Genius 2000:

A New Network

 

by Max Herman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

for Freda

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Love!  His affections do not that way tend,

Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little,

Was not like madness.  There's something in his soul,

O'er which his melancholy sits on brood,

And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose

Will be some danger."

 

 

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, III.i.131

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.  Who are you and what is your name?

 

I'm Max Herman and this is my book about my theory of history.  I've worked on it for a while and now I'm summing it all up for regular paper publication.  I think I might put photos in it too.  Anyway, I'm thirty-five, mostly bald, a celibate demi-vierge, and more or less on antidepressants constantly since 1996.  I was sexually abused once, when I was five years old.  I have two degrees in English, earn between thirty and thirty-five thousand dollars per year, and live in Minneapolis Minnesota where I was born, by myself.  I started the Genius 2000 Network in 1998 as the Genius 2000 Project.  I changed it to the Genius 2000 Network on January 1, 2000.

 

2.  Why should anyone read this book?

 

That's a good question.  I think it's a relevant book and will present a lot of useful information for you.  It will also show you my point of view on some things, give you some explanation of some new ideas, and it will also help me set up and expand my Network.

 

3.  How long will the book be?

 

Two thousand quanta long, which is standard book size.

 

4.  Will you put pictures in it? 

 

I think I will just put url's in it if and when I wish to point the reader to a picture.  This will save me cash on printing and help polish the fading sheen of the internet.

 

5.  Is your academic writing good?

 

It's not too bad, and what's more important, I enjoyed writing it.  Here's an excerpt from a paper I wrote for my Master's degree entitled "Book Review: The Sinews of Power:  War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783, by John Brewer":  "Brewer argues that the English state before 1688 was shaped by three major factors:  medieval centralization, England's avoidance of European wars, and the absence of a strong class of venal or bribable administrators."  You may read the full paper on the internet at www.geocities.com/genius-2000/SinewsOfPower.html.

 

6.             Where are you now?

 

I'm at the coffee shop.  I'll be writing some of these on paper.  I'll check the number at home before I go, and then do that number on paper by hand.

 

7.             What are the main ideas of Genius 2000?

 

The two main ideas are Albos-Koros-Hybris-Ate, which I didn't invent myself but learned from the late Professor Barbara Fowler in 1990, and the following question called "Contribution One" from the Genius 2000 Video First Edition:  "What does it take to be a genius?  Do you have it?  Does anyone you know personally have it?  What does the year 2000 mean?  Does it mean this to you or other people?  What do the concept of genius and the year 2000 have in common?"

 

8.             Aren't there any more main ideas?

 

Not really. I'm thirty-five, and when I was twenty-nine and wanted to make a video about genius, I decided to make it also about the year 2000 as a good complementary topic for interviewees.  Then I wanted to filter in my own ideas unobtrusively, so used the Albos-Koros-Hybris-Ate cycle of tragedy I'd learned in college from Dr. Fowler.  There were some other ideas as well but I would say that the primary basic constituents are A-K-H-A and Contribution One. 

 

9.             When did you start Genius 2000?

 

I made a Genius 2000 pumpkin and decided on the name for the video in 1998.  Before 1998, I'd never used the term "Genius 2000," but I'd been in school, I'd had my theories about literature and so forth for a while.  Here's an excerpt from a paper I did for Dr. Fowler, and then another one from a later paper about Hamlet and Oedipus, to give an idea.  I'd called "my idea" by various names, such as "the Communicative Hypothesis" and "the Communicative Paradigm," etc. 

"Oedipus commiserates with the suppliants at the very start of the play, 'I know you are all sick, yet there is not one of you, sick though you are, that is as sick as myself....My spirit groans for city and myself and you at once'(ll.59-64).  Ironically but fittingly, Oedipus identifies his own prosperity with the prosperity of the city, constantly calling himself savior or champion.  In a way, he is--he saved the city from the sphinx."

"The ghost admonishes Hamlet, with a poignancy and tenderness that riles up our most fervent filial instincts,

            “If thou didst ever thy dear father love--”

            “O God!” 

