Does the world care about genius, anymore?

I ask this question for a very specific reason. It is the experience of my life, with regards to my child prodigy son, that is not easy to secure adequate and fair coverage of his creative and intellectual achievements. This abstemiousness in the coverage of genius, is not particular to Ainan. In fact, I have written many more articles  on giftedness and its issues, than have ever been published. So many of my best articles on giftedness are not allowed to be seen and read by the world, because of unfortunate media mindsets. It is very strange to watch the media’s priorities, in which, too often very, very trivial matters (David Beckham’s new haircut, anyone?) receive massive global coverage, whereas much more significant, indeed, historic achievements, such as Ainan making a scientific discovery and co-authoring a research paper at the age of 8, receive relatively modest coverage, considering their importance. It is very strange to watch. It seems that the modern world celebrates ordinariness and sidelines the truly exceptional. Once, it was not so. There was a time when, to become famous, one had to be truly an exceptional being. Now, it is the other way around – the very ordinary (such as reality TV stars), manage to achieve great fame, on the back of seemingly no achievements whatsoever, whereas the world’s greatest scientists, for instance, are essentially unheard of, outside of their own discipline. We have an inversion of the age old relationship between merit and fame.

It seems that in our time, too often, the unworthy become known and the worthy remain unknown. At least, it is not difficult to think of talentless, famous people and even easier to think of very talented, unknown ones (we all know one or two such people). Public regard now seems to be accorded on those most like the public – ie. unexceptional – and least like the giants of old – ie. geniuses. This is a tragedy,  not only for the geniuses concerned, but for Mankind and human society as a whole. I shall explain why.

A genius has the power to transform the human world – be it culturally, technologically, scientifically or societally. Yet, to effect such transformation, the genius needs to influence the world. The ability to influence that world and effect the positive changes they could make, depends directly on how well known they are. The better known they are, the more the world will listen to their ideas. Thus, it can be readily seen that, to reach their maximum potential for positive change in the world, a genius needs to be famous, in a very real sense. An unknown genius is an uninfluential genius. An unknown genius will not be able to change the world, to any significant degree. It is only when their work becomes well known, that it can have a chance of affecting the world. Thus, it can be seen that the media, by starving the general public of information on geniuses, by preferentially covering the Top 100 Celebrity Haircuts/nose clippings/shopping sprees, are directly impeding the progress of humanity.

Humanity cannot progress unless the work of its creators becomes widely known. That creative work cannot become widely known, unless the creators themselves are also widely known. Thus, it can be seen that creative work cannot change the world, in any real way, unless its creators are themselves well known. Fame can be used for trivial or profound purposes. In the hands of a genius, it can be used to truly transform the world, in a positive way.

It is time to silence the tumult of unremarkable “celebrities” and put in their place, the truly remarkable among us. By empowering such individuals of genius, with the influence that comes with fame, the world will progress with greater rapidity, to the benefit of all.

So, it is up to the media, to make a point of giving people of genius – and their creative works – an appropriate level of coverage, in proportion to the significance, rarity and potential of the achievements. A book, an artwork, a musical composition, a scientific paper, an architectural design, a poem, a film and any other creative achievement are all INFINITELY more worthy of global coverage, than a celebrity’s latest “hook up”.

Let us usher in a world of significance – and let the trivial be silenced. Banish celebrity haircuts, relationships, and trashy behaviour from the world’s newspapers and put in their place achievements and achievers of significance.  Were this done, we would soon all be living in a much better world than this one.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.) 

The most popular internet searches on my blog.

It is bizarre what having a blog tells you about people. Most bizarre of all is what they are interested in.

I would like you to have a guess at what are the two most popular searches to arrive on my blog? Both searches have been popular for a long time, so this is not just a one off: I have been seeing them, in high prevalence, since the day I posted about their subjects, some long while ago.

What kind of thing most interests people? What concerns them most? To give yourself a better chance of getting the right answer, think of a few top answers, likely to end up on my blog.

Got them? Well, I don't know about you but I am surprised to observe that for several months now, the two top regular searches to my blog are: "What is Macaulay Culkin's net worth?" and "Is August Rush a true story?"

I would like you to further guess at what percentage these searches are, today, on my blog. Out of all the infinite possible searches, how prevalent are these two?

Well, coincidentally, they are both at 5% of my visitors' searches, today. There is fluctuation, however, with both reaching higher, Macaulay Culkin in particular sometimes reaching two or three times that prevalence.

Anyway, I find the situation both incredible, and revealing. Firstly, a lot of people are very curious about the net worth of famous individuals. It is as if they are using their "worth" as a proxy for their, well, worth (in terms of how important they are as an individual). What is very surprising in the case of Macaulay Culkin is that he hasn't done any high profile work since he was a primary school kid...and yet people still remember him and are curious about one thing: is he still rich?

