
How do we measure intellect? How do we cultivate it? How much should our nation have?

This article is a response to this Twitter thread, which shares a paper called The Problem of Excess Genius:

[https://x.com/visakanv/status/1361219094268186624?s=20](https://x.com/visakanv/status/1361219094268186624?s=20)

The purpose of the thread and the paper is to explore why some societies are more "productive" than others - quotes mine. Specifically, they focus on intellectual and cultural production.

It is a question-raising set of ideas - questions that, I think, are bigger than even the paper or thread imply.

How does David Banks' paper relate to America's position in the world? Why are some places more "productive" than the rest? Can a civilization choose to be so?

When was Athens the greatest? When was England the greatest?

When was Rome the greatest?

"Productive" is in quotes because, although neither Visakan or Banks mention it, they conflate "productivity" with Intellectual and Cultural production. I disagree. The greatest productivity is the production of Life.

Many other Utopians (such as[@harari_yuval](https://x.com/@harari_yuval)) also believe greatness is found in intellect and culture above all. Perhaps they are half-right - the greatest societies do often seem to reach great intellectual and cultural production. But I believe these periods do not constitute the greatest production of these societies - in fact, they are dangerous moments in the history of the society, where comfort and the brain are being idolized in the face of the hard realities of the world.

Banks himself acknowledges that these "flourishing" societies always seem to get conquered - from within or without - right after the "flourishing" happens. This conquering, and the tyranny that may follow, is a natural reaction to the society becoming dangerously lost in its own imagination.

As [@costin_eats](https://x.com/@costin_eats) says in his book - "an era that gives birth to philosophy is necessarily one where danger of tyranny is ever-present." In other words, societies can easily become imbalanced towards intellectual and cultural production, and these often become temptation to stray dangerously far from Life.

Overall, Banks is correct that excess genius is a problem to be solved: but not so that we can have more of it. Excess genius *is* a problem: a situation where the organism of society would rather idle inside its head rather than continue to physically grow. This idle time often leads to disaster. It is true that ideas are very valuable, but it is possible to generate so many that they cannot all be implemented. In a society like this, similar to the way of the current West, the bottleneck is not the lack of ideas but the weakness of the physical organism. 

As Durant says of Rome: "there were never so many writers as when the Republic fell".




What Makes a Civilization? What makes it Productive?

These are Will Durant's 4 parts of Civilization, which he lists in the opening chapters of The Story of Civilization, ([https://www.will-durant.com/civilization.htm](https://www.will-durant.com/civilization.htm)) -

1. Economic Provision,

2. Political Organization,

3. Moral Traditions,

4. and the Pursuit of Knowledge and the Arts

In other words:

1. Solving nature problems,

2. Solving people problems,

3. Accumulation of wisdom from the first two,

4. Accumulation of all other information

Economic production is listed first because prosperity is the foundation of civilization. Civilization was invented by farming - not law, politics, righteous decisions, or extraneous intellect and culture.

We must solve nature's problems for any hope of civilization. We must have great farming and industry, for these satisfy our most basic needs. Even in war, as Sun Tzu knows, the most difficult part is the supply chain. Only when basic needs are satisfied can we expand the other areas of civilization.

Of course, this begs the question - isn't it ideas which spawned farming? Isn't it intellectual production which gives us technology to work the land? And yes, it is true.

Indeed, the interesting thing to note is that farming must have come from ideas. But it didn't stay an idea. And to understand this is to understand everything else.

Indeed, farming ended up being enabled by all of the other three elements. It took research, after all, to discover it. It took property law to sustain it. And, it took a certain kind of animal to discover it.

It seems clear, then, that humans owe most a great deal of our prosperity to our brains, and the invention of certain important ideas. The brain is the crown jewel of humanity, and technology very core to human prosperity.

But notice how - if intellectual or cultural discoveries are important enough - they are transmuted into other categories. The idea of farming is considered economic provision. Hammurabi's laws, the first of their kind, are considered politics. Jesus' ideas, which relate to all Life, are considered morality.

These ideas all started as just ideas - in other words, they began their life as a part of the "intellectual and cultural" part of civilization. But they didn't remain there. We call farming an economic or productive institution because it has transcended into economic importance. In other words, farming is an idea (and a ton of work) that has figured out how to reach our needs.

