Metapotentialist Theory of Genius

Metapotention theory

2. Metapotentialist theory (from Greek meta – after, through, from Latin potentia – power, possibility) – sees the essence of genius in its aspiration and gift to open new meaningful spaces and expand life horizons, in the ability to build new worlds and wholenesses, to create new semantic dimensions and to open the boundaries of possibilities.
According to this theory, genius appears as the discoverer of new worlds, systems and entities, as a demiurge and creator of realities of a fundamentally new type, as the creator of new world pictures, paradigms and creative methods. He is considered as the founder of fundamentally new disciplines of concepts in science, original trends and styles in art, as the founder of empires, cities, new scientific schools, movements and parties.
Genius as a discoverer breaks into new, previously unexplored spheres, goes beyond the limits of existence, and boldly soars above the familiar and ordinary. He does not just improve the actual reality but creates new worlds, not just effectively solves problems, but seeks and formulates new and deeper ones, not just realizes the existing goals, but sees and defines those that no one has yet guessed.
It is distinguished by the fundamental novelty of its ideas, the revolutionary nature of its discoveries and the historical scale of its accomplishments, which led to upheavals in science and art, the opening of new epochs and systems of vision, to the opening of spaces and horizons.
The creative achievements of the pioneering genius are based on his keen experience of the limitations and incompleteness of the actual and known worlds, and his dizzying realization of the meaningful infinity, abundance and dynamic inexhaustibility of the Universe. At the same time, his existence is filled with the call of mysterious limits and drawn out by the tantalizing lines of new horizons. A genius mentally creates a harmonious whole and then fills it, awakening new properties, hidden potencies and possibilities in it, boldly pushes the limits and gives freedom to his actions, lays the foundation and then builds a building, recognizes a beautiful girl in a block of marble and then cuts off everything superfluous. Genius discoverers, – writes A.V. Shuvalov, – change the boundaries of their psychic reality, and go beyond the existing culture, enriching it, thus expanding the experience of humanity.
Metapotentialist theory states that the essence of genius is not so much in the ultimate full realization of all internal and external possibilities, as in the search and creation of qualitatively new, invisible from the position of the actual actor, possibilities. At the same time, genius possesses the art of “making reality possible”, and its interaction with the world unfolds along the path of increasing degrees of the possible in relation to the existing existence (M. Epstein).
V. Frankl emphasized the limitations of the “potentialist” approach, which assumes the deployment, and actualization of the innate potential of the personality. If the personality makes self-actualization its intention, it loses itself – wrote V. Frankl – “it is not about the realization of any possibilities, but, on the contrary, in the realization of necessity – the only thing that is needed at the moment.
The point is to strive every time not to the possible, but to the necessary. True existence is possible only in the process of overcoming oneself, in entering the world of essentially greater and richer human existence.
At the same time, A.N. Leontiev noted the evolution of the “potentialist” paradigm of humanistic psychology, based on the actualization of innate potential, towards the existential theory, which considers the very existence of a person as a “transcendental possibility” (N. Abbagnano) and the project of one’s own possibilities (M. Heidegger, J.P. Sartre).
Thus, A. Maslow in his recent works as a central feature of a self-actualizing personality put forward the concept of the mission of a person, dedication to some significant and worthwhile cause to which a person feels a calling. There may be other paths in other cultures, but in Western culture, this is the only path. “All the happy people I have known have been people who worked well at something they felt was important.”
Н. Abbagnano, following M. Heidegger, considered a possibility as the most important existential of being.
At the same time, he believed that possibilities themselves are unequal, and the true one is the one that is constantly consolidated in its being, i.e. the possibility of possibility itself or “transcendental possibility”. Possibility is always openness to the future; it does not appear as a potentiality that must inevitably be realized but as a method of search.
The fundamental difference between “potentialist” and “metapotentialist” theories of genius lies in the position, in the location of the centre of vision and understanding, which can be located both in the sphere of actuality, problematic and deficit, and in the space of successful results, ideal possibilities and abundance.
Experiencing the irresistible desire and thirst for acquiring new opportunities geniuses pioneers, discoverers, ancestors, founders and founders realize their desires and internal imperatives in several ways:
1. He seeks out and discovers new lands, continents, and transcendent spaces of qualitatively new possibilities.
2. Creates new holistic systems, models, concepts and spheres of reality, independent worlds, self-sufficient, organic structures capable of self-building, self-development and the generation of new possibilities.
3. Creates virtual, games, fictional realities, new possible worlds and scoops out, freely using their fundamentally new, unexpected and self-discovering possibilities.
4. Potentiates, “possibilisates” actual worlds and real objects, discovers, opens their infinite, hidden possibilities, and endows them with new potencies by changing the positions of perception and creative, playful manipulation of their qualities and forms.
At the same time, he is not only capable of seeing the actual in a new light but also of distinguishing and intuitively grasping something profound and fundamentally new.

