Forum Post: super geniuses

There are a number of people who have lived in the past who are considered to have been geniuses, and maybe even super geniuses, for example: Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, Mozart, Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh, and Albert Einstein.

The absence of women in that list does not mean that women are lacking in those abilities; they usually have not had the same opportunities to express them as men. We could add some women to the list, such as: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Maria Montessori, Marie Curie, and Wangari Maathai.

There are others we might have added to the list except that they died at an early age from an easily preventable cause: hunger, unsanitary water, violence, and so on. What a tragic waste of our greatest resource.

There are some who claim that a global direct democracy could not work because people are too stupid. Well, even the most intelligent of people are dependent on others who might be considerably less intelligent, to grow their food, fix their cars, dispose of their garbage, and so on. We are mutually interdependent, and diversity is good.

So, who are the geniuses and super geniuses today from whom all of humanity could greatly benefit? To whom might we be wise to turn our attention right now to enhance humanity's chances for success?

We don't have to start from zero in looking for these individuals. In the United States, there exists the National Academy of Sciences whose 2,200 members were elected "in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research." In addition to that Academy, there are also the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. There are probably comparable academies of exceptionally high achieving people in other countries, also.

We might do well to shift our attention from Wall Street and Washington, DC to a forum on the Internet to which we could invite members of these academies to share their ideas with us. That does not mean we have to stop our own sharing of ideas. It would just be a way to enhance our chances of success.