder touched everything he did.
The fact that the dice were loaded heavily in his favour seems to have escaped him. Self-awareness isn’t usually a skill valued by people like Musk.
He now seems on the verge of destroying a communication platform, Twitter, that, for all its faults, had become a vital part of our public discourse.
Ironically, Jack Dorsey originally founded Twitter as a journaling tool, not a site for endless gladiatorial arguments over Brexit. Unlike Musk, Dorsey never tried to impose his ego on Twitter. He allowed it to take its course, shaped by the anarchic, self-organising forces that used it.
The Brexit Mythology
The genius myth is pervasive. Similarly, people ascribe to the British the genius of invention and explain the industrial revolution to some metaphysical qualities enjoyed by its people. This has laid the foundation for our national delusion ever since and partly explains our exceptionalism and our Brexit fiasco.
As we watch the fall of another hubristic failure, British Volt, likely to end in receivership, Professor Edgerton remarks:
“For the past 40 years UK governments have pursued a policy based on the notion of a British innovative genius that needs to be exploited through the creation of startups. A battery startup was a perfect case, as it has long been claimed the UK is a world leader in battery technology. But, as was pointed out years ago, it is hard to be a world leader in batteries if you don’t actually make them.”
Wealth and Leisure
In fact, rather than innate genius, it was the combination of a wealthy class of leisured elite and enslaved manpower that allowed Georgians and Victorian’s the privilege to tinker, invent, experiment and invest. The wealthy gentlemen of that era enjoyed the rare freedom of being able to devote their whole lives to pursuing a single goal, unencumbered by the daily concerns of survival like everyone else. This was a peculiarly masculine privilege, as even wealthy women ran large households and died young in childbirth.
Like Silicon Valley 175 years later, having wealthy, over-educated and underemployed people with free labour available will create conditions for restless innovation.
The Gentleman Inventor
It’s no accident that the innovator behind the steam engine, Samuel Morland (1625 – 1695), was a Baronet, an academic, a diplomat, a spy and a gentleman polymath. His main passion, however, was industrial pumps, and he spent much of his life researching, experimenting and perfecting them.
The “Brotopia” that pervades Silicon Valley is not a new phenomenon. Moreland’s life of privilege was a specifically male preserve. Moreland’s three wives all died, two in childbirth.
Some caught up in this sociological effect will think the innovations were down to their personal genius. Moreland’s inventiveness possibly owes more to his abilities as a diplomat and his familiarity with the work of Italian, German and French inventors working in similar fields, like Torricelli, Papin and von Guericke. Like many innovators, he was a synthesiser as much as an originator. Like many inventions, there’s a question about whether espionage was involved.
Unquestionably, Moreland’s designs laid the foundation for the steam engine, and he strongly influenced Thomas Savery, who went on to invent the first commercially viable steam engines.
However, it is also clear from Moreland’s life that no single person is solely responsible for a specific invention. The emergence of a cluster of innovations that create waves of industrial and social revolution is likely the effect of a concentration of wealth and privilege in the hands of very few men. Yet, the benefits are concentrated in the hands of the individual “genius”, who often turns out to be male, wealthy and white.
The reality of social injustice
The genius myth is why so many innovations lead to increasing social inequality and perpetuate age-old injustices. Only the few who are in the right place and time to exploit the innovations benefit substantially. With wages stagnant across the developed world for decades, there’s little evidence that the benefits of the “internet revolution” are being shared, even with the coders and designers who build sites.
Musk’s success owes as much to the apartheid-era wealth accumulation as it does to his intellect, merit or talent. The origins of his Pretoria-based family can be traced to 16th-century England. Its accumulated wealth ensured he had the readily available financial capital to turn code into a gold mine.
So what does this mean for the rest of us? It means we must reinforce our democratic institutions, civic laws and culture against the whims of powerful megalomaniacs, who think their wealth and power are due to their innate gifts and not their privilege.
It also means we develop a realistic sense of how innovations occur and the broad-based social nature of the “genius” behind them.
Dr Andrew Atter