1. Geniuses – pioneers and discoverers

From geniuses discoverers of new lands and continents to brave explorers who expanded the boundaries of the universe include:
Leif Ericson, the Norwegian navigator and ruler, who was the first European, about 1000 years, visited North America, Marco Polo – Venetian traveller, the first European to explore in 1271-1295 years of Inner Asia, Christopher Columbus, who discovered America (New World) in 1492, Vasco da Gama – Portuguese explorer, the first European to make a sea voyage to Asia in 1497-1499, Amerigo Vespucci – Italian, after whom America was named (the name was suggested in 1507 in a book describing his travels and mentioned on a general geographical map in 1520. ), Fernand Magellan, who made the first known circumnavigation of the globe (1520-1522), James Cook, who led three circumnavigation expeditions to explore the world’s oceans in 1768 -1779.

In this case, the inner source of the movement of genius discoverers to new lands, as it is well seen in the example of Columbus, was rather not the instinct of freedom or the desire to overcome borders, but, to a greater extent, the search for new opportunities and often, quite real material wealth and resources.

2. Originators of independent spheres of culture

Originators of independent spheres of culture, fundamentally new scientific disciplines, directions and styles in art, and founders of religions, concepts and institutions.
Genius ancestors include those great personalities who initiated the development of new content spaces, the most important spheres of culture, who served as founders of world and national literatures, musical and pictorial schools and trends.

2.1. Demiurge and Cultural Heroes.

The term ancestor has more fundamental semantic connotations and correlates with demiurges (from Greek demioyrgos – artisan, master, creator), mythological cultural heroes and common ancestors.
E.M. Miletinsky, based to a greater extent on the philosophy of the Neoplatonists and Gnostics, believed that demiurges appear in the images of gods-creators, creating the world in two ways: by manufacturing – like the Egyptian god Khnum, who created the world and people on the potter’s wheel and by means of ideal magical transformations – like the Egyptian Ptah, creating the world “with tongue and heart” or by verbal naming.
The demiurge, E.M. Miletinsky believes, makes objects that did not exist before, and in this sense he is comparable to the cultural hero, who acts, as a rule, as an assistant to the supreme deity, discovering and extracting what already exists but is removed and hidden. A cultural hero is a mythical or real character endowed with magical powers, a great creator and explorer, acting on the initiative of higher powers. Cultural heroes are brave, courageous and inventive, possessing supernatural creative power, but at the same time, they are not sacralized and live in real worlds and epochs. Their mission is to invent, create and obtain for people such cultural goods as fire, tools, language and writing, as well as to form social organizations and teach people crafts and arts. Cultural heroes also include outstanding historical figures whose lives and works have become legendary, mythologized and turned into a cult. Such geniuses include Moses, Thales, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Pythagoras, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Napoleon, Kant, Nehru, Mother Teresa, Greta Garbo, and Elvis Prestley.
A cultural hero can also play the role of an ancestor who gives birth to a family. So in Iranian mythology, Gayomart is considered the ancestor of mankind, and in the myths of the ancient Greeks – Deucalion, the son of Prometheus the ancestor of all people, and Bel (Belus) – the ancestor of heroes. At the same time, real cultural heroes are called ancestors and “fathers” of open, invented and created by them fundamentally new systems, concepts and trends. Thus Aeschylus is considered the father of tragedy, Aristophanes – of comedy, Aristotle – the father of logic, Hippocrates – the father of medicine, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton are called the founding fathers of the United States, Max Planck and Niels Bohr are called the fathers of quantum mechanics, and Tim Berners-Lee, Paul Beran and Vint Cerf – the fathers of the Internet.

