Life flourishes in a relatively slim band. For our planet, being nestled neatly in the Goldilocks Zone, with just the right tilt, afforded us to neither a fireball nor snowball planet be. It took a few billion years to get to this happy Holocene era, wherein life has blossomed – wildly – for the last 12,000-odd years. Opportunistic as life is to maximize good seasons, we humans cracked the game faster than anything that’s gone before us – bacteria may be more successful, but they’ve been around for longer.

Our rapidly evolving tools have allowed us to tinker with time and space. We bend the physical environment to suit our specific needs or if we’re lucky, simply fly to another part of the world where we’re happier, or take a pill to make it so. The narrow band of temperature, pressure, light, sound that humans can operate in natively hasn’t stopped us from dangling into volcanoes, visiting oceanic abysses, listening to the crackle of radiation from distant galaxies, see in the dark with special goggles, command the fates of animals that would otherwise quickly dispatch of a tool-less human, we even routinely get our children to tinker with hazardous chemicals as part of their education.
Who needs big sharp teeth? We have these super-senses and protections that we can apply at will, without the encumberance of waiting for nature’s slow delicate engineering to select it out for us. As a species our context opportunity band is vast. We even have representatives living off-planet for goodness sake.
It isn’t as easy to insulate our brains from context as we do our bodies though.

“You can’t be a sweet cucumber in a vinegar barrel” – Prof Phil Zimbardo

Activating genius appears to require a narrow band to open within the opportunity spectrum. Intelligence is robust and adaptive to almost any circumstance like a hardy weed, but genius is fragile. Too much money or average and uninteresting problems can leave it dormant – as confused venture capitalists in the dotcom boom or parents of evidently bright but underachieving kids have learned to their frustration. Unless character and tenacity are available to bolster the mind, curiosity and courage are blunted out of social convenience, in grownups as much as in young ones.
As fortunate as it may sound to have a genius around, it’s generally an unwanted intrusion. They require an unusual amount of time and space to devote to seemingly unproductive tinkering, they’re always experimenting, testing their ideas out on the world – most of which will be useless/ugly/odd, the urge to tick the cultural checklist of expected behaviours is often mislaid as they wander into realms the rest of us don’t inhabit yet. And most often they aren’t even recognised – it takes talent to spot ‘em – most people can’t discern genius from weird (don’t believe? check the Joshua Bell/Washington Post experiment at post’s end).
Smart we get, genius eh, it’s generally a little too far away from current measures of celebrity – whether in science or the arts. Until such time we can’t relate to them, their context hasn’t been established in our frame of reference yet.

Being in the right place at the right time looks a lot like luck, and sometimes it is. But there are ways to stack the odds.

RIGHT PLACE:

Genius takes what is available to everyone else in a similar environment, but repurposes common elements to solve a known problem in an elegant and unexpected way. Sometimes it comes from the effort of a single person, but most often it’s a collaborative effort of a cluster of people racing each other to the breakthrough; sometimes one person fits the last piece and snags the accolades. Ask any research scientist.

There’s an awfully good set of reasons for smart people to hang out in the same environment together. Sometimes that’s as big as a city – we’re recognising that some cities crystallize a creative class of pioneers, engineers and the cultural experimenters – sometimes it’s in small gatherings like the Lunar Society or TED. But gather they must. The physical context we find ourselves in shapes us profoundly. Stuff happens in physical proximity that simply misses out in digital contact – which is why online dating is still dominated by local searches with 100km range. Choose your spaces wisely and if you have no choice, gather the finest people and tools to defy stagnant or oppressive contexts with vigour. Genius begets genius as contagiously as evil begets evil.

RIGHT TIME:

Being too far ahead of the recognition – and reward – curve has most often led to the archetype of the starving genius battling their life through, and only generations down the line getting what they were banging on about; consecrating museums, cars and companies to their legacy, buying their creations for millions. Smart and talented is almost invariably better than genius if you care to enjoy success while you are with body. Being ahead of your time sounds like a compliment, but is more often a curse. Short of grand old style patience and fortitude, that may pay off eventually, no other time hackery is surer than education. Educating your audience - through informal/ social learning infused through cultural experiences in particular - can shorten the time between generational changes and hasten the crowd to casting the glad eye your way.

“All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
- Arthur Schopenhauer

You need to to be in the right context to frame your work appropriately, otherwise most people simply won’t see its value. Place, people, price give cues to how we allocate worth. Messed up, but there it is. Let’s not totter into the sticky debate of absolutism and relativism, save to say that humans have a hard time recognising standalone genius.

Maybe this will make you feel better: (long, but worth the time-out; a little context: it’s a Pulitzer Prize winning piece) >> Pearls before Breakfast : wherein one of the world’s finest musicians + multimillion dollar Stradivarius test whether people have an innate sense of appreciating quality. (Video snippet & spoiler below)

Click here to view the embedded video.