As for August Rush, that tells a different kind of tale. It tells that in the modern world, people have lost sight of what is fiction and what is reality. They are not able to distinguish the two, readily, for themselves and so have to seek out online verification for their misplaced suspicions. Anyone, with a strong understanding of the real world, and a knowledge of literature would see the derivative nature of August Rush's plot and recognize it as a reworking of old fictional stories. Even had they not read those prior works, someone with a strong sense of reality and understanding of the world, would know that this could not have been based on real people. However, people nowadays are not very discerning...hence the untold numbers of searchers who think that August Rush was real, and want to find out who it was "based on".

The other thing that is notable about these searches is that they are trivial. It doesn't matter whether Macaulay Culkin is rich, or how rich. So, too, August Rush is just a minor film, telling an obviously fictional story of an unbelievable boy. It is quite derivative of both films and books and is not, therefore, a great work of art, in itself. Thus, it should not inspire the degree of interest that it does: it is not important enough. Yet, now, people don't know what is important - so they trawl the internet for the trivial.

On another note, a rather surprising note, I still get searches landing on my site, occasionally, for David Hartanto Widjaja, the Indonesian student who allegedly attacked his Singaporean lecturer and then supposedly committed suicide. I also receive searches for Singapore's two other high profile suicides: Dr Allan Ooi, who preferred death to a life of servitude working for the Singaporean armed forces and Nordin bin Mondong, who, in my view, was not paid enough to feel it was worth staying alive and threw himself, literally, to the tigers.

That people still search for these three individuals up to a year after their deaths, prompts me to marvel at the impact their passing made in Singapore. Perhaps people are shocked that so many people would consider Singapore's artificial "utopia", so disagreeable that they would rather be dead. There is a message in their choice, concerning the nature and pressures of Singaporean life...and I think anyone who has lived there, and is not a multi-millionaire Minister, would know what those pressures are.

My condolences to their families. Perhaps they will gain some consolation, should they stumble across my words, that people still care enough about their loved ones, to be searching for them, so long after the events in question. In a sense, there is hope in their interest, that not all searches on the internet are trivial: some people are actually thinking about other people and perhaps, valuing their lives.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals. If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The triviality of modern medicine.

So much about modern life is trivial - even, it seems, at times, medicine.

I will explain. There is a glaucoma drug called Lumigan which had an unusual side effect (well, more than one unusual effect, but I will get to that). Commonly, users of Lumigan noticed that their eyelashes grew longer and thicker than before. So, being alert to any opportunity to make money, the pharmaceutical company behind Lumigan has remarketed Lumigan, the glaucoma drug, as Latisse, the eyelash-lengthening-plastic-surgery-in-a-pill-drug.

On hearing this news, I found myself quietly astonished. Now, there is a drug to lengthen eyelashes...and people actually want it. Journalists in the news piece I saw, interviewed women who said that they would "take the drug for the rest of their lives". The estimated cost of the drug, by one doctor, was over 100 US dollars per month, for the privilege of elongated eyelashes.

What kind of world do we live in, in which companies would actually develop drugs to lengthen eyelashes - and people would actually buy them? To my, perhaps old-fashioned way of looking at things, this preoccupation with minor details of appearance seems appallingly trivial. I cannot imagine anyone or anything more superficial than the lifelong consumption of a medical drug purely to lengthen one's eyelashes.

Interestingly, this drug, Latisse, has another side effect that its consumers might not be so keen on. Users of Lumigan, for glaucoma, also noticed that their irises tended to darken over time: light blue eyes, would darken and become brown, for instance. This is a permanent change in iris colour that cessation of the drug does not reverse. However, progression of the darkening stops once the drug is no longer consumed.

I wonder how many people are going to start consuming this drug? If it becomes popular, long eyelashes might become universal - and everyone would have dark eyes: blue eyes would become something only young children have, before they lose them to Latisse.

I would like to think that it is just my own sensibilities becoming more demanding, as I get older, but, it seems to me, that the world we live in, is becoming one of the most trivial Ages there has ever been. People are preoccupied with matters of such triviality (and superficiality) that not one thought should be devoted to them - yet they are major matters of attention, for so many. People devote their lives to pointless activities; people spend money on useless commodities - and people actually take drugs to change the length of their eyelashes. It is all mind-bogglingly stupid.

As for medicine...you know, the Ancients may not have known much, but I rather think they were trying to address serious issues, and did not overly concern themselves with the length of eyelashes.

