Edward Dutton - The Genius Famine

What is the Endogenous Personality?And why is he so important?

In a nutshell, we argue that the Endogenous personality isthe type of a potential genius a compound of abilities and attitudes, ofintelligence and innerness. As a strong generalization: the true geniuses areEndogenous personalities; and it is from Endogenous personalities that geniusesarise.

The Endogenous personality is the inner Man; a personwhose outlook on life is inward. He is inner-directed, inner-driven,inner-motivated; one who uses inner modes of thinking, inner evaluations,in-tuition; one who is to a high degree autonomous, self-sufficient; one who isrelatively indifferent to social pressures, influences and inducements.

He stands in stark contrast to the Exogenous personality;that is, to most people. The Exogenous Personality is orientated toward theenvironment, particularly the social environment. These are people who wantmore than anything else social (including sexual) status, worldly success;people whose perceptions are directed outwards and who try to align theirbehaviour with group norms.

When described in such terms, the Endogenous personalitymight appear anti-social, uncooperative, a dreamer, not the kind of person wemight wish to have to deal with on a regular basis. We would probably beaccurate in perceiving the Endogenous Personality in this negative way. Weprobably wouldnt want to go for a drink with him, let alone be friends withhim.

But he is important; he is very important. Because theEndogenous personality is the archetypal genius. He is the type of agenius whether a large scale, world historical genius of the highest levelachieved by humanity a Shakespeare, a Beethoven or an Einstein or a local,tribal, or town genius; a shaman, a sculptor, an inventor whose name isunrecorded (yet who might be the originator of some great but anonymous ballad,folk song, painting or a technological breakthrough such as the spade,spear-thrower, arch or stirrup).

Genuine breakthrough, world-impact creativity is so rare,so difficult (far more difficult than commonly imagined) that it requires aspecial kind of mind a mind especially designed for this kind of work (innerwork). There need not be many such men indeed, there should not be too many,since the necessary mind is relatively unfit for the primary, day-to-day,activities of survival and reproduction of the species. But such men are needed sooner or later, from time to time.

These are the people who (whether we know their names ornot) will almost-certainly be behind the scientific and technical breakthroughsthat are the motor of civilization, these are people whose can inspire andunite society moving it towards greater things or out of the depths of despairand ennui; these are the people who can rescue a society on the brink ofcatastrophe.

The Endogenous personality is recognized because when thiskind of creative personality is combined with high general intelligence, weget a potential genius of greatness in proportion to their ability.

So, an Inner, Intuitive personality plus high Intelligence(or another special ability) is the Creative Triad and equals the Endogenouspersonality, or potential genius. The high intelligence serves as a kind ofguarantee that the Endogenous personality is positively adapted by hislop-sided focus, and inclination to be a creative specialist problem-solver insociety; and is not merely a broken, sick or damaged individual who simply cannotparticipate in normal society perhaps through mental or physical illness.

The Endogenous personality will stay focused on a problemlonger than most men and he will look at the problem in a different way. Hewill deploy different (more inward) procedures of understanding more detached,more abstracting. Hence he is more likely to see something new and useful in anew and different way.

His stance is less personal. He stands back to a greaterextent than most. He sees the problem in a wider scope precisely because hesees the problem detached from normal personal concerns, such as status, sex,or wealth; none of which he really seems to care much about. For him, solving hisproblem is not a means to an end a way of gaining status, wealth or sex itis an end in itself. The inner man gets the greatest satisfaction from innerwork it is what he most wants to do.