Genius: One Craziness, Hold the Insanity, To Go, Please

When Confucius wrote, "better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without," he meant that attempting to thrive, with the potential for incurring a blemishing failure, is always superior to remaining impeccable and safe by never undertaking anything. Geniuses are people who always thrive because they undertake "enterprises of great pitch and moment" by using their own lunacy for creativity, while abandoning fear (Shakespeare 32). Everyone was always a diamond in the rough at one time or another. By polishing and adroitly seizing the right opportunities, one creates successful intellectual capacity equivalent to a genius. Geniuses are those rare gems who always courageously attempt to emancipate their own craziness into robust and resourceful applications.

Genius is a frequently misused banality. Usually it connotes a hyper-intelligent, but socially incompetent, individual. James Gleick states, "Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity." Definitively, a genius is someone who possesses a particular type of intelligence -- "level of analysis, comprehension, and insight that produces results that have the potential to redefine an area of knowledge" (Gleick). Even though attentive comprehension, incredibly analysis skills, and thorough insight creates intelligence, the single number one key factor for genius and certainly for any type of success is craziness.

You must be crazy to be successful.

Crazies can be sinkers or drainers, or they can be geniuses, affluent eccentrics. Crazy people sink to a watery grave or they can swim, generating tremendous erudition, applied intelligence, and wealth. Michael Gelb explain the avenues in which craziness can be channeled to create tremendously enriching outcomes. "Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy." Clearly, the goal is to not minimize the insanity, but to channel the "non compos mentis" (Latin, literally meaning, not having control of one's mind) into creativity by dancing with your own craziness to create productive eccentricity and genius. In other words, you can be crazy one of two ways: Successful crazy or Insane crazy. Both successful crazy and Insane crazy people have somewhat of a psychopathology at their core, but insane crazy people destroy and create malign, while the successful crazy people auspiciously channel that core into creative, nourishing, inventive acts. The trick is to not remonstrate craziness, but to herald it.

C.S. Lewis writes that Jesus -- given his outrageous claims of being able to enact miracles, revive the dead, exorcise the demons, and more -- was a "Lunatic, a Lord, or a Liar". Saying he was the son of God could only mean that he was a complete nutso, a total liar, or an actual lord. This is not implying that we all are either a lord, lunatic, or a liar, but that we must take up honesty to avoid lies, and embrace productivity and wealth to negate the insanity and the wretched suffering from lunacy. There are some brilliant comedians, for example, who would not be funny if they weren't crazy. Instead of suffering and combating their craziness in an ornery denial, they allowed it to flourish. Gelb reminds us that crazy people who are neither productive nor rich and active, simply wallow in their lunacy. However, productively committing to that unknown can generate a wild, but galvanizing roller-coaster of success.

Truly though, most of the successful people are lunatics. The unparalleled, superlative intelligence or strength or artistic ability -- whatever the attribute -- can only be reached by an unparalleled, superlative method, a unique unconventional method. If the superlative could be acquired by simply following the status quo with a simple, ho-hum, convenvtional method, it would mean that everyone could be much more or much less intelligent, but that procedure could never be the path of a genius because genius possesses "exceptional" creative power, intellectual ability or some other ability. Key emphasis on the exceptional. If everyone else has that same intellectual ability and creative power, it ceases to be an exception. In his book GENIUS, author James Gleick describes mathematician Richard Feynman as a "'Renaissance Man' were that term not so diluted from its application to everyone from television sitcom stars who scribble a few lines of poetic doggerel to major league athletes who speak in complete sentences. Instead, let's just say that, in this Jewish-American son of a New York uniform salesman, we find a remarkable marriage of transcendental intellect, hubris, and frat house debauchery. A "character" to be sure. But also a genius." A renaissance man possessing transcendental brainpower, pride, and an affinity for parties? With all of those zany characteristics stewing together in the same melting pot, how on earth could Feynman be anything but a little crazy? He was very much crazy, but this made him very much a genius.

Similarly, Picasso was psychotic, John Nash, inventor of Game Theory, was a diagnosed schizophrenic, Einstein, incredibly eccentric, the list goes on. This certainly does not exclude people who lack psychological disorders or eccentricities from becoming wealthy, exceptionally intelligent, or immensely successful, but it does mean that you have to get in the water. Gelb writes, "Geniuses and crazy people are both out in the middle of a deep ocean; geniuses swim, crazy people drown. Most of us are sitting safely on shore. Take a chance and get your feet wet". Picasso, Nash, Einstein, and all the other successful crazies swam and, in doing so, they churned up all kinds of enlightening inventions of art, math, and physics.

The rich and famous, the eccentrically intelligent, the superbly successful people are not normal! They work different hours, eat different foods, have different beliefs, different logic. Normal is staying on the shore. Normal is safe, innocuous, harmless, average, and typical. It is a constant, but does not imply, necessarily, goodness; it certainly does not imply craziness, productive or unproductive. Think about it, normalcy certainly never implies genius, wealth, or supreme success. If someone is exceptional in anything you never refer to them as "normal". While normal is not an insult; it is safe and without risk, but drab, discolored and debilitating towards expansive, but, channeled craziness. Don't avoid being normal, it's important to have a stability zone in life. You can have a comfort, normal, constant zone with the types of books you read, people you interact with, rituals you have, exercise you perform, and other invariates. Constancy can be the eye in the tornado of successful craziness.

