Strands of Genius: Your Mind is Not A Computer, The Real Meaning of Genius, Apocalypse No!
plus our thoughts on: Prometheus, Epimetheus and Pandora
WRITING FROM | Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
WORKING ON | Kicking off a new consulting project for an agency, ongoing workshops for global marketer training and inspiration, gigs (see below), taxes, our health.
LOOKING AHEAD
(TODAY!) Tues, March 16 @ 2p ET / 7p GMT| Workshop: Creativity in the Time of Crisis with Serial Marketers (RSVP)
Weds, March 24 @ 9:30a GMT | Speaking: Faris @ Spark 2021 with Magnetic Media (RSVP)
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
As I write this it is March 15th, which is also the Ides of March, a Roman festival of Jupiter on which, like all good pagan religious holidays, there were big celebrations with feasting, drinking and general revelry. It was also traditionally a day upon which debts had to be settled, which is probably why Brutus and co decided to assassinate Julius Caesar then. Very poetic, those murderous politicians.
Ides aside, we’ve decided to stay in the same place for another month because we have a bunch of work on and coming in (grateful), which means keeping things simple with robust wifi is the key need for now. Plus, it stopped raining so that’s nice.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Friends and family who were here and have left, B&C, Lil&Jason, Beals, AnneMarie & Tobin, all of whom gifted us their leftover groceries so we’re stocked for a while. Barry the Canadian who gave us some local insight. WandaVision [Disney+ which has now hit 100M subscribers, which is a lot], Homecoming [Amzn], taking a health break for the next while, Vibram Fivefinger shoes for running on the beach, What Tech Calls Thinking (good book you should read) and discussing it with Gwendo, zooms with some members of SOSG, mosquito coils, chicken parm, which Jared taught us to make (and we realized neither of us had ever had it!).
THIS IS TODAY! THIS AFTERNOON!
We are co-hosting a workshop with Serial Marketers’ David Berkowitz TODAY March 16th at 2pm ET (We’re in AST, so that’s why you see the 3p in the image above) and we’d love if you would join! Check it out and RSVP on LinkedIn.
:: THE LINKS ::
THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF GENIUS
Since our consultancy is called Genius Steals, we obviously have some thoughts and interest in those particular words, especially since we are using them, consciously, in ways designed to trigger discussion about the nature of ideas. We don’t mean stealing as copying or copyright infringement, and we don’t have any truck with the idea of the lone genius, which seems like a toxic myth. Fortunately, the original meaning of genius meant something more akin to how we prefer to understand it, as a unique confluence of sources. Genius, in its ‘original and ancient sense’, means the specific underlying quality of a place, as in the Latin Genius Loci, the spirit of the place. For a person, it is the conversation between the specifics of who we uniquely are and the context we’re in. “To live out our genius is to live out the conversations between our particular inherited body and the body of the world from which we seem to have been made” (HT Gwenyth), originally from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words [David Whyte] (Waking Up Pod, 5Mins)
YOU’RE NOT A COMPUTER, YOUR A TINY STONE IN A BEAUTIFUL MOSAIC
The metaphors we use matter. They create conceptual connections between ideas and thus influence how we act and shape our experience. “With mind-metaphors, one way that this manifests is through influencing the therapeutics we seek out to cure our complaints…The metaphor you use will not only shape how you experience your inner critical voice, but also determine your counterstrategies”. Since minds are the most complex thing known, we tend to use metaphors from technology as it develops, but the mind as computer metaphor we have at the moment is especially dangerous, as is the mind as investment account. “These kinds of metaphors reduce us to achievement-driven and advantage-seeking entities, condemned constantly to self-optimise, as if our highest purpose is to be effective instruments.” (Psyche)
APOCALYPSE, NO: WHY I NO LONGER BELIEVE IN THE APOCALYPSE
Apocalypse comes from a Greek word meaning revelation, and it is a distinct feature of modern Christian and Western thought. The majority of other cultures tend to see time as circular, rather than coming to an end. Even the Old Testament of the Bible makes no mention of it, or of heaven or an afterlife. So where did the idea come from? And why has it gripped Western secular culture, spreading as a meme through Y2K, doomsday cults and preppers, and ecological doomism? This wide ranging and well researched piece has some answers, as well as some concerns, wondering “is it psychologically healthy for modern cultures to continually retraumatise themselves by keeping the apocalypse narrative alive, no matter how secular its current metamorphoses are?” (AREO)
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Experimental Learning Community Second Cohort || Only a few places left!
