Creating the whole scene.
Brian Eno coined the term ‘scenius’ to describe times and places where important new discoveries emerges in more than one person. It’s a combination of ‘scene’ and ‘genius’.
There are some particularly clear examples of this throughout history: punk and post-punk music surging into being in London and Manchester, the dada art movement, the Renaissance in Florence, the Enlightenment across Europe.
These are periods of extraordinary innovation, creativity and the emergence of new human insight.
Scenius captures the notion that it is a collection of people, places and phenomena that lead to our greatest creations in any field - art, science, literature, astronomy, medicine…
When groups of people are gathered together, often in unplanned and seemingly disconnected circumstances, it can lead to something almost magical emerging.
We might think of it, in modern parlance, as an eco-system where network effects and a shared philosophy of creativity and experimentation leads to new discoveries.
Eno’s intention was in part to counter the ‘Great Man’ theory of history and instead recognise that periods of great change emerge from a significant collective and from wider society.
Creativity then emerges from all of us as a collective enterprise. People create and contribute to the scene, and the scene creates genius.
Related to this is a cultural theory, the cultural unconscious. This builds on the concept of the unconscious as identified by Freud and Jung, the parts of ourselves we don’t know yet are the origin of most of our behaviour.
At a societal level, we are collectively interacting with, contributing to and are influenced by the culture we live in. We’re both water and fish.
At a cultural level, it’s as if we’re all thinking about similar things at the same time, sharing those thoughts like drawing on a vast shared reservoir. It’s been offered as one explanation as to why similar films, music and books emerge into being at the same time.
It’s a compelling idea, that we’re all participating in this together. It also poses an interesting question over who gets to own all of this genius as it emerges. There is perhaps no such thing as a ‘self-made man’.
There’s another side to this too.
If we’re collectively creating our culture together, we’re collectively creating all of it - not just the nice cool stuff. We’re also creating the darkest, most terrible, most horrific and most unpleasant aspects of our culture.
The things we say those other people do, are things we’ve contributed to also. By denying it in ourselves, we might simply have pushed it elsewhere, remaining ignorant of our role in it all.
So what are we creating now?
WB Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’, written in the aftermath of World War I, is interpreted by some as foreseeing what was to come - the Spanish Flu and another World War.
‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’ he writes and then ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’
What are we creating now?
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
- WB Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’
I’m a coach, consultant and facilitator living in Berlin. At the heart of my work is helping individuals and organisations to make sense of who they are and the world around them. You can find out more about my coaching work here and my work with men & masculinity here.