So, in the course of civilization, certain special ideas tell us how to fill our needs, how to manage our communities, or who we should be. Then, we often must do a huge amount of work to maintain these ideas or put them into action. But, if an idea does not do one of these three other things? Then, it stays in the fourth category - the category of intellectual and cultural production. And there are a lot of these ideas.

Therefore, when we laud a culture for intellectual and cultural production, we are actually lauding its excess. We are lauding it for generating an abundance of ideas which were not important enough to become one of the other three categories.

In fact, the modern West is in quite a dangerous moment - it is in a moment where many follow ideas for the sake of ideas, and the brain for the sake of the brain. It is a culture which believes, foolishly, that intellectual and cultural production will eat the other three categories - if only we can put enough capital into it. The most dangerous strains of this new religion are Utopian in nature, even going so far as to believe that if humans can focus only on ideas, then all other problems will be solved. Through the brain, everything will be provided.

As Banks, the author of the paper himself, acknowledges - these societies which experience "flourishing" mysteriously seem to be conquered moments later! Perhaps, then, when the mind becomes an idol, the body becomes weak. Non-substantive ideas are promoted, and many people become intellectuals who are not supposed to be. Perhaps the idolization of the Brain comes at the cost of Life.

In retrospect, I'm sure many of these "flourishing" nations would agree.

Socratic Athens, Augustinian Rome, and Shakespearean England

Therefore, let us consider some of the nations that Banks and Visakan point out - let us look at Socratic Athens, Virgil's Rome, and Shakespearean England. These are all intellectual and artistic "flourishing points" of their civilizations.

~ Athens

In 490, the Greeks won the battle of Marathon, a great Greek victory over the Persians. After the Persians were decisively defeated in the decade following, Greece (and particularly Athens) had a very strong position.

This gave Athens a "golden age" of unchecked prosperity. During this time, Athens became much more intellectual. A very disproportionate amount of Athenian intellects were born during the time after the war, including Herodotus, Hippocrates, and Socrates. Athens became much more powerful, and began to become increasingly influential in surrounding geographical areas. They began to build an empire.

Sparta, however, was also powerful - and was the foil to Athens' intellect. Where Athens loved intellect & culture, Sparta was loved physical domination. Sparta was a eugenic and violent culture, focused on producing the biologically superior warrior. Sparta watched Athens grow, and eventually struck. They went to war. Sparta won.

After Sparta won, they instituted the Thirty Tyrants to rule Athens - led by a select five. One of these five was a man named Critias. Critias, coincidentally, was taught by Socrates. Critias was extremely violent; possibly shedding more Athenian blood than the Spartans did in the war. He destroyed parts of the city and was so aggressive in his desire to eradicate the biologically "lesser" Athenians that he faced resistance even from the other tyrants.

Alexander was educated by Aristotle - and Critias was educated by Socrates. Totalitarian rule can be directly linked to the "cultural flourishing" of Greek philosophy.

Indeed, this was a stated reason for executing Socrates in 399 B.C. - Tyranny.

"The trial of Socrates has always seemed mysterious ... the charges sound vague and unreal ... because behind the stated charges was Socrates's real crime: preaching a philosophy that produced Alcibiades and Critias ... but of course he couldn't be prosecuted for that under the amnesty [which had been declared after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants] ... so his accusers made it "not believing the Gods of the city, introducing new gods, and corrupting the youth"." (

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates)

)

~ Rome

Rome - Rome won the Punic Wars against Carthage and became dominant. Their cultural and intellectual production began to go up - but their morality and toughness went down.

In 157 B.C., a man named Marius was born. In 146 B.C., Rome won the Third Punic war, defeating Carthage for good and becoming the dominant power in the Mediterranean. In 138 B.C., a man named Sulla was born.

After Rome won, it conquered several surrounding areas and began to produce some of its first memorable cultural and intellectual figures, such as Cato the Elder. However, divisions which had been growing in Rome between the aristocratic old families and the regular people started coming to a head.

Rome had been creating an unsustainable class system for many years. The richest of the society, bolstered by the wars, began using slave labor instead of citizen labor for all their endeavors. They also bought up vast swathes of Roman land, making it very difficult for the poor and middle classes to own property.

Thus, the poor and middle classes moved to the cities, and demanded retribution for their mistreatment. They supported increasingly populist and radical leaders, like the Gracchi and, eventually, Marius.

Only 50 years later, in 88 B.C., Marius and Sulla - the representatives of the peasants and the aristocracy - went to war. This began the first Roman Civil war. Sulla won, and became dictator. Then, he murdered thousands of Roman citizens. Then, he tried to restore the integrity of the Republic by reforming the laws.