It doesn’t just happen at the subtle world of the arts, the same goes for simple stuff like food, we have no reference for beautiful artisanal coffee (wine, chocolate, pizza..) until we’ve had really bad coffee and have something to weigh it against, and even then, if the packaging & price don’t give us the right clues, we may miss it. Ah, being human. The upshot of all of this is that even if you are most exceedingly brilliant person in your field, if you’re out of context you’re most likely to be undervalued and overlooked.

“For humans, everything is relative. There are no absolute measures. Our judgement becomes swamped by local context. We can only tell you how pleasurable or painful an experience is based on our previous experience of what is painful or pleasurable, hot or cold, slow or fast and so on.” – Nick Chater (Professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences UCL)

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Contextual Links:

The International Space Station http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Phil Zimbardo http://www.zimbardo.com/
The Big Bang’s Echo http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4655517
Lunar Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Society_of_Birmingham
Dan Ariely’s Books – must reads if this fascinates you http://danariely.com/the-books/
the Hershey’s Kiss and Pricing Irrationality http://bigthink.com/ideas/15775
Texts without Context writing and the Web (NY Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html
How Supermodels are like Toxic Assets http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/07/how-supermodels-are-like-toxic-assets.html
Pearls before Breakfast http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

“People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live… We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” – Albert Einstein in a letter to his best friend Otto Juliusburger sometime in ’42

 
 
The better part of genius -that doesn’t get subsumed by madness or misanthropy perhaps- is kept alive by the childlike wonder. Wonder from the simple stuff that Uncle Walt drew out in poetry to the ridiculously-cool scientific improbability of human existence. Uncrutched by a blanketing binary religious belief it could do your head in. THAT, if nothing else is what most religion has stripped from us,  the possibility of looking nakedly into the total perspective vortex (thank goodness we had the indisputable genius of Douglas Adams walking with us for a while).. the feeling of entitlement rather than feeling absurdly lucky, is dangerous beyond any cruel weaponry we can fashion.
 
wow, sidetracked. Okay so essentially:
Intelligent fun are us. I’m taking what I do in my secret life (the arcana vitae) and sharing the magic that I’ve seen, woven into everyday urban life and crafting edventures that others might enjoy too. Into social learning experiences, urban games and unusually powerful travel experiences for the slim minority that take delight in learning (even if you’re a grown-up, with the academic papers and debt instruments to show it) rather than just looking cool and together.
 
I’m doing this with a group of brilliant ones like some kind of oldskool Explorer’s Society. Global citizens who are up for adventure beyond cracking the corporate C-suite. We may have mapped the physical but there is still so much yet to be discovered.
Ah, heady delights.
We’d love to do this with you if you too are not entirely convinced that the smug consumers life is the life for you (and you’re not heading out for a monastry anytime soon).

So here I am,¹ still in Johannesburg, Joburg, Jozi, the District 9 city. The African version of LA.
The rough & tough old mining town that I was born in. esCAPEd from. And evidently needed to return to make peace with (like an ex-smoker I bore greater rights to cast scorn on its dirty sexy evils when I’d slipped its golden handcuffs in ’99).
 
Here for the best of reasons – which means I’m not here for the money. And not leaving anytime soon. Which means I better bloody well deal with it.
 
I’m sure you’ve also caught strains of that tatty mantra : it’s not your conditions but your decisions that make for success. Unfortunately the damn thing rings true, and not the kind of thing a “When I ..” wants to hear. (You know those When I’s? those who stubbornly defer giving their best until some favourable condition shimmers in: when I ..get married ..finish school ..lose weight ..write that book ..get a job/liver transplant/goldfish ..er, get out of Joburg).
 
We humans have so many forces that nudge our destiny: biochemistry, genetics, market forces, religion, politics, chemicals in our food, the neighbourhood we live in, our choice of friends. We can’t even trust our rational decisions any longer – beware the descent into paranoia from Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational all ye elegant logicians (or watch this for 17 minutes for a quick scare).
 
It’s easy to be buffeted, eroded and move along en masse with the grand forces of our time and evolution. It takes a ferocious inner force to carve out your own destiny, regardless of circumstance. Hard cities are the best places to track down those who embody that level of defiance and strength.
 
Living in a place with a sophisticated, stable market to support your talent, obviously makes it easier to succeed. Urban social scientists like Richard Florida [Rise of the Creative Class] make sense of why some cities attract a disproportionate share of talent, spawn innovation and wealth with greater ease than most (think Silicon Valley or Singapore).² Being in Jozi just requires digging deeper (as you’d expect of an old gold mining town), but it yields some dazzling human.shaped gems.
 
This is a place where unexpected local brilliance radiates out globally, like YouTube star Khaya Dlanga

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Urban Survival : my 2 rules for enjoying cities that don’t share your ambitions

1. Deal with it. Resistance is futile. Remember the maxim: “bloom where you’re planted” fortune favours the fast adaptors. One of the best things you can do for your career is to learn some improv theatre techniques [think "Whose Line is it Anyway"]. Same goes for moving cities. Rocket scientist of adapting improv in business is Rob Poynton (Everything’s an Offer)³ who preaches almost only one thing: ACCEPT, then make something fresh/ useful/ outrageous from whatever life thrusts your way (sounds easy, but it takes serious theatre-ninja skills).