            “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” 

            “Murder?” 

“Murder most foul, as in the best it is, but this most foul, strange, and unnatural” (1.5.24-30).

            "The simple yet striking meter in this passage, moving in seemingly innocuous but ineluctable iambs and powerfully sounding the chord “Murder--Murder?--Murder,” expresses remarkably the feeling of tenderness, loss, and passion that must have been wringing Hamlet Jr. at hearing this news."  You may read these two papers in their entirety on the internet at www.geocities.com/genius2000/ LearningToAcceptMistakes.html and www.geocities.com/genius-2000/OedipusAndHamlet.html, respectively.

 

10.         Is it true you're alcoholic?

 

Yes, I'm pretty sure that is not in question.  I would agree that I am one.  Maybe "alcohol addict" I would agree with more.

 

11.  What is the purpose of the Genius 2000 Network?

 

I might be mistaken, but my goal for it is to heal and fulfill human genius, to help with that very broad and diversely pursued enterprise.  To help humanity live better, happier, and more fulfilled, is what I hope to assist with.  This is so general as to be not much, but heck, it's the truth.  I don't care too much for the question--it implies there is, always has been, and always will be only one purpose of Genius 2000, and that I can't agree with.  There isn't just one permanent constant purpose.  It's a stable field. 

 

12.  What is a stable field?

 

On one hand, the Genius 2000 Network is my own network, the network I have legally created and incorporated as a business, a legally established for-profit corporation.  So, its purpose is to make money or earn profit.  It is a stable field in that it is a constituted platform or entity to carry out whatever needs doing for the larger motive of profit.  The Genius 2000 Network is my own independent music label and art gallery and publishing house all in one, so like a restaurant, it's a stable field in which various food dishes are made, sold, and eaten.  Or, where various records are made, sold, and listened to--it's the platform, the continuing platform for all this.

 

13.              How much money do you want to earn?

 

I'm single, 35, and addicted to alcohol, so I don't need or want much.  If I could earn fifty thousand per year for the next fifty years, adjusting for inflation, that would be enough for me.  I don't have luxurious tastes.  I do think there is a patriotic obligation to acquire as much wealth as one can, not for one's personal gratification but so as to "strike a blow for the common good"--to be able to protect the Good.  So, for example, a billion dollars per year in revenue might ultimately be necessary--even a hundred billion perhaps.  Then again, one million gross with $100,000 net might be preferable.

 

14.              Do you support the U.S.-led War on Terror?

 

Yes I do.  This is the toughest topic for me to address.  I used to be deceitfully leftist, praising Nader and Chomsky.  This was a demented form of the semi-psychotic death-game called "chicken."  It's hard for me to explain why I support the War on Terror, or what I sometimes call "the Second Cold War."  One can look at all the horror, wastage, and misery of the First Cold War and still accept it was necessary.  I feel that way about the Second Cold War, or CWII.  It will take me maybe my whole life to explain this adequately, in part because it is not known yet how CWII will play out in all the variations.

 

15.              What about all of your revolutionary posing from 1999-2002?

 

Well, that’s a tough one.  I guess I'd have to say number one, in part I'm guilty of bad actions and regret that, and apologize, and have to pay my debt to humanity.  On the other hand, I was never your orthodox Leninist for example, but rather went out of my way to distance myself and Genius 2000 from doctrinaire Communism, Marxism, etc.  I say this despite my occasional rhetorical episodes.  For example, I wrote in my "Crying Game" paper about Marx, sounding a bit Marxist, but it's hardly damning.  Also, in a lot of settings they pressure you to pick a side, and if you don't they'll excoriate you.

 

16.              Why do you praise Chomsky so much in your early work?

 

I divide 1998-2002 as the first part of Genius 2000, before I quit drinking and smoking weed and snorting Ritalin in October 2002.  On one hand, I liked Chomsky; on the other hand, I wanted to call attention to certain artistic factors and ramifications I felt that Chomsky and especially his fan base neglect unjustifiably.  I wonder about this sometimes.  But no, I can't say I wasn't a bit confused about the value of Chomsky's work such as it is, and his leadership.  Taken objectively, I don't see much similarity between Genius 2000 and Chomskyism.

