To write the Geography of Genius, best-selling author Eric Weiner traveled to seven places where a golden age occurred including Hangzhou, China; Vienna, Austria… and of course Athens,Greece! What he found was that cities can create geniuses and pinpoints that its all a matter of having the right condition. For instance Silicon Valley is not as different as ancient Athens as far as appropriating other people’s ideas are concerned.

Weiner comes to the conclusion that “certain places, at certain times, produce a bumper crop of brilliant minds” that he calls “genius clusters”. For instance, Ancient Athens produced one of the world’s greatest clusters bearing in mind the fact that Sophocles, Plato and Socrates were all born at this place at around the same time. It appears that genius thrives in chaos and almost always happens after a major cataclysm, disruption or cultural earthquake such as the plague in Renaissance, Florence, or loss of political independence in Scotland before the Enlightenment.

Weiner believes that like Greece today, if you were a gambling man back in 500-600 B.C. you would not have put your money on Athens as there were hundreds of Greek city-states that were wealthier, more fertile and more powerful, such as Sparta. Ahtne gained from looking at the world in a special way due to the fact that they were seafarers. The Ancient Athenians applied much of what they saw in the Greek mentality so they “stole” a lot and learnt from others before inventing democracy, art and philosophy. Plato had even admitted to this, stating: “What the Athenians borrow from others, they perfect.”

Weiner believes that Silicon Valley is much like Ancient Athens in the fact that much of what is “invented” has its seeds planted outside Silicon Valley. It’s a system for processing ideas where the good ones are recognized and the bad ones discarded.

He says that genetics doesn’t matter in genius as much as hard work. Whereas, to raise a genius, the best thing that parents can do is to drop dead. The old proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child” is true when it comes to producing a bumper crop of brilliant minds.

Another thing about genius is that it doesn’t last long. In many cases a society can experience its enlightenment for a couple of decades or a century before it fizzles out – like a candle.