We’ve opened applications for our second Experimental Learning Community, and wanted to let you know we’re almost at capacity.
This is a 7-week mastermind-like program designed to connect marketers around the world, through less-traditional learning.
We’ll meet on Tuesdays at 10a PT / 1p ET / 6p GMT / (+1 day, Wednesday 7am for those on NZDT), beginning April 13th.
Each session will have you looking at work - and maybe even the world - differently, with prompts and exercises that you can steal and replicate within your organization. If you’re curious about the specifics of each session, you can check out the full schedule here.
The program fee is $175, and is available to members of the School of Stolen Genius. Kim had these kinds words about ELC1.
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: PROMETHUS AND EPIMETHEUS ::
Since it’s a festival of Jupiter, we were delighted to listen to a sleep story about Jupiter and co last night on the Calm app, in a version written by James Baldwin. (I’m unable to work out if it’s that James Baldwin but it’s not mentioned on his Wikipedia page so I’m assuming not.)
It delightfully retells the classic origin story of the Greek gods in their battle with the Titans, describing a prelapsarian paradise, where it was always springtime, no one got old or had to work, there was no sickness and everyone lived for hundreds of years and was very attractive, of course. No one was poor, because everything was owned by everyone and there was no money or any jealousy. Sounds good, right?! But these things never last in explanatory myths… because they have to explain how we got to how things actually are.
In this case, Jupiter couldn’t stand his dad, and in some versions his dad Saturn ate lots of his brothers and sisters (I think but that isn’t mentioned here), and he overthrows him in a great war and it changes everything.
“At last, instead of everybody being everybody’s friend, everybody was everybody’s foe.
So, in all the world, instead of peace, there was war; instead of plenty, there was starvation; instead of innocence, there was crime; and instead of happiness, there was misery.
And that was the way in which Jupiter made himself so mighty; and that was the way in which the Golden Age came to an end.”
The next bit was what really got me thinking though. The story of Prometheus, which I thought I knew, and his brother Epimetheus, who I hadn’t heard of. Prometheus, it turns out, means Forethought and Epimetheus means Hindsight, because they are really just aspects of humanity. Prometheus steals wisdom and fire and so on from the gods and gets humans back up and run with scientific progress. This really annoys the gods so they start scheming about how to put humans back in their place.
They create a magic woman and give her all the possible gifts of the gods, hence she was called Pan-Dora, which means all gifts. They send her to seduce Epimetheus, because hindsight is easier to fool then foresight (because memories are mostly fictions), and they give her a box she famously shouldn’t open, so of course she inevitably does.
The version I had heard was that the last thing in Pandora’s Box, the one thing she keep in there, was hope. But in this version it is Foreboding:
“If he had gone out into the world, men would have known from childhood just what troubles were going to come to them every day of their lives, and they would never have had any joy or hope so long as they lived.”
Which is perhaps the same thing backwards, and reminded me that the key thing you want healthy brains to do is to usefully consider the future, learn from the past, and focus here on the present. All the presents, Pandora, as it were.
You can read the story here, and listen to the Calm version here.
:: AND NOW…THEY MAKE IT LOOK EASY ::
Very impressive Tik-Tok by a young woman known as @edenharvz making a series of quick cut music video extremely quickly. (The image above is from Twitter, because TikTok doesn’t embed on this platform. The link on her name goes straight to the TikTok video. It currently has about 16M views there.)
For thoughts that help clarify what that might mean consider Eugene Wei’s essay on the TikTok, about how it has democratized video editing, amongst lots of other interesting thoughts on the tik-tok flywheel. Seem to be reading flywheel a lot nowadays.
Faris is also speaking at Spark 2021 for the lovely people at Magnetic Media alongside Ebiquity and Lumen Research, talking about attention and the cookie-less future that is just around the corner. It’s online and it’s free! You can register here.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed
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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)
I miss you guys already! I am glad to hear that you've decided to stay in Playa Bonita and that it finally stop raining! I hope you could enjoy the grocery and Faris, I also hope you had the chance to head to town!!