 

17.              What about the Frankfurt School?

 

You could say in one sense that I've stolen or copied a lot of the ideas in Genius 2000 from Adorno, Habermas, and Benjamin.  That would be fair.  I would like to meet Habermas one day.  He was my first external way out of post-structuralist literary theory as I encountered it at Oberlin, Madison, and Binghamton.  I discovered Habermas around 1994, early, when the internet first came out, with the usenet groups like alt.postmodern.  Then I read Philosophical-Political Profiles, in Minneapolis I think--could it have been?--in 1994.  However, it was my article on Plot, Literary Change, Shakespeare's Ghost, and my Hamlet/Oedipus paper that set my main line as I wrote those before discovering Adorno and Benjamin via PPP.  There would not be any sense in denying my use of Benjamin and Adorno however, as I moved along through grad school--they were my linkage to established academically legitimate thought, plus I liked them a lot.  I was not raised in a religious home so it was through Benjamin that I first got interested in messianism and monotheism.  I think I've copied some of Benjamin's thinking style as well, his rhetoric, or stolen it, or I maybe had the similarity before reading him. 

 

18.              Why use the question-and-answer means of composition?

 

Well, I like Collingwood, whom I read in 1989 at Cambridge, and for other reasons.

 

19.              Were you a student at Cambridge?

 

No.  My father was a visiting professor in biology in 1989 and I visited Cambridge.  I sat in or "audited" a course in aesthetics taught by J.P. Casey however, and also a maths class.  I was a big maths fan from age 12 to 15, as I participated in UMTYMP--the University of Minnesota Talented Youth Mathematics Project. 

 

20.              Won't it take forever to type these?

 

No.  I type quickly.  I type about 50 words per minute.  I use typing at work, and learned real typing at Sanford Junior High in Minneapolis.

 

21.              Are you ashamed of what you've done so far with Genius 2000?

 

Yes, very much so.  Maybe so far I've had several phases of my life in Genius 2000.  Phase One was about 1998-2000, then my drinking went way out of control 2001-2002 so that was a second, degenerate, evil phase.  I really feel ashamed about that alcoholic behavior.  It's disgusting to me to recall it.

 

22.              What are your main anxieties?

 

I'm not sure I understand my anxieties.  Sexual I guess is the main one.  Social prestige and value in the eyes of others, my sexual attractiveness, the health or wisdom of my celibate life, whether I'm an insane failure or not--these are perhaps the main ones, along with family and artistic phobias and worry.  I worry that my mental health is so poor that none of my reactions to anything are pure or healthy--I'm on antidepressants and all.  I worry that I'm homosexual or sexually unsalvageable, unable to be an artist or even a human really without sexual relationships.  So, I guess I worry about whether my tactics and goals are correct, my values, whether I work hard enough or at the right tasks. 

 

23.  Where are you now?

 

I'm at work.  I work nine to five.  My computer is acting weird.  I'll be trying to type a few numbers here and there during the workday, and at lunch, and then all evening so as to finish at least five hundred numbers to send to agents in April.  It could get me in trouble and fired however.  Work is a good place.  The stress isn't overpowering; what is more inimical to me and my peace of mind is the feeling of being an asexual failure, or what you might call "an office eunuch," impotent and inadequate.  I never mentioned my penis size, which is 5.5.  This is no good for all practical purposes, and thus I've felt it would be a manipulative insult to request that a woman go to bed with me.  At work I get the feeling of not taking enough emotional risk, daring to love at is were, accepting my fate and destiny, or loving love.  Perhaps I could quit my job and write only for three months--I do have the savings.  Exactly $2000 saved.  I could go for a brief time on that.  And by selling my Karmann Ghia, 1972 model year.  Better keep the job and write when I have time.  Palatino and Prestige elite, 1000 numbers by April 30.  For the agents and all.