Clearly, the correct measuring of craziness, is the ingredient to success. Important to note that while "normal" may not insinuate genius, the "state of normalcy" should never be relegated as an inferior state of being. Normal is simple, commonplace, prevalent, but it is never lesser or inferior. Obviously, most of the time, to be different, one must get off the conventional, well-beaten path and listen to his own drum beat. Or one could make their own impression within a well-beaten path, but some form of divergence from the norm must occur. The trick is avoid having that divergence from being a meandering, dismal distraction, and, instead, make it productive by maintaining resilience, generating a high-faculty of concentration, and having immense faith in the process.

Faith is needed for success. Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose, and many times the scintillating endeavor for creating success, demands faith to take the necessary risks. The risks necessary to success can be undertaken with or without faith. Risks endeavored without faith become frightening and disturbing changes of tumult. Risks endeavored with faith transform fearful moments of doubt into inspiring and dynamic moments of exciting "Satori" because you have the confidence from perseverance and the awareness that risk is pursuing a goal.

Satori is a Zen word meaning, ""sudden awakening". Satori is "insight into our fundamental nature...not the result of abstract mental concepts or ideas but rather a momentary, experiential fusing of body, mind, and emotions" (Millman 92). When your emotional and physical energies flow freely you are experiencing the inner peace and power of the moving inner experience of Satori. A great method for acquiring Satori is creating craziness channeling in structure by using sound judgment for our decisions.".

Additionally, Famous story-teller, Roald Dahl, writes. "Most of the really exciting things that we do in our lives scare us to death" (52). Crazy endeavors possess the dichotomous quality of being frightening and exciting because you know that task is a stepping-stone to achieving a goal, but in the back of your mind, you know you are "acting crazy', abandoning the norm, and are entering the unknown. Don't purposefully pursue things that make you afraid, but that closeness to fear, is often an ingredient in things that are certainly exciting. Risk, craziness, and fear with the linchpin of faith, self-confidence, and personal belief, become invigorating and stimulating excitement. We must never abandon tact because prudence ensures success, but we must avoid "paralysis by analysis", while still analyzing our past, connecting it with the present, and moving forward with certainty.

We must abandon the reliance on restricting compartments for structure. Compartments provide obligation and structure. While the benefits of structure and support are undeniably vital to growth, obligation can get messy. The best position remains outside of the cubicle by creating your own self-defined responsibilities. Define your own vocational department. Get your life aligned by identifying your interests and passions, access the freedom to discover those investments, experience the happiness from being prudent about your future, but passionate about your present, and the elaborate the happiness by expressing it.

The trick for happiness is to not avoid lunacy, but to embrace craziness, while engaging prudence. Tactfully create the resources you need to channel the non-normal, wild, sincere talent into productive outlets. Bach, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Haydn -- masters in setting different, totally new Baroque, Romantic, and Renaissance-Baroque movements -- had the attributes for would-be "crazies" if failed to discover a piano, and music. Instead, their talent was channeled into sound and logical craziness, a productive zone, making incredible "crazy" -- different, setting totally new periods and movements -- and successful symphonic classical composition.

George Orwell asks, "What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?" Nothing at all. A person, operating at high faculty of intelligence, yields to no obstacle. Abraham Lincoln failed 13 times trying to get elected into Congress, trying any more seemed like lunacy, but he persisted in his "crazy pursuit" and became the sixteenth President of the United States. Dogged, but calculated, persistence in any noble endeavor propitiously transforms the insane process into prodigious success because it is within that inner tenacity that we discover our subtle genius.

All success and true genius is acquired with the risk of admitting your own craziness. Athletes who train copious hours, insane number of miles, do so with a twinge of looniness; musicians who have psychotic fits on stage producing the greatest performances imaginable embrace being bonkers and engage their craziness; and the greatest breakthroughs in science, medicine, mathematics, and chemistry occur with a zany and warped hunch that proves to be a new vaccine, cure, or discovery. Success -- whether or not it is derived from genius -- is everything or nothing at all

Success is not categorical; it is never kind of successful;it is black-and-white and make it or break it . Some people could argue that unhealthy crazies like John Wayne Gacey, Jeffrey Dommer, Ted Kazinski were all "successful", possibly notorieties, because they were certainly crazy (you'd have to be to murder that way), turned heads and became well known names. However, they were unsound, unlogical, destructive crazy people that were unsuccessful in every way possible. They drew attention, but did not experience an iota of success. Craziness is only successful if it is channeled into creativity. Notice the etymological backbone of "creative" is create, not destroy. Success is expansive and ultimately good. A twinge of craziness mixed with dogged persistence combined in a concoctive of harmonious connection with humanity, creates a powerful elixer of genius and success.

Embrace the craziness, hold off the lunacy by being productive, but never deny that you're nuts. Denying your insanity limits yourself. Give testimony that you will recognize, honor, and nurture your wild crazy side is not an ominous crutch, but as an exhilarating springboard for cataloging ingenuity.


Gleick, James. Genius, New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Shakespeare. Hamlet. New York New Haven Press, 1999.