Finding Your Scenius: The Power of Place and Time

I recently discovered the city of Edinburgh in Scotland last year. As I dug into the history of the place, I found out it was the scene of the Scottish Enlightenment that occurred during the 18th to 19th century. It was a place of great learning and progress in the arts and science. 

According to Wikipedia: “In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterized by a thoroughgoing empiricism and practicality where the chief values were improvement, virtue, and practical benefit for the individual and society as a whole.

Among the fields that rapidly advanced were philosophy, political economy, engineering, architecture, medicine, geology, archaeology, botany and zoology, law, agriculture, chemistry and sociology. Among the Scottish thinkers and scientists of the period were Joseph Black, Robert Burns, William Cullen, Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, James Hutton, John Playfair, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Dugald Stewart.

The Scottish Enlightenment had effects far beyond Scotland, not only because of the esteem in which Scottish achievements were held outside Scotland, but also because its ideas and attitudes were carried all over Great Britain and across the Western world as part of the Scottish diaspora, and by foreign students who studied in Scotland.”

And this has happened many times throughout the history of human civilization. Almost always centered around cities that were rich, in the middle of trade flows or the center of an empire. 

Places like ancient Athens, republican and Imperial Rome, Abbasid Baghdad, Umayyad Córdoba in Spain, Florence during the Italian Renaissance. Amsterdam from 1585 to 1672, London during Victorian times. Or more recently, Chicago, Paris, New York and Berlin in the 1920s. Places that were the center of action and where things were happening. 

Another way to describe this is a term called Scenius. Defined by the brilliant Kevin Kelley as the following: 

“Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes”  can occasionally generate. His actual definition is:  “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.”

Individuals immersed in a productive scenius will blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like a genius. Your like-minded peers, and the entire environment inspire you.

The geography of scenius is nurtured by several factors:

•  Mutual appreciation — Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure.

•  Rapid exchange of tools and techniques — As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.

• Network effects of success — When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.

•  Local tolerance for the novelties — The local “outside” does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.

Scenius can erupt almost anywhere, and at different scales: in a corner of a company, in a neighborhood, or in an entire region.”

I realized how lucky I am to be in San Francisco in the late 90s. This is where the great technology boom and renaissance was and still is happening. A place where the smartest, most ambitious and talented young people want to go, live and build. I genuinely believe that most of my relative success can be attributed to being in this place the last 2 and half decades. I’ve said many times, you have to go to the center of the network. For better or worse, it is Silicon Valley in this day and age. 

And so my point here is, place and time really matters. If your life is not in a good place or where you want it, the easiest way to fix this is to move somewhere else. Preferably somewhere that is a “scenius” that will enable your success and ambitions. A place that will put a trajectory back into your life. 

As Naval once wrote, that well describes the importance of Scenius: "The three big decisions - what you do, where you live, and who you’re with."