 

24.  How is Genius 2000 a theory of history?

 

Wow, good question.  I may have to ask for a long-term answer voucher for that.  Genius 2000 implies there are two factors that combine to create history: Genius and 2000.  2000 is the time, obviously; i.e., the setting, conditions, space-time specificity, economic and technological givens.  Genius is the other complement, and this is human genius, or just genius; human genius plus human 2000 equals human Genius 2000.  So, akin to how E=mc2 is a theory of energy and matter, Genius 2000 is a theory of history--an equation or setting-forth of terms.  Genius 2000 is an equation.

 

25.  There is no equals sign, so isn't "Genius 2000" just a term?

 

Maybe Genius 2000 is a theory or thesis about history, a hypothesis even.  By comparison, E=mc2 is part of Relativity theory of spacetime.  G=mt2000 is an equation which is part of the Genius 2000 theory of history.  So, Genius 2000 is rather a theory than an equation, but it implies the equation History=Genius+2000 just as Relativity theory implies the equation Relativity=spacetime.

 

26.              What is another theory of history?

 

Marxism is one, also religions are theories of history.  Religions set forth how things started, how things or events occur, and what is upcoming; cause and effect, patterns, conflicts, elements, rules of events, etc.  I might say that Science is one theory of history, Dialectical Materialism another of the Marxist school; factually I can't think of any more.  Nationalism and the various racist philosophies are theories of history; one could say that Art is a theory of history.  Any idea or set of ideas, principles, that aims to define events or how they happen and under what rules is a theory of history.  So, the various economic theories are theories of history in a sense.

 

27.  How can you justify the compositional form of this book?

 

There's no need to, because how I write is my own business.  I don't have to justify it to you.  That would be slavish on my part.  But, one could justify it by my stable field theory, or by the aphoristic compositional style, or the dialogue, or by In Medias Res, or any number of other compositions.  But if you don't like it, you don't like it, that's OK.  I would prefer not to let that make me feel sick and suicidal.

 

28.  Do you feel sick and suicidal today?

 

Somewhat.  I occasionally will go off my antidepressant and get depressed.  I sense that I live under a blanket so to speak, in a semi-protected infantile state due to my medications.  They protect me from my nightmarish emotions with which I either cannot or will not cope.  For example, off my medication I sense very directly how intense and beautiful dating, love, sex, etc. could be, and this makes me doubt my whole value system and worth as a person, making me feel unsalvageable and in short repulsive.  Bald, thirty-five, and celibate but not in the funny who-cares way but the horrifying, shameful, guilty, miserable, inexcusable way.  The way that is a sin against humanity, society, and myself.  Nonetheless, as my medication levels creep up over the next couple of days I will feel monumentally happier, mellower, and safer.

 

29.              What if someone doesn't feel like a lot of questions? 

 

Well then they can just sit and meditate.  I am not saying people should O.D. on questions or on trying to answer.  As Collingwood said, it's a cycle.  Excess of questions is manic; of answers depressive.

 

30.              How are you enjoying Nietzsche and Strauss?

 

Well, I'm reading Nietzsche and Strauss for the first time.  You could say I lost touch, pace, with the real world of intellectual life in 1987, when I went to Oberlin College.  Allan Bloom lectured there very early in the academic year, one of the first nonacademic lectures if I recall.  I think it was standing room only, as I remember seeing him at the lectern, and a full room, but then leaving.  The general idea was that he was Bad.  I didn't follow him at all.  Maybe that's OK.

 

31.              Why do you want people to know what you've read, and when?

 

I hate secrecy, and agree with Benjamin Franklin that "honesty is the best policy."  It saves energy spent in lying.  So, I can't enjoy reading in secret.  I don't like reading but not admitting it, and I like getting credit for what I've read.  I also like getting credit for getting an idea before reading something.  For example, I critiqued "Art" and "Plot" in Shakespeare as instrumental and linear mistakes before reading Habermas, Adorno, Benjamin, and Benedict Anderson.  I basically came up with their entire corpi all on my own at age 24.  And that without reading any Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, or Schopenhauer--what have you.  So I want credit for what I did before reading Nietzsche.

