Lone genius vs. diffused node (a spectrum)

A note: Last time I assumed my “Word vomits” section had no subscribers, but it does. Oh well… it’s helpful for me to create with that in mind :) So I also created “Word vomits” with no subscribers, hopefully it will works now. This is “Word vomits” with subscribers, and you can unsubscribe from it without unsubscribing from my main newsletter.

What is the best book you ever read? What’s your fav writer, artist, intellectual? I used to create these lists and ask this type of questions. It’s funny to find oneself on the opposite side of the spectrum here.

(here is one of my lists from my art years, plus i just added papyrus rn :). I really felt that sharing these was important. Like if these things transformed my world so much, I want you to have a chance to transform yours)

I see a spectrum here between two points of relating to how we think influence works in culture, and I think the way we answer this question has quite a lot of consequences on how we create culture and relate to it. So I think there are two points like (A) you are the important artist, capitalized letters, a unique talent, often creating alone, genius, your work is transformative, distinguished etc.

Or you are (B) a diffused node in a network. The creative act comes from a confluence of forces, and it’s hard to pin-point from where exactly. Your impact heavily depends on your context and the context of the recepient, on who are they, their experiences, developmental stage, current sensitivities, preferences etc.

Okay, quick reveal, no need to wait until the end of the article. If this spectrum is A and B I have been somewhere around 16% (towards left) and now I think a lot more accurate how influence in culture work it’s more like 63% (towards the right).

We are in this acute labyrinth of knowledge. Communication is much more context dependent than i thought. We are each on different heights of a knowledge ladder in each of knowledge areas. Things that are epiphanies, that break my mind, may be obvious to people on steps above, not understandable or not even graspable why they seem important to people below—and maybe there are very few people on similar ladder height, with similar contexts, for whom this may be also important.

Like let me give you a tiny, non-exahaustive example recently i created this mental model Weak ties — no strong tie gets you to wellbeing like one big epiphany, but large amount of weak ties I was a little embarrassed to put it on my wiki. I expect this won’t be particularly helpful to anybody. But I was like I want to be true to what feels important to me and weirdly this definition helps me. This may be a small bit that at the current stage of my knowledge, in my current tensions with reality, is helpful. But I don’t think its helpful to a lot of people nor will be important to me in ten years.

Okay but there are strong differences in strength of impact, length of impact and qualities of outputs. Yes, I don’t want to deny this. On both axis, impact and quality, there are orders of magnitude differences. There are some really great movies, books, buildings, essays, poems that transformed disciplines and are engaging for centuries.

That, said there is also an effect of falling for a great creator. One side of it makes sense as a mechanism that is just pretty universal. Something is good, and because it’s good it becomes popular, like say 98 percentile popular. Then it becomes even more popular because of its popularity. So one mechanism is people will go see a thing because it’s high quality, and the second is they will go see a thing because people are talking about it.

And there is another mechanism that is… plain stupid 😤. I think there is this need to have heroes, gods or equivalents. We want to idealize things and people, and put them on a pedestal. And I think this is another mechanism that’s working here. Oh, artist? I am not talented enough to be that. This person is a great master. This is a masterpiece. This may be one of the largest motivations for creating, to try to be that loved one. We want to be as desirable and impactful.

So my long-term shift is that the more correct model of influence is a much more diffused, multi-player game. For example, Edison the great inventor of a lightbulb, right? No, expect in cases like this, and in fact what have been the case here, some thing like twenty different attempts, some already working (Joseph Swan had a bulb running in London around the same time), and some that succeeded but haven’t been as well known and celebrated (Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans patented one in Canada in 1874). The great lone creator probably had less unique influence than default culture assumes.

I see monuments as a society delusion, a want to find the ideal, to preserve it. It’s a misrepresentation of reality and a distortion of the more correct (B) multi-point model. All monuments will fade at some point, literally decompose. We will understand it’s a misrepresentation of where the love comes from, who really deserves it, where its real channels are, ready to be unclogged. Sending love to people of the b-sort, weak, poor, shy, uncool, unconnected, sending it to animals on the factory farms, forgotten in their numbers, and bugs who can be easily squeezed or shrimps killed inhumanely

Even if you are Adam Mickiewicz type (an influential Polish poet from romanticism) please agree that Adam Mickiewicz from a pedestal is a distortion. Accepting this feels like abandoning something, abandoning this want to be great, desirable, original. But I also feel a little ecstasy there. That I am in contact with something truer. Model (B) shows me I am finite. All my actions will be forgotten. (do u even remember all names of your great-grandparents?). Sure, I can still create a cultural wave, but this wave isn’t coalescing into remembrance, but into a big emptiness around. We are just mortal nodes in the network of something larger, exchanging things, doing things in the now. It is unremarkable, unglamorous, unmonumental. But after agreeing to it, it feels more beautiful, maybe because it feels like connecting to something larger, to emptiness, or maybe because it feels like more true to what is.

when i think about it i literally have a mini-spark of ecstasy