The genius paradox: how a neurotoxin might amplify creativity

“Albert Einstein kept a picture of [Michael] Faraday on his study wall, alongside pictures of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell.”

The common denominators? All had astonishing creative insights and innovations making them some of the most brilliant scientists in history, and two of the three worked extensively with mercury and were poisoned by it. Mark Zuckerberg was also exposed to mercury and exhibits signs of mercury poisoning; stay tuned for that discussion.

POP QUIZ: Name the only President who:

(a) received a patent

(b) led the United States through its greatest crisis

(c) created the best speech in history: the Gettysburg Address

(d) manifested his imagination in countless quotes illustrating his brilliant originality

Answer? Abraham Lincoln, who was also the only President poisoned by mercury in doses that markedly affected his behavior (references: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

Mercury is one of the most potent neurotoxins, so for Einstein to revere Faraday and Newton may seem as odd as a sports fan admiring football players or weightlifters victimized by substances causing muscle atrophy. He could have added Nikola Tesla, who invented what Thomas Edison coveted but could not conceive; some of his prototypes utilized mercury in ways hazardous to health.

Physicist Ernest Rutherford called Faraday “one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.” Newton’s über-intellect was revered by Einstein, whose name is a synonym for exceptional brainpower. Thus it is difficult to reconcile how two of the brightest superstars in history had minds clearly affected by mercury—and at least in the case of Newton, also lead, another potent neurotoxin (medical evidence indicates that Ludwig van Beethoven had chronic lead poisoning: 1, 2). Very likely some of their work occurred before significant exposures, but certain discoveries unquestionably occurred during times of chronic toxicity.

What might possibly explain this? In a two-part series (Control freaks, creativity, and your career and Self-censoring is bad for your career and the economy), I presented evidence suggesting that a bit of brain damage might amplify creativity by suppressing the filter that functions to keep us from saying or doing socially inappropriate things (its minor function) and its primary one: of the countless internal and external stimuli and jumble of thoughts bombarding our brains, decide which are relevant and worthy of attention.

Here’s the rub: that filter evolved to keep us primarily focused on the here and now, such as avoiding saber-tooth tigers; people who didn’t were quickly removed from the gene pool. Average cavemen could get by just fine without creativity, which has little personal adaptive value despite its crucial role in fostering humanity’s collective success.

It turns out that topnotch filters are your worst enemy if you aspire to invent, write superbly, or make a significant discovery; what keeps you from doing something stupid also diminishes your chances of doing something brilliant, hence dooming you to the rat race. Hello alarm clock, goodbye doing what you want to do. In theory free; in reality a slave to your boss, who will take more of your life than you can give to your family and friends. A single flash of creative insight can be your ticket of escape—but how to get it?

The annals of genius are not filled with lists of bookworms who aced every test because merely repeating what others have done is not sufficient to qualify as genius, the sine qua non of which is exceptional creativity: intellectually going where no man or woman has gone before, not parroting information (or regurgitating it, as we said in school). Exceling in school impresses your parents, not the world.

You cannot break new ground by thinking what others think. Those with great filters may appreciate how they safeguard from transgressions (especially in this era in which potential employers scrutinize your online life to see if you are a plastic-perfect robot 24/7/365), not realizing they screen out ideas that could change the world.

Here’s one: I now have a 30-inch waist, but decades ago—when most people were still slim—I was so fat I couldn’t see my feet when I stood up. In the years since, most folks ballooned in size while I lost weight and kept it off easily, which is as rare as a dodo bird. The difference? I discovered a way to rapidly quell hunger that is entirely legal, practical (requires no willpower & VERY low cost) and healthy (no drugs, herbs, or surgery) in addition to making other food discoveries that billionaires would give their right arms for but could be produced so inexpensively anyone could afford them—in fact, they will enable you to consume healthier food than you do now at less cost, with greater convenience, and markedly more eating pleasure, so fun they may be more addictive than the Internet.

I have thousands of other ideas. When a few dozen of the best ones are commercialized, your life will be better than you can imagine possible. I can now invent almost as easily as I breathe, but I wasn’t always so creative. I dreamed of becoming an inventor when I was a kid and spent many years trying to conceive good ideas but generated largely trivial ones. I was so disgusted by my lack of progress I took a blue-collar job after quitting work as an ER doctor—something I vowed to never do again unless I were starving.

