Conjuring Scenius — Packy McCormick

Just as the Renaissance had le botteghe , scenius more broadly requires a home. As it turns out, a surprising amount of innovation happens in bars.

Looking backwards, it’s striking how unevenly distributed progress has been in the past...the discoveries that came to elevate standards of living for everyone arose in comparatively tiny geographic pockets of innovative effort.

Starting in the mid-500s BC, history’s foundational scenius sprung to life in Greece and lasted over two centuries. The ancient Greeks created the modern philosophy we still turn to in search of answers to life’s biggest questions. In addition to foundational technologies and concepts like geometry (every high schooler learns the Pythagorean Theore

Even with a catastrophic catalyzing event, just the right amount of internal and external competition, and a place in which to collaborate, scenius will not take root without a diverse group of people who are willing to offer differing thoughts and experiences. It’s at their intersection that new ideas form. Scenius is a remix, a riff off of what h

These burgeoning efforts offer hope that scenius can indeed be created online, but must also be strengthened and punctuated by real-world interaction; that competition will always drive humans to push themselves further, but that competition need not be zero-sum; that the scale of the internet can mean bolder, more ambitious missions.  

The purpose of the II community is the II community. It’s an infinite game. Your goal is that people want to keep wanting to play with you.... I think if you do good work, it’s natural that you will become influential. Like good work is really rare. We want to have a better public discourse and a higher level of intellectual engagement. But it’s n

The Eagle and Child played host to scenius , the major driving force behind much of the world’s progress. It is possible that future historians will write the same thing about The Hype House. It is difficult to realize in the moment when and where communal genius strikes, but identifying a potential scenius and nurturing it has the potential to cha

Thirteen of history’s most productive and influential scenia and their contributions to humanity.

Patrons of The Eagle and Child wrote three of the five best-selling fantasy series ofall-timewithin an eighteen year period - The Lord of the Rings , The Hobbit , and The Chronicles of Narnia . It is here, on Tuesday mornings, that C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the other members ofThe Inklingsof Oxford met to read, discuss, and critique each other

Scenia do not start fully-formed. Instead, they evolve through three stages: communities, micro-scenia, and scenia. 

Community: a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common; a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

Examples: early personal