the genius curve

Forget the bell curve and refer instead to the genius curve.

In a nutshell the genius curve predicts that in any sample...whatever its size...99% will be shit and 1% will be...pure genius ie. oustanding. Anyone who has judged an essay, poem or book competition will know this to be true. It's really easy to judge as within seconds you get the sinking or rising feeling. Sinking- 99% of the time, nervously rising 1% when you realise THIS IS THE WINNER- SIMPLE.

Bell curve thinking has infected every area and encourages us to use 'the law of averages' in our favour. It encourages poor sap authors to endlessly self-promote on facebook and their blogs and of course they get...nowhere. The average dude who says to himself- 'it's one in a million'- has a better grasp of the maths than the bell curve bell end...

But flip it around and ask- what's going on? A friend who attended the presigious Rhode Island school of art and design told me that all the best work was done in the first month. By the end of year one it was fairly dire and by the end of year three it was crap...why? Because everyone copied each other and tried to 'fit in' and all their work resembled each other's. The element of DIFFERENCE had been eliminated.

And it is difference that counts. Difference doesn't just get noticed it has a functionality beyond that. Difference indicates a potential new survival plan (stripping it very rapidly down to basics here). In any Milgram experiment situation the presence of an EQUAL status person who said the opposite of the evil task setter FREED people to act on their own conscience. Difference is the grit of human progress, the moment we all start acting in the same way is the moment of greatest vulnerability. So even if you produce a brilliant but derivitive art work it will be disdained for something rough...and different - just look at the bad drawings Jackson Pollock did before he embraced difference. But that sort of modern art is SHIT I hear you expostulate (well a few of you anyway) and part of me agrees. But as we all know the ability to hold contradictory opinions is a sign of true - call it quantum- intelligence...QIQ- what is your QIQ?

Back to the difference thing. It is not that difference per se is better than a sound copy of what works. It is just that the modern world is a difference engine (sorry, had to say that) which is geared up to spot difference rather than quality. The ability to spot quality is connoisseurship- but we have moved from that kind of culture ever since the first world war (for all sorts of complex cultural reasons the main being the connosiseurs signed off on Trench warfare, A Bombs and Death Camps). So in a difference culture be...different.

The bell curve makes the fatal assumption about society that in a uniform society difference will be evenly distributed. NO! In a uniform society difference is RARE. So you can see I'm tying two ends up here- we still live in a uniform society (by definition almost) but one without quality awareness- the pursuit of quality will get you nowhere without an element of difference squirted into the mix.

When you know that, you can begin to beat the odds. You'll be on the genius curve.