2.2. Founders of national literatures

Separately it is possible to distinguish a bright pleiad of genius ancestors and creators who served as founders of national literatures.
Thus Homer was the founder of Greek and all European literature, Dante – new Italian, Rabelais – French, J. Chaucer and Shakespeare – English, Joost van den Fondel – Dutch, Washington Irving – North American, Mihai Eminescu – Romanian, Metropolitan Varlaam – Moldavian, Sándor Petőfi and Kalman Miksat – Hungarian, Sholom Aleichem – Jewish in Yiddish.
Gotthold Lessing is considered the founder of German classical literature, Johann Goethe is the founder of German New Age literature, and Ignaz Franz Castelli is one of the founders of Austrian German literature. At the origin of Spanish poetry stood Gonzalvo de Berceo, the founder of Spanish prose is considered to be the King of Castile Leon Alfonso X the Wise, and the founder of classical literature M. Cervantes.
The founders of Swedish literature are Olof Dahlin, Esys Tegner and Johan Aagust Strindberg, of Danish literature Kristjeran Pedersen, Anders Christensen Arrebo and Ludvig Holberg, who is also considered one of the founders of Norwegian literature.
Among the founders of national literatures who first translated the Bible into their native language were Mikael Agricola, the founder of Finnish literature, Kristjern Pedersen, the founder of the Danish literary language, Martynas Mažvydas, one of the founders of the Lithuanian language, and Nikolaus Ramm, the founder of Latvian literature. At the same time, Alexis Kivi is considered the founder of Finnish realistic literature, and Friidrich Reingold Kreutzwald is the founder of Estonian literature.
The ancestors of Russian literature were Alexander Pushkin, of Ukrainian literature Ivan Kotlyarevsky and Taras Shevchenko, of Polish literature Adam Mickiewicz, of Serbian literature St. Sava, of Bulgarian literature Petko Rachev Slaveikov, and of Czech literature František Ladislav Celakovsky and J. Kolar.
The ancestors of Arabic literature were Bashshar ibn Burd and Abdal-lah ibn al-Mukaffa, Persian-Tajik- – Rudaki, Uzbek – Alisher Navoi, Turkish – Ibrahim Shinasi, Namyk Kemal, Kazakh – Abay Kunanbaev, Azerbaijan – Hasanogli Izzeddin, Georgian – Shota Rustaveli. Mesrop Mashtots was the creator of the Armenian alphabet, and Abovyan Khachatur was the founder of the new Armenian literature.
The ancestors of Indian literature are poetess Andal and poet Manikkavasahar, who wrote in Tamil, Chand Bardai, who wrote in the ancient language of Dingale, Vidyapati (Biddepoti), who wrote in Maithili and Sanskrit, Kabir and Keshavdas, who wrote in Hindi, Surdas, who wrote in Braja (a dialect of Western Hindi), the poetess Mira Bai, who wrote in Braja, Rajasthani and Gujarati, Senapati Fakirmohan, considered the founder of Oriya literature, and Bhanubhakta Acharya, who wrote in Nepali.
The Chinese monk I-shan Yi-nin is considered the founder of Japanese literature, while Saikaku, Ki-no Tsurayuki and Tsubouchi Shoyo are considered the founders of classical literature, and Natsume Soseki and Akutagawa are considered the founders of modern Japanese literature. Lu Xin is the founder of modern Chinese literature, and Marco Cartodicromo is the founder of modern Indonesian literature.