After Sulla died, the Republic got peace for a time. It continued to defeat its remaining enemies - often Germanic tribes - until divisions in the society again created a civil war. Julius Caesar won, became dictator, and then was killed. Then, another civil war - and, finally, in 27 B.C., Rome got a conservative king named Augustus.

Augustus tried everything he could to bring Rome back to its previous morality - he changed marriage laws, childbirth laws, abortion laws - but none worked. Rome never reclaimed its former culture, and never reached the same heights as the Republic after the Punic Wars. Augustus died in 14 A.D.

In Rome, as noted by Durant, there were "never so many writers" as right after the Republic fell. They flocked to the capital in droves, each hoping to find great success with their novels and poems. In retrospect, this was Rome's greatest period of intellectual and cultural "flourishing". Tacitus, Sullust, Virgil, Livy, Cicero - all from this time of Roman instability.

Rome, the institution, lasted for many more years after the "flourishing" - but the meaning of being Roman changed. The idea of being "Roman" became much more vague, and the citizens no longer had the same confidence or drive to multiply. The civilization never expanded its borders significantly. Finally, it fell to the Germanic tribes it had long fought against.

~ Shakespearean England

I do not know much about this time in England and I am tired of writing this article. So I cannot speak on how England rose before Shakespeare's time. All I know is that, right after Shakespeare, Cromwell became an absolutist ruler. Banks pointed out this pattern himself in the paper - Shakespeare's time as flourish, Cromwell's as the reaction. So I suppose we will take his word for it.

Where was the peak?

So - when were Greece, Rome, and England at their peak? And why?

Clearly, these nations were all successful around the times of flourishing. Banks is correct in his idea that these societies often have won a great war - Rome with Carthage, and Athens with Persia. And, though it seems that extreme intellect and artistry produce tyranny - it is obviously not a bad thing to have them.

It seems that all of them were at the peak near the point where they defeated their enemies, and where the"flourishing" began. Somewhere in-between the "flourishing" - high-points of intellectual production - and the victorious high-points of success.

Now, it is important to keep in mind - Athens and Rome never recovered from their reactionary rule, but England did. England went through at least one more of these cycles before significantly losing power. So, it is not always the case that a civilization will have only one of these periods, or that these periods mean total decline.

So - let's look at America, with this pattern in mind - Civilizations often seem to reach their peak a generation or two before the "flourishing" begins. Somewhere in-between the victorious high-points of battle and the "flourishing" high-points of intellectual production, a new generation is born - one which lays the foundations for the nation to be remembered, and for tyranny to begin.

America

In 1945, America defeated a great enemy - Nazi Germany. In doing so, America established dominance over all of the West, and most of the world. Then, the baby boomers were born - and America began building an empire.

It is no coincidence that the 1950s are often seen as a "golden age". They probably were. This is the age in which America's identity was strong - but also, the society really flourished. The "baby boom" produced a huge amount of Life, and resources were plentiful to fund it.

Then, we started "flourishing" - The 1960s and 1970s showed these signs of "flourishing" - computing took off, the hippie movement began, and postmodernism was founded. In the 60s and 70s, the government became far more tyrannical. The CIA and FBI establishing newly dominant roles in society. Entertainment culture and abstract ideas became far more significant in the national identity. "Tolerance" and "Diversity" became the guiding values - and postmodern philosophy began. In other words, Openness, Tolerance, and Liberalism became a religion.

However, America did not fully succumb to these ideas. The base of the West, at least in America was still not wholly defined by intellect. Traditional American culture, bolstered by Christianity, remained comparatively strong.

But then, we won again.

Just as Rome defeated Carthage, or Athens defeated Persia - we defeated the Soviet Union. And this time, a torrent of comfort and intellect came faster than ever before. The 90s, 2000s, and 2010s became defined by a host of brain-first, utopian ideas - such as the idea of racial "color-blindness", the idea of complete globalization and outsourcing in trade, and the idea of technological utopia through AI and the internet. The advance of these ideas in mainstream society quickly hollowed out much of the old culture - Christianity

[plummeted](https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx)

, birth rates

[plummeted](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/NAC/north-america/birth-rate)

, and all economic industries besides Service continued to

[disappear](https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2095734&seqNum=3)

.

