On the genius, and the importance of translation.
The Greeks had two conceptions of cosmos: idios kosmos, which means private world, and koinos kosmos, the shared world. The former is often referred to as the dream or thoughts sphere, while the other one is the confrontational or real-world sphere.
The genius is the one who maximizes his own idios kosmos and imposes it on the koinos kosmos. In other words, it’s the one who pushes to the maximum the creation of his own image of the world, and then imposes his own image onto the real world, therefore actually changing it. The genius is therefore able to think and impose his thinking through actions.
The difference between genius and folly is the ability to impose your thoughts onto the shared world.
The first step is expression, meaning to experience your created worldview outside of your mind, meaning within the real world. For example, you can be a flying turtle in your mind, yet you will not be able to have a sensual experience on planet earth of how it feels to be a flying turtle, because neither will you be able to fly, nor will you have the form of a turtle.
The second step is for other people to understand your world. This can only happen through a means of translation. For most people it is language, but it can be mathematics, music, symbols, or movements.
Whether somebody is considered a genius or mad is first whether his thoughts can be expressed, and second whether his expression is being understood.
When Einstein said that the world is relative, he had maths to explain it. Without it, he’d be a madman. When John Cage can hear the beauty of nothingness, he has music (or the absence of it) to express it. And when that unknown autist sees the world in every detail, he has pencil and whiteboard to portray it.
The most beautiful minds are those that think independently. It is up to us to train our minds to dream independently, and to sufficiently believe in our own creations to impose them onto the real world. And it is up to us to hear those other minds, to understand them, open up to them, and give them the means to express themselves.