 

32.              Do you think it's immoral to seek credit like that?

 

I feel guilty about it so you could say I reflexively consider it immoral.  In other people, another person, I wouldn't consider it immoral at all--I'd consider it refreshing.  Much more so than the same old classic rock tunes playing in the laundromat I'm writing in now.

 

33.              Why don't you try, for a change, to stop condemning yourself for actions you wouldn't condemn in others?

 

I think I have habits of condemning myself that have causes separate from whatever I might be doing, i.e. the specific actions.  For example, I fear becoming vain and excessive in my braggadocio, and thus causing a disaster for the species, that is, the polis.

 

34.              You fear that to allow yourself to write freely and express your abilities might threaten the polis?

 

I certainly do.  I'm afraid that society could not survive if I expressed myself freely and completely.  People would have to kill me to protect themselves from the consequences my self-expression would have for the polis, the political-exosomatic patterns that protect the future and present continuation of the species.  In a sense, for me to express myself cleanly and openly would, quite literally, kill the entire species so it cannot be allowed.  I suppress myself, therefore, to save society the work-cost of repressing me and hope thereby to put my society's heart at ease and gain its mercy if not reward.

 

35.              Isn't that fairly neurotic and perhaps paranoid?  That is to say, isn't it merely an unhealthy obsession?

 

My gracious, it must be, mustn't it?  I can only think it originates in my childhood deprivations and abuse.  I suppress myself in a nightmarish automatic response, because I've ingrained fear-based behaviors to the level of reflex.  If I'm confused about what to write, or the role of the writer in 2005, I conclude that I must be evil.  Because of course, when I kept myself quiet--by the use of self-hate--through sad and abusive periods in childhood I trained myself to think that to express myself would damage my social support structure i.e. my family.  I find this moderately hopeful an analysis.  It suggests that I can un-learn my fearfulness and eventually get to a point where I can express myself artistically, socially, and sexually.  I.e. get a girlfriend.

 

36.              Do you now accept and truly believe it is safe for your society for you to express yourself in writing?

 

That would sure be great if it were true.  I'm not used to thinking that way.  I'm more used to thinking, "I can't express myself because the world is too evil, desperate, vulnerable, and dangerous.  Therefore my only hope to express myself is to fix the world, fix it to perfection and for all time."  But this is too difficult.  It forestalls my legitimate hopes of doing a decent share, of doing enough, i.e. my two thousand hours of socio-economic labor per year.  I suppose I would have to answer that I don't yet accept fully, in all its ramifications and outcomes, the idea that I can fully and satisfyingly express myself in writing without hurting or damaging my society of the human polis, but I believe I can try and if you can try you can improve and theoretically succeed. 

 

37.              How many quanta do you have left to write? 

 

1963.

 

38.              Do you often feel that the internet version of Genius 2000 was immoral, or do you feel ashamed of yourself for doing it?

 

I feel extremely ashamed of myself for doing it.  I think there may have been a grain of decency to it, but for the main part it was vile and alcoholic in nature.  I hope very much by writing this book to clear up some of the evil-causing loose ends or sinful aspects of Genius 2000.  Again, this will take approximately my entire life to live down.  Even one truly high-quality book isn't enough to repair the evil hybris of claiming you're the Messiah.

 

39.              Do you feel ashamed and guilty for having put yourself forward, even in ultra-ironic postmodern self-mocking jest, as the second coming of Jesus Christ?

 

Mainly I feel scared that someone crazy, or more likely, a mob of very angry ignorant people, will painfully kill me for having said it.  I feel that I have to or ought to exhibit feelings of remorse or shame about it in order to save myself from being murdered by zealous persons for blasphemy or sacrilege.  In fact, I don't feel guilty or ashamed at all for the internet phase of Genius 2000.  I made it partly crappy and partly superior on purpose.  I'm scared that I'll be tortured and killed for admitting that I did it.  It's complicated, now that I write it down. 

