Over the past couple of months, I have been working on an essay about Scenius - the communal genius that emerges in particular places and times throughout history. You’ll be familiar with those places and times by name - Ancient Greece, the Renaissance, the Scottish Enlightenment, the Junto, Silicon Valley - and also by what those scenia created - art, history, literature, forms of government, economic theories, civic organizations, universities, technologies. Collectively, the scenia that I just mentioned along with many others are responsible for such a large portion of the progress humans have made in our time on Earth.
In the essay, I have been trying to figure out what ingredients shaped those scenia, and how we can apply those ingredients to create modern versions that leverage the internet to connect groups of geniuses regardless of physical location. And frankly, I have been stuck. There was something missing, and I couldn’t quite believe that we would be able to create modern scenia with even close to the impact of the Renaissance or the Enlightenment or even the Junto.
Over the weekend, though, Puja and I watched Hitsville: The Making of Motown, an excellent documentary about the early days of what would become Motown in Detroit.
And it was textbook scenius, down to the ingredients from my essay.
Place: Motown was started and grew out of a house in a residential neighborhood in Detroit. If a songwriter had an idea for a song in the middle of the day, he could walk into a room and find Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder to play it right then and there. That allowed for rapid creation and innovation.
Competition. Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, intentionally used competition among his artists to bring out the best in them. He held weekly meetings in which the team voted to release certain artists’ songs while holding others’ back until they got it up to their friendly competitor’s level.
Diversity. Despite protestations, Gordy built a diverse team of artists and management - white or black, male or female, whoever got the job done got the job. That diversity brought new ideas and allowed the right people to play the roles they were best suited for.
It was uncanny, but what knocked me back, and the thing that was missing in my essay, was the fact that Motown was born in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. Some of the greatest musicians in American history came together in a small house in Detroit at a time when many of them couldn’t even share bathrooms with audience members at many of the venues in which they performed. Without the unifying and creative force of something as terrible as racism, Motown wouldn’t have become the cultural force that it did.
After watching the movie, I went back and looked at the historical examples of scenius in my essay, and there it was. In nearly every case, explosions in progress and creativity were preceded by awful situations. Ancient Greece was preceded by a period literally called The Dark Ages. The Renaissance was preceded by the Bubonic Plague and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. Les Années Folles in Paris came off the heels of World War I. Bell Labs came out of World War II. The list goes on and on.
That’s why I was struggling to see how we could create modern scenius. We hadn’t had anything really bad happen to us collectively in too long. We were too comfortable. We didn’t need to create new ways of doing things because the way we were doing things was working out just fine, thanks.
Obviously, that has changed. Whether the Coronavirus Pandemic ends in 18 days or 18 months, the world will never be the same. Each of the articles and essays linked in Links & Listens speak to that fact. But having studied scenius, I am optimistic that the world will emerge from this tragedy revved up to come together to create and progress. (Fun fact: I almost wrote “emerge from this tragedy like a Phoenix rising from the ashes” but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Welcome inside my creative process.)
Even as we remain locked up, it’s already happening. Teams are working together across the globe to fight the disease, social gatherings are taking on new virtual forms, and we’re even doing audio simulations of NBA games.
A common enemy and shared tragedy will bring out the best in us. I’m optimistic that this is the start of a wildly creative era in human history. Bring on the Greeks.