2.3. Literary Trends

In addition, it is possible to distinguish a number of geniuses who served as founders of certain literary trends and genres, among them – the brothers J. and E. Goncourt – the founders of psychological Impressionism, Marcel Proust – one of the founders of European literary modernism, Franz Kafka – the founder of the literature of the absurd, Edgar Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle – the founders of the modern detective, and Jules Verne and Herbert George Wells – the genre of science fiction.

2.4. Directions in painting

Among the artists, we can distinguish Giotto, who revolutionized the third dimension in painting, Peter Powell Rubens, the founder of the Flemish school of Baroque painting, Georges Pierre Seurat, the founder of Neo-Impressionism, Edvard Munch, the founder of German Expressionism,  V.V. Kandinsky was one of the founders of abstract art.

2.5. Founders in music

In music, we can distinguish L. Beethoven – the founder of the new symphonic genre and heroic style of performance, J. Haydn – the founder of the Viennese classical symphony and string quartet, Glinka – the founder of Russian classical music, K. Debussy – the founder of impressionism in music and Sam Cooke – the founder of soul music.

2.6. Founders in Philosophy and Science

Thales is considered to be the founder of ancient, and therefore of all Western philosophy and science, Heraclitus is the founder of dialectics, Laozi is the founder of Taoism, and Ammonius is the founder of Neoplatonism, F. Bacon is the founder of empiricism and Descartes of rationalism, I. Kant as the founder of German classical philosophy, Gottlieb Baumgarten as the founder of aesthetics, and S. Kierkegaard as the founder of existentialism.
In the field of science, Hippocrates is considered the founder of the art of medicine, G. Mendel of genetics, Wilhelm Humboldt of modern linguistics, A. Comte of positivism and sociology. Ph. Pinel – scientific psychiatry, S. Freud – psychoanalysis, K.E. Tsiolkovsky – modern cosmonautics, Max Planck – quantum theory, and Hermann Haken – synergetics.
The brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière pioneered cinema, V.K. Zworykin pioneered television, and Tim Berners-Lee, Paul Baren, Vint Cerf and Robert Kann pioneered the Internet.

2.7. Social life

In the socio-political sphere, it is possible to note Alexander the Great – the creator of the world’s greatest empire, Emperor Jimmu – the legendary founder and first emperor of Japan, Anthony Pechersky – the founder of Russian monasticism and the founder of the Kievo-Pechersk Lavra, Christian Rosenkreutz – the founder of the Order of Rosenkreutzers, Luther – the founder of the Reformation in Germany, Gandhi – the spiritual founder of independent India. Sun Yat-sen the founder of the party Gomindan, Constantine – the founder of Constantinople, Peter I – Petersburg and P. A. Dementiev, the founder of the city of St. Petersberg in the state of Florida USA.
It should be noted that according to the metapotentialist theory, genius rejects old paradigms, theories and trends in an extremely positive, affirmative way, not by negation, but by creating and affirming new ones. It does not revolutionize culture because of its rebellious temperament, but because it is sensitive to the invisible but powerful influences of new possibilities.