 

40.              What is your plan for Genius 2000 to help society?

 

To convince people to develop their own genius and let other people develop theirs too.  But given the crowded, confused, and competitive nature of life in the zeroes, it's not likely to be accomplished in one swift stroke.  Rather, I hope to enchant the avid reader into a sleepy, comfortably advancing state much as sitting in class gradually adds knowledge to one's being.  Despite the fatigue.

 

41.              How are you feeling today?

 

Not very well.  I took a three-day weekend using one day of vacation time and feel rather traumatized.  I live in nearly total isolation.  I have a lot of doubts whether I can write or be a legitimate source of wisdom given my isolated lifestyle.  The question whether a monk or a hermit can have any health or goodness whatsoever.  I am not sure of the answer.  It bothers and worries me greatly that I cannot finish a good book, become a published writer, and do something good or valuable for humanity under my current state of isolation.  I worry and fear that my solitude and celibacy are a hideous sin, making me a broken and mentally ill lunatic/mutant/freak, able only to write disgusting vomit.  How to know?

 

42.              How are you feeling today?

 

I feel pretty well.  I have been pondering solitude and concluded that it is a good thing, beneficial, if done correctly.  It is not correctly done if one is expecting a reward.  The advantage of solitude is, like that of G2K, anticlimactic.  Nothing happens.  Once I rid myself of the compulsive need to go see people or make myself girlfriend-worthy, nothing happens.  A blessed nothing occurs.  In this state is somewhat where I am today.  I am resigned to the wisdom of writing daily without extreme expectations or rules, just to sit and write, low-pressure, reading and painting watercolor too.  I'm convinced there is no need to worry excessively.  Rather than worrying about what to do, how to fix the world, I can just write the two thousand.  Noble two thousand!

 

43.              What are your thoughts on Machiavelli?

 

He said that it is best to be both feared and loved if one is in authority.  He implied that it is not always necessary to be loved.  He also implied that love only, with no fear, is never enough.  I agree that authority must be feared to some degree, to a sufficient degree, that the unavoidable feelings of power-craving among those not in authority will not always lead to an attack on authority, but will be instead filtered through a questioning layer; and therefore a peaceful solution may be found insofar as one looks and one is possible.  In any measure the mood of usurpation will be given a chance to pass, protecting against the risk of all imperfect love to fail at one time or another. 

 

44.     What are your feelings on the progress of the book?

 

I think it's doing fine.  However, I return to worry as to my exoteric naivete.  Also as to the "factum brutum of religious revelation."  Obfuscation, misdirection, things of this nature.  I imagine that these may all suffer radiance from my fear and uncertainty about becoming successful as a writer, i.e., read by many.  Would it throw a fragile equilibrium into catastrophic imbalance?  Would the rapprochement of liberal and conservative elements outpace the irritation of sensitivities or the need for diversity and dynamism?  Do I dare to eat a peach?  Gravel for my craw?  O sages standing in God's holy fire, as in the gold mosaic of a wall, come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, and be the singing-masters of my soul.  Consume my heart away; sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what it is, and gather me into the artifice of eternity. 

 

45.  Are your ideas on the shortcomings of the art-as-object paradigm valid or putrid?

 

I use to say "Art is processes, not objects."  I think this is sound, though it never was my idea only.  Think of E.H. Gombrich, Literary Change, etc.  Even the IDS tower is a process and not an object.  No one should doubt this unduly much.  Only out of fear would one doubt it.  The impermanent object vs. the permanent process, the possibility thereof, the eternal return, the will-to-power, fields of quanta, these all hold together.  Even Shakespeare's "Like as the Waves."  Shakespeare is hardly rough and raggedy.  He's vernacular to impede idolatry and to ease the shock of contrast.  A very kind and accurate fellow, truly.

 

46.  What is the relevance of Laughlin's theory of dots in a temporal field?  Rather, fields of dots in temporal frames?