I became aware of this book when I was reading a list of Bill Walton’s favorite books after his passing, this title popped off the page. I have been reading and learning about genius and its place in our culture recently and this title had a unique spin on the idea of genius, and what idea means in human consciousness. The idea that a place, at a given time, can play a role in creating a hothouse for original thinkers that nurtures an environment that is conducive to growing creativity seemed intriguing to me.
I had previously read and enjoyed Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking
Tools of the World's Most Creative People by Robert S.
Root-Bernstein (Author), and Michele M. Root-Bernstein. https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2022/01/book-review-sparks-of-genius-by-robert.html
Which delved into the kind thinking tools that are employed by creative people as
well as the changes in perspective these people employ to open their
imagination. I used that reading experience as preparation in anticipation of this
reading experience. The central topics are different for the two books, as this
book is focused on the seven cities/locations had experienced a golden age of
creativity and innovative thinking, writ large as the author had
identified: Athens, Hangzhou, Florence, Edinburgh, Calcutta, Vienna, and
Silicon Valley. Vienna had two chapters devoted to it as the golden ages
happened at different times and the Viennese golden ages were focused on
different areas of genius. The order of the cities roughly follows chronological
order.
The author travelled to these cities, stayed there for an
extended period of time, met and interviewed people in those cities who are knowledgeable
about the histories of the cities as well as the people who created those
golden ages. Since the author is a travel writer, his descriptions of the visits
to these cities play a key role in his narrative and are a major source of reading
enjoyment. His sense of how to document history as well as his ability to spin
a yarn all contributed to a most entertaining narrative.
The most important part of the very enjoyable narrative is
the author’s ability to stay with the main theme of his mission, which is to
find out what qualities each of these cities had that made their golden age
possible, the salient reasons why it happened to these cities and not others. A
particularly helpful technique that the author uses is to continuously reiterates
salient points that he made in the previous chapter, this helps bind the new
narrative with the older narrative. It reminds the readers of what they had
read previously, it helps the reader synthesize
the contexts of the idea with each new city, to integrate the ideas in their
thoughts, and to help the reader compare and contrast the different
manifestations of those ideas while never losing the different flavors of the concept which are solely attributable
to a specific city.
A case in point is his focus on the social aspects of each
city and how the social life feeds the creative spirit of the city. Places like:
the Agora of Athens, the Hangzhou West Lake, the piazzas of Florence, the clubs
of Edinburgh, the addas of Calcutta, the Café’s of Vienna, and so on.
The places where people can meet, converse, and argue freely; be seriously
challenged in a public setting to properly test their ideas; have an honest
exchange of ideas without residual ill will, all under an umbrella of civility.
The unique feature present in all the cities is that the group interaction
never devolves into groupthink, which is what usually happens in modern day brainstorming
sessions. There are many ground rules which make these social group interaction
successful, the main difference is that the conversation is not sharply focused
on specific subjects and that the purpose of the social interaction is quite
dispersed and amorphous, which allows for the participants range broadly or
deeply, as they please; whereas the modern day brainstorming sessions
are set up for being useless because they are usually convened by people with
an agenda to keep the subject narrow and focused. The social interactions
described by the author are rarely convened by authorities or people with
specific agenda, it is a free flowing free for all about everything and nothing
at the same time.
This is just one example of the author’s writing expertise
that draws the reader in, as he clearly integrates the common factors from all
the cities to give us broad yet well-thought-out conclusions. It was all I
could do to keep track of the salient points because there are so many of them.
His various impressions about these cities reinforced the broad general observations
that he made about the salient elements that caused the creative tensions that
brought out the possibilities for each city to have a golden age of creativity.
It was obvious very early on in my reading that if these
salient factors that are existent in these cities were implemented artificially
in a generic city, golden ages of creativity wouldn’t necessarily blossom in those
cities; correlation does not equal causation. I recognize that these factors the author
identified are the serendipitous results of the meeting of minds, those
factors, and quite a bit of luck. However, it is always interesting to find out
about the intangible factors that serve to incubate a vast amount of intellectual
thought from seemingly disparate groups of people who are brought together by circumstance
to a geographic location.
I so enjoyed Eric Weiner’s ability to aggregate ideas, his
way with words, and his ability to communicate the key lessons from the history
that he is writing about that I had purchased a few of his other books to add
to my already teetering TBR pile.
