The Deal with Genius2000

What is Genius2000 anyway and what the fuck does it have to do with me? Is it just a bunch of esoteric artist? Tapping keys and activating scanners? Dumping digits into the web divide and hoping the net will become like TV and that we’ll all tune in at the regularly scheduled time?

Nope, that’s not G2K at all.

Genius2000 is an epicenter at which the following beliefs resonate:

All people are capable of genius. All people have an obligataion to express their genius. All people have the right of respect for their genius by fellow human beings.

So where IS all this genius we’re talking about? Up in museums? Off in some school? On some rich guy’s wall or built into the planes of his mansion?

Nope, not necessarily at all.

This genius is everywhere and perhaps least of all counted in the institutional residencies mentioned above.

This genius is in that moment when you connect with another person, when you move someone to think, when you try and try and maybe succeed in understanding your dog or your mother or someone who doesn’t look like you at all. This genius is every ray of light, no matter how small, that illuminates the humanity in each and every one of us.

Why isn’t this genius recognized? Because we’ve decided to let museums and universities and money tell us what genius is. Those institutions have become the designators, and we go to them to tell us or show us what’s meant to touch our insides. We turn away from our own sense of the neighbor’s smile, the smell of barbeque, cut grass stuck on bare feet, colored chalk on the sidewalk in summertime, delicate flowers on the boulevard downtown, some sticker about love smacked up on the window of a department store that’s never stopped trying to sell us neediness, or how it feels to find a place where you can just be.

Maybe your list of things is different and so you say I’m talking crazy. But I say, your different list just proves my point all the more; we each experience, identify and ordain genius in our own way – so why,oh why, oh why, oh why, have we stopped asserting what we experience with our own senses?

Since when did "experts" have the credentials to tell normal people about what breathes breath into life? I’m not saying ‘out with experts!’, but I am saying – who decided on these experts? Who judges their expertise? And how the hell can they be telling me that the experience of sitting on my mother’s screen porch in the summer time, with wind chimes, drinking lemonade, as the thunder storm is made is not as worthy of a prize as something framed by Matisse or calculated by Fermat? After all, she conceived of that spot. She saw to the building of her vision. And it exists in the flesh for people to experience. It’s a masterpiece.

Here’s another example:

People who believe in God tend to turn to the bible. At least those who claim to follow the "true faith", certainly those that can unequivocally call themselves Christian. When I’ve heard Christians fight amongst themselves they often refer to digression from the bible - and how, in doing so, these digressors mislead people, obscure God’s word, distort God’s message.

Genius2000 asks: Who put together the bible and what makes it the end-all reference book on the big G?

The fact is that several other texts have been found (in the deserts of Nag Hammadi in the mid-40s) dated to the same century (1 A.D.) as the gospels included in the New Testament. Why were these texts excluded? Who decided that they represented "less God" than Luke or the other gospels we are generally aware of?

One point I’m making is that there WAS a decision made as to the godliness of content, and not by God. The holy hand did not descend and pluck a handful of books from the stack. People made these choices and the reasons behind the choices become clearer when one looks at the material left behind. These "secret" gospels are written about events in Jesus’ life that the New Testament covers, but seen in an entirely different light. Under the perspective of the Gnostic Gospels (as the Nag Hammadi texts came to be known) we see that early Christianity not only included a much stronger element of diversity but also a stronger commitment to the idea that God resides in each of us. I.e. that GENIUS is the birthright of us all.

From the Gospel According to Thomas:

"…Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, ‘Look, the Kingdom is in the sky," then the birds of the sky will get there first. If they say, ‘It is in the sea’, then the fish will get there first. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the children of the living God. But, if you will not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty."

All this is just to say:

If the Bible (a pillar of society as we know it) can be so subjective – then why not the designation of Genius? And if it’s going to be a subjective assignation, then why not by me, or you, or my mom, or yours?

Lastly, if we’re going to talk about this kind of realignment, what better time than the dawn of a new millenium?

Genius2000 – see?