The same virus that took hold of Athens, Rome, England and others has now taken hold of Western Civilization. We have obtained an unsustainable fixation on ideas, culture, comfort, and openness. Many of our citizens have begun to believe that technology, ideas, and the brain are a source of Life - rather than God.

After America defeated the Soviet Union, we entered another unparallelled time of "flourishing" - and now, this lifestyle has gained so much power that it refuses to let go.

This unsustainable fixation has begun to erode freedom from government, all morality, and all national identity. Many people still do not realize just how much of the history and demographics of America have changed - and of the whole West. As of 2021, 70% of American industry has become service - simple consumption of goods (

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/270072/distribution-of-the-workforce-across-economic-sectors-in-the-united-states/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/270072/distribution-of-the-workforce-across-economic-sectors-in-the-united-states/)

)

We have outsourced hard work to other countries, declaring ourselves "modern." We have abandoned God, choosing technology instead. We have stopped having children, choosing free sex instead. And this time, it is so extreme that our Critias, Augustus, or Cromwell is waiting in the wings.

Now, we have a very comfortable society - one which loves technology, entertainment, and abortion. They seem disparate interests, but they are not. The curses of Adam and Eve - hard work and the pain of childbirth - are necessary for Life. Instead, we choose comfort and the brain. Most of the West does.

If we continue, we deserve to lose what we have. A nation that does not produce Life will not receive Life's fruits.

The Problem of Excess Genius

So - "The Problem of Excess Genius" is quite a fitting title here, though not in the way Banks intended. The meaning of excess genius in a society - of excess intellectual and cultural production - is a retreat into comfort of the citizens of that society.

Whereas Athens, Rome, and England, in their rise, could be considered deeply ingrained in nature - "each man in nature according to his ability" - Socratic Athens, Augustinian Rome, or Shakespearean England are societies who have become a great mass of citizens, simply thinking and feeling, who spend more time on society than anything else.

One important lesson here is that it is not the absolute value of technology or progression which seems to be bad - Athens, Rome, England, and America all have had great golden ages, and vastly different levels of technology. So, it is not the brain or technology that is bad. The brain, indeed, is the crown jewel of humanity. Rather, it is the idolization of the brain that can destroy a civilization. Even though the brain is our best attribute, it still has its limits - and the other parts of the body, if left unattended, will not be able to support the its extreme demands.

Does anyone really think AI will be able to sustain itself without human energy driving it? We are laughably far from that reality. Every year, Elon says cars will be self-driving - and one of these years they may be - but if it takes this long and costs this much to self-drive a car, how long will it take to do anything more physical? Most jobs are more physical than driving. The "Singularity" is a hoax. If we keep going on this path, it's much likelier we will have war with another nation before we have most of the technological achievements Utopians yearn for.

Truly, there are many places where Life flourishes but ideas are not present - but the only places ideas are present are places where Life flourishes. We must never get the order confused.

~

For the West, there is good and bad news. The good news is that, even though the Roman Republic fell - the Empire lasted about another 400 years. The fall of the Republic did not destroy the society - but it did mark the beginning of its long decline.

The bad news, though, is that we are deep into a cycle that started partially in 1945 and accelerated drastically in 1991. It is a story of how humans so often accomplish great things, and then abandon the values that brought them there. We now see an increase in Tyranny, and a decline in Morality. They are certainly linked.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

The West has done more for ourselves and the world than any other civilization ever has. We have created the greatest order and prosperity the world has every known - that is the Light of the West. Through Christianity, Farming & Industry, Law and Property Rights - we have created the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

We don't have to lose it. 1991 doesn't have to be our peak. We are not at any "End of History" - unless we decide to be. We can decide to send each man in nature, according to his ability. We can decide to respect the teachings of Christ. We can decide to expand and improve upon the long legal history we have been building since the Magna Carta. Or, we can not.

If we do not, then democracy in the West will end. Men like Trump and Elon have seen the signs - the West has strayed very far from Life. Elon lauds Napoleon for his contributions; Mark Zuckerberg looks up to Augustus so much that he copies his haircut.

Perhaps, it is not the worst thing. Perhaps, once things go too far, a man who loves his country must make war on it. And, in this war, refocus the citizens on what is essential.

Perhaps this is better than the alternative, of being conquered by a foreign power.

But war is not necessary. We, the people, can choose. The men and women of the West can choose to go back to Life. To freedom. To God.

Land is cheap in America - the question is whether we will build on it ourselves, or wait for someone else to. I choose to build. I hope you will choose the same.

If not, someone may choose for you.