Think Like Da Vinci: 7 Easy Steps to Boosting Your Everyday Genius. Michael Gelb

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      Many of these innovations and most of the great art masterpieces of the period were fueled by the entrepreneurial spirit, the spreading desire for consumer goods, and a rush to capital. In Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, Lisa Jardine shows, with magnificent illustrations and incisive, detailed text, how the cultural and intellectual transformations of the Renaissance were driven by expanding capitalism. She suggests that “those impulses which today we disparage as ‘consumerism’ ” were present in the Renaissance mind-set that produced the works and advances we treasure today. Even commercialism played a role: “A painter’s reputation rested on his ability to arouse commercial interest in his works of art, not on some intrinsic criteria of intellectual worth.”

      This extraordinary burgeoning awareness of human capability was delightfully reflected by changes in the rules of chess. Prior to the Renaissance, the queen moved only one square at a time; but as the perception of human horizons and potential expanded, she was granted the wide-ranging powers she maintains to this day.

      Still, the question remains why the Renaissance took place when it did. For one thousand years prior, European accomplishments in the realms of science and exploration were negligible. Throughout the Middle Ages, the vast majority of human intellectual energy and effort was diverted to questions of doctrinal minutiae and “holy” war. Instead of exploring new lands, innovations, and ideas, the best minds engaged in debates on how many angels could fit on the head of a pin, and the church rarely hesitated to torture anyone who questioned its dogma. This, of course, put something of a damper on independent thinking.

      The seminal event that led to the Renaissance, my colleague Raymond Keene and I believe, occurred in the fourteenth century when the Black Plague swept through Europe. Almost one half of the population was destroyed in a rapid and hideous fashion. Priests, bishops, nobles, and knights died in the same proportion as peasants, serfs, harlots, and tradesmen. Devotion, piety, and loyalty to the church provided no protection, shaking the faith of people from all walks of life. Moreover, wealthy families had their ranks thinned almost overnight, concentrating wealth in the hands of the lucky survivors. While they would previously have spent this wealth on the church, the wealthy began to hedge their bets after the plague and began to invest in independent scholarship. In what was at first an almost imperceptibly subtle shift of consciousness, answers were sought outside of prayer and dogma. Surging intellectual energy, dammed for a millennium in ecclesiastical reservoirs, began to flow through the pestilence-inspired breach.

      Five hundred years after the Renaissance, at a time when nations and corporations rival the church in their claims to people’s loyalties, the world is experiencing an even more dramatic expansion of knowledge, capitalism, and interconnection. Air travel – the fulfillment of one of Da Vinci’s dreams and prophecies – telephones, radio, television, motion pictures, facsimile machines, personal computers, and now the Internet combine to weave an increasingly complex web of global information exchange. Revolutionary advances in agriculture, automation, and medicine are taken for granted. We’ve landed men on the moon and machines on Mars, unleashed the power of the atom, deciphered the genetic code, and unlocked many of the secrets of the human brain. These dramatic developments in communication and technology stimulate the energies of capitalism and free society and the erosion of totalitarianism.

      You can’t help but notice that change is accelerating. How these changes will affect you personally and professionally, nobody knows. But, like the thinkers at the end of the cataclysmic change caused by the Black Death, we owe it to ourselves to ask if we can afford to let the authorities of our time – whether church, government, or corporation – think for us.

      It is safe to say, however, that accelerating change and increasing complexity multiply the value of intellectual capital. The individual’s ability to learn, adapt, and think, independently and creatively, is at a premium. During the Renaissance, individuals with a medieval mind-set were left behind. Now, in the Information Age, medieval-and industrial-era thinkers are threatened with extinction.

      The Renaissance was inspired by the ideals of classical antiquity – awareness of human power and potentiality, and a passion for discovery – but it also transformed them to meet the challenges of the time. Now we can draw inspiration from Renaissance ideals, transforming them to meet our own challenges.

      Perhaps, like many of my friends, you feel that your greatest challenge is living a balanced, fulfilling life in the face of increasing stress from every direction. As we noted, our medieval ancestors had no concept of time; we, on the other hand, are in danger of being controlled by the clock. In the Middle Ages, information was unavailable to the average person, and the few books that existed were in Latin, which was taught only to the elite. Now we are awash in an unprecedented, unrelenting overflow of data. In five hundred years we’ve moved from a world where everything was certain and nothing changed to a world where nothing seems certain and everything changes.

      Accelerating change has inspired a never-before-seen burgeoning of interest in personal growth, soul awakening, and spiritual experience. The sheer availability of information about the world’s esoteric traditions has launched a tsunami of seeking. (A hundred years ago you would have had to have climbed a mountain in India to learn how to meditate; today you can take a course at the Y, download information from the Internet, or choose from hundreds of volumes at your local bookstore.) At the same time, the information glut contributes to pervasive cynicism, fragmentation, and a sense of helplessness. We have more possibilities, more freedom, more options than any people who have ever lived. Yet there is more junk, more mediocrity, more garbage to sort through than ever too.

       THE MODERN RENAISSANCE MAN OR WOMAN

      The ideal of the Renaissance man or woman, or uomo universale, has always suggested a well-rounded, balanced person, comfortable with both art and science. The liberal arts curriculum of universities around the world originated as a reflection of this ideal. In an age of increasing specialization, attaining balance requires going against the grain. In addition to possessing a good knowledge of the classical liberal arts, the modern uomo universale is also:

      

Computer literate: Although even Leonardo may have had trouble programming a VCR, the modern Renaissance man or woman is attuned to developments in information technology and is increasingly at home on the World Wide Web.

      

Mentally literate: As discussed earlier, 95 percent of what we know about the human brain has been learned in the last twenty years. Mental literacy is a term, coined by Tony Buzan, to express a practical familiarity with this evolving understanding of the workings of the human mind. It begins with an appreciation of the vast potential of the brain and the multiplicity of intelligences, and includes the development of the accelerated learning and creative thinking skills that will be introduced in the following pages.

      

Globally aware: In addition to appreciating the global links in communication, economies, and ecosystems, the modern uomo universale is comfortable with different cultures. Racism, sexism, religious persecution, homophobia, and nationalism are viewed as vestiges of a primitive stage of evolution. Modern Renaissance people in the West cultivate a particular appreciation for Eastern culture and vice versa.

      For seekers who wish to cut through the dross, to find deeper levels of meaning, beauty, and quality of life, Leonardo da Vinci – the patron saint of independent thinkers – beckons you onward.

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