Which would you rather have? A cure for a major illness...or long eyelashes? The same research and development funds that are committed to nonsense like "eyelash extending drugs" could have been committed to matters of greater import. When the trivial is allowed a voice, it tends to crowd out matters of more substance. No drug company should be devoting funds to trivial projects, when there are so many untreatable, or inadequately treatable, illnesses in this world that need attention.

Once, medicine was a serious calling and drug manufacturers were serious businesses engaged in matters of great importance to us all. Not anymore, however: now we can look forward to a plethora of drugs for every trivial issue that ever concerned the most trivial of people. However, I bet you one thing: the serious diseases will still be incurable - and enough attention will fail to be devoted to them.

Perhaps it comes down to one thing: more people have eyelashes than have cancer - so why not treat "short eyelashes" and make money, rather than "treat cancer" and save lives (and make money, too)? It seems that triviality is an infectious disease and the pharmaceutical/medical establishment has caught a serious case of it. Perhaps it will be fatal. Let's hope so. Perhaps the doctors and pharmacologists who replace them will be a serious bunch, instead.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Victoria Beckham's Haircut and the idiocy of the modern world.

We live in the Time of the Idiot. This is clear to see when one looks at what is considered news.

A couple of days ago, Yahoo News carried a story about Victoria Beckham's new haircut. Apparently, the fact that she has cut her hair short warrants global communication. It is something that the whole modern world must know. The question is: why?

Why is it important for us to know of a change of haircut of someone who long ago stopped contributing anything to the world (if one considers her initial claim to fame - pop songs - a worthy contribution in the first place)? What does it matter if her hair is long, short, pink or balding? In truth, it is of no importance whatsoever - or it would be in a world that had its priorities right.

In a reasonable world, a world of values and rationality, none of us would know what Victoria Beckham's haircut looked like - quite simply because no-one would consider it important enough to communicate it. Her hair would remain on her head - but it would not be in our faces. Yet, sadly, perhaps tragically for Mankind and its future, we do know about Victoria Beckham's haircut. We are forced to know because it is thrust to the front page of Yahoo News and appears on hundreds of millions of browsers around the world. We have no choice but to know: it is there, before our eyes, when we check our mail (for many have a Yahoo account and perhaps another like Gmail, too).

We don't live in a reasonable world. We don't live in sensible world. We don't live in a world of values or proportion. We live in a mad world in which a young woman's haircut is thought of such earth-shattering merit that it must be known to all. Well, it isn't. Victoria Beckham is not important enough to know about. She doesn't merit any real attention. Her haircut, therefore, being but a part of the wholeness of Victoria, is of even less consequence. Neither should consume our attention. Yet, they do.

We live in a world where nonsense is purveyed as information, where emptiness is presented as knowledge. Victoria Beckham is a young woman. That is all. She is married to someone who has merit as a sportsman. That is all. She herself doesn't have much individual importance. Her haircut, therefore, should have none.

Now, I don't wish to pick on Mrs. Beckham. No doubt she makes a great wife to a great footballer. She once entertained many people with her pop songs. Yet, she doesn't, in any real sense, embody anything that should place her on our front pages every time she changes her haircut. In reality, no-one, AT ALL, merits discussion because of their haircut. A haircut is not important enough to communicate around the world. Our minds should not be filled with images of haircuts, our attention taken away from more important matters (like anything else at all). Yet, so it is. We live in the Time of the Idiot. A time when a haircut is of world importance - and where a pop song sets one on the same footing as major historical figures of lasting import.

Victoria Beckham's every move receives more attention, it seems, sometimes, than that of world leaders. Yet, the most major decision Victoria makes is which handbag to buy. Her decisions do not affect the lives and livelihoods of millions...so why, then, does she receive the attention of those whose decisions do have such importance? It is bizarre. It is also a purely modern phenomenon. There was a time when only people of true merit were famous. Now, some people are of very great fame but of very little worth. I will leave it to you to decide for yourself whether Victoria Beckham's worth is as great as her fame.

I would like a world in which news was news; a world in which all the information conveyed to me over every news channel had some baseline of merit and substance. Once, there was such a world. However, the modern era of mass media has dispelled it. Now, what is conveyed is not so much news, as entertainment. Victoria Beckham's haircut is not news, but it may be entertainment. However, the problem is, that the entertaining snippet of her latest haircut is conveyed as if it is news. It is time to draw a distinction between the two categories of information. News should fill news channels. Entertainment should be found elsewhere...

I wonder if my children will ever live to see a world in which news becomes news again. I wonder if they will see a time in which haircuts are, once again, matters of no consequence, and no-one knows of the Victoria Beckhams of the world. It is a world we used to have. It is a world I would like to see again.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)