I just watched A Beautiful Mind for the first time. It was brilliant, and I think Nash really was a genius. I’m about six years behind Hollywood, but never mind, I’m trying to catch up. What I came away with was a question: What is the difference between achievement and recognition? Until John Nash’s tutor posed the question to him, I had never needed to consider that they were two distinct entities. It’s almost logical to take it for granted that the two are interchangeable; so logical in fact, that it takes stepping back to extricate one from the other.
On stepping back, I realise that it’s a distinction that needs to be made more often. Take contemporary fiction for example. There are a few authors I’ve read, whom if I were their teacher, I’d write ‘Stop being lazy and apply yourself’ in red across the top of their paper. But whether or not I think their work is mediocre, they have awards, endorsements and reviews (celebrity) that seem to suggest that they are good at what they do. In that scenario, their recognition implies that they must have achieved extremely high standards of work, when in fact, they might not have.
In the same way, there are geniuses working away all night, churning out masterpiece after masterpiece, yet because they don’t yet have a public platform, it may be possible for an anonymous observer to play down the excellence of the work; simply because he can assume that if the work was reeeeeaallly that good, then surely it would have been noticed by now.
I think this separation of achievement and recognition can and should be be applied to most creative fields. There are popular singers, writers, producers, film makers, actors, designers etc that make one think, how in the world did they get a deal? Or maybe the undeserving heroes used to produce top quality stuff until the critical acclaim and recognition made them complacent? And on the flipside, there are incredibly talented people we know who’ve been banging at the doors of opportunity for ages and haven’t got the recognition that their work deserves.
In Emile Durkheim’s paper, ‘The Functions of Crime’ he insists that crime actually serves a purpose in society. Stay with me here. According to him, punishment of criminals acts as social organisation, deterring the general public from doing the same. Crime also helps in the governance of societies because it reveals the negative changes that have occurred in morality (by measuring collective responses etc) and enables them to facilitate better security services for the average citizen. I have decided to appropriate this concept (the concept of crap stuff having a purpose) to my appreciation of untalented geniuses.
Rather than continue to rant and rave about how the prominent people with disgraceful work shouldn’t be where they are, I’ve decided to learn from them, to use them as inspiration and I think this is something we can all do. If they, with all their half-arsed work can get a record deal/get published/get exhibited/get cast/get awarded/get endorsed/get signed, then so can the rest of us. Their mediocrity is actually a good thing about them because it serves a purpose; it gives the rest of us hope that if they could hoodwink the world with their nonsense, then we can sure as hell bless the world with our excellence.
P. S. The psychiatrist who had Nash committed in A Beautiful Mind was called Dr Rosen. There’s a well known article called ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’ written by a David L. Rosenhan. Is that a (reality to fiction) coincidence? Or does the scriptwriter happen to own the same books as me? Strange.
On stepping back, I realise that it’s a distinction that needs to be made more often. Take contemporary fiction for example. There are a few authors I’ve read, whom if I were their teacher, I’d write ‘Stop being lazy and apply yourself’ in red across the top of their paper. But whether or not I think their work is mediocre, they have awards, endorsements and reviews (celebrity) that seem to suggest that they are good at what they do. In that scenario, their recognition implies that they must have achieved extremely high standards of work, when in fact, they might not have.
In the same way, there are geniuses working away all night, churning out masterpiece after masterpiece, yet because they don’t yet have a public platform, it may be possible for an anonymous observer to play down the excellence of the work; simply because he can assume that if the work was reeeeeaallly that good, then surely it would have been noticed by now.
I think this separation of achievement and recognition can and should be be applied to most creative fields. There are popular singers, writers, producers, film makers, actors, designers etc that make one think, how in the world did they get a deal? Or maybe the undeserving heroes used to produce top quality stuff until the critical acclaim and recognition made them complacent? And on the flipside, there are incredibly talented people we know who’ve been banging at the doors of opportunity for ages and haven’t got the recognition that their work deserves.
In Emile Durkheim’s paper, ‘The Functions of Crime’ he insists that crime actually serves a purpose in society. Stay with me here. According to him, punishment of criminals acts as social organisation, deterring the general public from doing the same. Crime also helps in the governance of societies because it reveals the negative changes that have occurred in morality (by measuring collective responses etc) and enables them to facilitate better security services for the average citizen. I have decided to appropriate this concept (the concept of crap stuff having a purpose) to my appreciation of untalented geniuses.
Rather than continue to rant and rave about how the prominent people with disgraceful work shouldn’t be where they are, I’ve decided to learn from them, to use them as inspiration and I think this is something we can all do. If they, with all their half-arsed work can get a record deal/get published/get exhibited/get cast/get awarded/get endorsed/get signed, then so can the rest of us. Their mediocrity is actually a good thing about them because it serves a purpose; it gives the rest of us hope that if they could hoodwink the world with their nonsense, then we can sure as hell bless the world with our excellence.
P. S. The psychiatrist who had Nash committed in A Beautiful Mind was called Dr Rosen. There’s a well known article called ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’ written by a David L. Rosenhan. Is that a (reality to fiction) coincidence? Or does the scriptwriter happen to own the same books as me? Strange.
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