The Limits of Genius?

Genius might just be overrated. In the past few weeks, we have been astonished at and wildly entertained by the very public travails of geniuses, both acknowledged and self-proclaimed. Elon Musk is perhaps the world's most talked about individual today, and that is not an accident. The entire Twitter saga beginning with his bravado-laden and overpriced offer to buy it, all the way through his subsequent efforts to back out of the deal, his various slapdash attempts to transform the site overnight has been riveting, if not entirely flattering to him.

- SANTOSH DESAI

The other genius-in-the-dumps story involves the world of crypto currency where a gentleman by the name of Sam Bankman-Fried has through a combination of deceit and stupidity melted away a $16 billion fortune in the space of a few days. FTX, a major crypto exchange was revealed to have committed fraud by using a sister company to deploy customer funds in highly risky investments.

And then of course we have the 'stable genius' Donald Trump who has been taken down a peg or three in the recent US midterm elections, where many 'election-denying' acolytes of his have lost. His announcement that he is running again has been met with groans rather than the rapturous applause that he might have expected.

Over the last few months, we have seen a pattern emerge- a lot of new ideas and currents that were seen to be part of a new narrative for the world seem to be suffering setbacks. The idea of the individualistic genius is facing its come-uppance. Crypto is in deep trouble with a Pandora-like ability to disgorge new disasters from its capacious box. Start-ups across the world and in India are facing a pushback-valuations have become less insane and money is tighter. Politically too, there seems to be some resistance to the move towards a form of chaotic populism.