In madness we trust

A long time ago, words had meaning. Today, when you look around the block, everyone is a genius.

No one wants to be condemned to a life of mediocrity, and so, it has become incumbent on everyone to be a great judge of character. Not only must we work hard ourselves, we must also have enough humility to recognize that there are people out there, seemingly ordinary people, some profoundly unqualified for their jobs, who actually possess extraordinary gifts, and if awakened and recognized as such, they can rescue the world from certain doom. Of course, we also dream to be bestowed with the same honor, although we must never make this desire known. It’s a cardinal sin in a time of great upheaval to be vocal about one’s ambitions. Everything is about “the mission” these days. You can do or say just about anything as long as people believe that you have a higher calling you’re aiming for.

In practice, the genius and his admirer are actually one and the same. They’re mirror images of each other. When one person is committing a crime, the other person can serve as the alibi. When one person has betrayed the very ideas that made him powerful, his double can start the revolution all over again.

Hope, elation, disappointment, anger—how long must this cycle repeat itself before we change the way we view greatness? If the change we seek is simply the opposite ideology than the one in power, no fundamental change will ever come. As long as we keep admiring people who seem larger than life, we will always find ourselves under the sway of madness. Life will continue to be an endless array of revolutions and counter-revolutions with no real meaning.

Maybe it’s time to view greatness differently. Maybe real genius is the innate desire to see the world clearly, and to venture beyond what current ideas dictate. Maybe then, we can make it out of the wilderness that seems so pervasive today.