3. Computer geniuses 

They are creators of the virtual worlds of the Internet, global search engines, social networks and Internet projects.
The birth of the Internet was an epochal event in the cultural, creative and even cosmic evolution of mankind. The creation of a self-sufficient, ontologically independent virtual space led to the unfolding of a new, additional dimension of the Universe, to the spontaneous, explosive generation of new, unexpected possibilities by each point of the virtual space.
The artificially created new, alternative reality, simultaneously embodying conventionality and truthfulness, also possesses resourcefulness and efficacy, the ability to influence, to cause real feelings, experiences and actions.
Among the computer geniuses, the creators of the Internet, who managed to find a technical embodiment of the great humanitarian ideas – the ideal society and hypertext, stand out: Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Caillot, who invented the technology of the World Wide Web; Paul Baran, who developed the mechanism for transferring information from computer to computer, as well as the ARPANET network; Vint Cerf and Robert Kann, developers of the TCP/IP protocol, which is the basis for the exchange of information between computers, Cohen Bram, who created the BitTirrent file transfer protocol; Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, creators of the personal computer; Bill Gates and Paul Allen, co-founders of Microsoft and creators of software for personal computers.
A huge contribution to the development of the Internet was made by the creators of search engines: Matthew Graham, who in 1993 developed the first search engine “Wandex” and the first robot that indexed the pages of the Internet, Jerry Yang and David Philo, who in 1995 created the search engine Yahoo, D.V. Kratkov, who created in 1996 the first search engine “Wandex” and the first robot that indexed the pages of the Internet. Kratkov, who in 1996 created the first Russian-language search engine “Rambler”, A.Y. Volozh, I.V. Segalovich, who in 1997 founded the search engine “Yandex”, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who in 1998 created the company Google, Robin Li, who in 2000 founded the Chinese company and search engine Baidu.
The most famous creator of social networks, virtual spaces in the Internet universe, and some independent worlds that have their own structure, laws and rules, are: Rand Conrad – creator of the first social network Classmates. com (1995), Brad Fitzpatrick created LiveJournal (1999), Jonathan Abrams and Peter Chin founded Friendster (2002), Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolf, Josh Berman, Tom Anderson launched MySpace (2003), Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook (2004), Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams founded Twitter (2006), A.M. Popkov, the author of the first Russian social network “Odnoklassniki” (2006).
Among the creators of the most popular and most visited sites are: Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon.com (1994), Pierre Omidyar, the founder of the world’s largest Internet auction eBay (1995), Jimi Wales, the creator of Wikipedia (2001), Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Fries, the creators of Skype (2003), Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Javed Karim, who founded the video portal YouTube (2005).

4. Geniuses – reality constructors

Geniuses – reality constructors, fantasists, experimenters, “bead players”, modernists, alchemists, wizards and magicians freely use fiction, imaginative power and virtual constructions to approach a living and authentic “reality of realities”. The construction of multiple possible worlds allows us to overcome the boundaries of the impossible and freely exhaust the possibilities of new meaningful spaces and reservoirs of new potencies.
The creative and potentiating activity of “genius-wizards” is realized in the following ways:
– Creating virtual worlds and spaces and utilizing their new possibilities.
– Potentization, endowing existing worlds with new possibilities.