 

2. Genius begets Genius. There are 2 things I believe about developing genius. The second of which is that genius begets genius. Surrounding ourselves with people who are ferociously brilliant and determined, awakens the brain’s portals to significance, positive competition and heroism, otherwise dormant in less challenging company. HANG OUT WITH PEOPLE DOING INSPIRING THINGS, not just friends by convenience. Find your tribe and then go adventuring. Thankfully we aren’t limited by who’s in our hyperlocal ‘hood any longer. We have the world to search for our kind. Nothing beats realworld though – which is why it’s a no.brainer that the best and the brightest cluster in close vicinity - but resourceful digital nomads can get the best of both worlds. To stave off entropy, your average coffee, dinner, movies with friends doesn’t apply to this tribe. These are the people you want to go on expeditions with, develop a cure for Albanian measles, rack up some patents with, learn new languages together, build a school, discover a new species ..find something in your area of shared passion to defy time and the numbing cycle of work.buy.display.repeat. that our cities can loop us in.

[Wherever you are, be there.]

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* Check if YOUR city on the best-of lists (Joburgers, let me end your suspense. It isn’t. Deal with it.)

Monocle Magazine’s 25 Most Liveable Cities 2009
Business Week’s slideshow on The World’s Best Places to Live (from the Mercer 2009 Global study)

1. 9 months after leaving Cape Town for a 2 week holiday
2. Keep an eye on the Vinny Lingham & Justin Stanford passion project – Silicon Cape – vying to make Cape Town the first African creative attractor city
3. I’ve been lucky enough to get into Rob’s classes – find out where he is in the world and catch one of his sessions if you can

..and I’m going to have to choose who I am to live with now. No matter which of the cities I decide to make home I’ll always be craving the other.
The choice staggeringly hard, because the pace of emerging technology keeps reducing relative distance between humans, no matter where they live on the giant ball.. it’s become easier than ever to live local and work global. Flying back over the Hex Mountains, over the winelands at sunset wobbled my resolve: Jozi may have to be mistress to my two-timing soul.

I live in a city that is like a big natural energy power-station to my soul. This place is spirit-soaringly lovely. Considered one of the world’s most beautiful cities, nestled between the big blue Atlantic Ocean & towering granite mountains, exquisitely clothed in the planet’s most richly diverse floral kingdom. Ringed by rambling vineyards and white sand beaches, could it get more gorgeous? Oh yes.. and the humans emerge in abnormally beautiful varieties here too %-)

Lucky me, I’ve chosen to live in Cape Town, South Africa..at least for now (wild&wandering spirit appeased for a time).

From this southern tip of the African continent a story with an ancient lineage arose. In fact a story written into each cell of every person on this planet. Within the looping strands of our well-travelled DNA the human family has a common thread with a trackback to one tiny tribe of San people that gave rise to us all. No matter how different we may look from the original crew that started out on the modern human journey 60 000years ago :: whether you’re a 6’7 blonde blue eyed Scandinavian, a carrot-curled & freckled Irish lass, a strapping Maori or hardy Inuit chief every one of us came from one little family that survived cataclysm and began the extraordinary adventure that spans every continent.. and it all began here, at the bottom end of Africa. [BTW National Geographic have a fun way to discover where your genes have travelled by joining in the genome project]

This beautiful spot is also a wild and dangerous region, not just because of the Great White sharks that patrol the coast that occasionally mistake surfers for snacks, but most particularly for the violent crime, borne of frustration and disparity, poverty and learned helplessness.

South Africa is a microcosm of the world, balancing tentatively between the potential for outright paradise or abject ruin. All the global challenges that face our time can be found playing out here :perhaps writ small: but clearly within the diversity of cultures, creeds, languages, brutal haunting histories of hate, economic chasms that grow ever wider, environmental fragility, the strain of archaic systems of governace and education not keeping up with the accelerating frontier of innovation ..we get it all.. the world in one country. The best & the worst of it all.

From my current HQ, I can’t help but feel inspired. This isn’t a home to kick-back and be compacent in: there is a lot of family feuding, but also a lot of love that gives us hope to believe beyond the probable & predictable.

Revelling in the overflowing blessing of natural beauty helps me power-up. Giving fuel to my fire: to make a difference, to be an activist, to live gloriously and share the joy.

Where do YOU find your energy?

As we scour the globe for new sources of energy, make sure you know where your power comes from. Are you still getting it from dirty corrosive chemical fuels? Perhaps for you, from hanging out & laughing uproariously with friends; or maybe shaking out numb indifference by going out & making a difference to other people’s lives however small or wacky? Perhaps natural energy throbs its magic into you from a walk on the beach, in the forests, playing with your kiddies?

I heartily recommend finding your effortless source of power, refining the best way to get it – in it’s highest quality form – then, with the rampant enthusiasm of a puppy>> get it as often as you can! .. wherever in the world you happen to find yourself today..