4.1. Creation of Virtual Worlds

One of the most important characteristics of genius is the ability to create and build virtual worlds, and to construct new wholes from active voids. He is distinguished by the desire and ability to multiply the worlds of the Universe and freely use their new, unexpectedly powerful resources.
The creation of possible worlds in art by a genius is based on the so-called “secondary conventionality”, which, in contrast to the “primary conventionality” characterizing the figurative nature of art in general, consists in the deliberate deviation from plausibility, in the distortion of visible reality and the conscious application of the techniques of fantasy and fiction.
These methodological attitudes and artistic principles are manifested in such literary genres as the magic fairy tale in the Romantics and Symbolists, in some directions of literary modernism, as well as in mythological novels (O. Wilde, M. Maeterlinck) and in philosophical prose and parables (F. Kafka, T. Mann, H. Hesse). “In the poetry of N. Gumilev,” wrote T. Skryabina, “acmeism is realized in the craving for the discovery of new worlds, exotic images and plots. The way of the poet in Gumilev’s lyrics is the way of the warrior, the conquistador, the discoverer”.
At the same time, travels in the poet’s poems carried impressions of his concrete expeditions to the unknown, but quite real lands of the African continent and, at the same time, resonated with symbolic wanderings in “other worlds”. The mental construction of possible worlds is especially vivid in the works of representatives of magical realism, who consciously include magical elements in the realistic picture of the world.
Among them, such outstanding creators as Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Bulgakov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Castaneda, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortasar, and Milorad Pavich stand out.
Conscious and skilful construction of possible worlds, helping to highlight new opportunities in the actual reality, characterizes such representatives of socio-philosophical and science fiction, such as K. Capek, A. Tolstoy, J. Verne, G. Wales, A. Asimov, A. Clark, K. Saimak, R. Bradbury, K. Bulychev.
Constructive potencies of creative consciousness are also manifested in the genre of fantasy, in which the boundlessness of the authors’ imagination is organized and justified by the use of mythological and fairy-tale motifs and archetypal plots. In this case, fictional worlds are created with their supernatural inhabitants, life norms and rules, with their own system of laws that operate with the inevitability of the laws of nature, which distinguishes this genre from the magic fairy tale. The most prominent representatives of the fantasy genre are R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and R. Zelazny.
The metapotentialist theory of genius states that genius is distinguished by an extremely developed ability to mental construction and inner vision, to discern tempting, possibilities, unexplored but useful phenomena, entities and forces, as well as a well-developed imagination and the gift of potentiation – the ability to fill the world and objects with infinitely new possibilities.
In this case, the independent goal of the creator is to live, experience and use not only new possibilities of the real world but also all possible, including fictional worlds created by them.
Genius acts as a demiurge of new inner worlds, a discoverer of new psychic realities, as a creator and multiplier of new inner possibilities.
A genius is capable of creating new multidimensional inner worlds and projecting them into the space of his activity and thus creating new universes and epochs in the sphere of his creativity. Geniuses create and live in their own worlds – the world of music, the world of mathematics or the world of the Internet. Thus, A. Astvatsaturov, analyzing the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, wrote that the world became for him a musical universe, in the centre of which was a man. At the same time, Mozart created his own special inner world and “created, saw the world and built his relationships from the centre of his musical world”.
A genius sees the world as an infinite potency and inexhaustible resource, he realizes with dizzying clarity that he has the entire Universe at his disposal, and he becomes ready to use everything available, possible and accidental, as well as to independently generate new opportunities. When the resources and possibilities of the basic phenomenal worlds are exhausted, the genius boldly creates new possible worlds and freely utilizes their new, reality-acquiring reserves, possibilities, and powers.
It creates new ontologies, new spaces of abundance, a new reality built of possibilities, active voids and pure energy-saturated places. Geniuses create a virtual perpetual motion machine, which is a set of virtual worlds oversaturated with “free” energy, information and power. In virtual worlds the laws of everyday life are violated, the laws of nature cease to operate, and new higher laws come into force, making miracles and fairy-tale realizations of desires possible.

4.2. Potentization of reality

Geniuses possess such an important quality as the ability to “potentize”, to awaken new properties, qualities, potencies and possibilities in worlds and objects. Their activity is directed not only to the construction of possible worlds but also to the creation of new possibilities in already existing phenomenal worlds, to the construction of an independent world of the Possible.
M. Epstein and G. Tulchinsky defined potentiation as a search for hidden possibilities and potentialities, as “ovozmozhnizhenie” of the world and potentialization of reality. M. Epstein asserted the importance not of possible worlds, but of possible worlds, of the constructive possible that is compatible with our world and gradually transforms and potentiates it.
“Genius personalities,” the author wrote, “such as Mozart, Goethe, Pushkin, Lermontov, Nietzsche…, are attractive and mysterious because they have realized themselves, but not completely; with each realization, an excess of some new possibilities that remained beyond the edge of life and history opened up and grew in them.
In the framework of the metapotentialist theory of genius, the most important qualities of genius are curiosity, thirst for novelty, desire for play, almost childlike curiosity and ability to surprise. A. Einstein claimed that having reached the desired, he never stopped and continued to search for new and deeper problems. Geniuses, the semantic and determining centre of whose inner world is a possibility, usually ask themselves the sacramental question “What if?”, trust their own intuition and start creating new theories, concepts and paradigms.
Their capacity for inner vision lies in the discovery, construction and enrichment of inner worlds, in travelling through “exotic inner spaces” and continents of meaning.
At the same time, genius is distinguished by the ability to mysterize reality, manifested in the desire for the unknown, mysterious, intriguing and miraculous, in seeing and endowing objects with the features of mystery, inscrutability, hiddenness, depth and inexhaustibility. Mystery is the most important property of reality, it is manifested in such characteristics of the world as inexhaustibility, integrity and productive tension. Mystery in its depth and scope is commensurate with the concept of genius. Mystery, in itself, has an extraordinary power of attraction; at the same time, its possession and its rigorous preservation generate exceptional fortitude.