I put up with the loss of status and income, relinquishing my place in the top 1%, with others living in the mini-mansions I once owned and dating the supermodel clones who evidently were attracted to my money, not me. I silently swallowed abuse from my clearly disappointed mother, who did her best to humiliate me, perhaps thinking that might incentivize me to resume working as a doctor.

Fat chance of that. I was indescribably disappointed by my lack of creativity yet filled with a conviction it would eventually surface. But when?

Years passed and the only big changes were that I lived in a moldy house with peeling paint and a leaky roof, and drove a rusty car older than what I had when I was a kid mowing yards. Blue-collar life in 21st century America can be hard for anyone but especially ignominious for someone with MD after his name and a brain filled with a dream of inventing but no trailblazing ideas.

Flash-forward several years and I’d sold some of my inventions to a company led by a friend of Bill Gates—a company that internally brags it hires only the smartest Ivy League graduates was now paying me (as an independent contractor) month after month for years for my ideas (less than 1% of them; they’re not large enough to digest the others).

What changed? I lost my filter, making me cringeworthy outspoken but highly creative, conceiving many ideas I once couldn’t have imagined were possible—such as how to extinguish my appetite that otherwise won’t take “no” for an answer, how to prevent most car accidents and mitigate the severity of others with technology that all automobiles (even driverless cars) dearly need, how Google and LinkedIn could be vastly improved, and how one of the most annoying aspects of lawn care could be performed much better without engines—something that never occurred to me during the years I spent working in that business.

The most recent invention was a fundamentally new method of propulsion that has thousands of potential applications, including self-defense and yet another way to control vehicles so you arrive safely instead of becoming a statistic: according to the World Health Organization, 20 to 50 million people are injured in car accidents every year and almost 1.24 million die as a result: about as many as are killed by HIV/AIDS. Car accidents cause $518 billion globally in property damage—over $5 trillion per decade. My innovations will significantly reduce those losses and hence slash auto insurance rates. The protection they provide is so compelling that consumers would shun cars lacking it, thus it would be a game-changer for automakers, who will need it to survive.

Last night, my girlfriend (a nurse and psychologist who primarily worked performing neuropsychological assessments of intellect) called me a prodigy; previously she’s called me The Next Steve Jobs despite knowing about only a small fraction of my ideas. That’s quite a change from how our relationship began, when shortly after my creativity began to blossom and I explained some of my inventions (such as a wheel that can instantly and reversibly morph into a track that does things neither tires nor tracks can do), she laughed, opining I was just a bullshitter full of hot air, thinking “there's NO WAY he does ANY of those things.” She eventually realized everything I said was true when she saw working models of things she once presumed were just fantasy, but it took years for her to fully relinquish her doubts because I’d tell her about inventions she deemed impossible pipe dreams. She’d see me working for weeks or months building prototypes, wondering what the heck I was doing, and then she’d see it work in real life. Then she’d see me repeat this cycle time after time.

I never blamed her for laughing at me and doubting my ability because people understandably extrapolate from their prior experiences: after a lifetime of seeing no one in their midst generating breakthroughs, it’s a bit much to expect that a series of them would spring from the mind of someone mocked as a loser by his own mother.

My Mom had a small fortune and could afford to see any doctor in the world but was chronically plagued by dry skin that made her miserable even after trying all of the purportedly best products, including prescription ones. I inherited that propensity and had sandpaper-rough, pathologically dry hands like old leather that would often painfully split open (even buttoning a shirt could cause excruciating agony); they remained that way after decades of trying one product after another. Then I had a flash and prototyped it, giving me hands that my girlfriend says are softer and smoother than a baby’s skin despite me washing them dozens of times per day and using chainsaws and other power tools, plus living in a home in which I must keep the air nosebleed-dry during the winter (to prevent condensation onto my crummy Pella windows, on which water often freezes on the inside!).

Had I invented this before my Mom died, she would have been impressed; there is nothing like it, and not only is it esthetically superior, it’s better for health (skincare products commonly include chemicals that adversely affect people physically, behaviorally, and cognitively).

Nontrivial trivia: You think the FDA regulates cosmetic and other personal care products? That’s what I assumed, too, but it does not approve cosmetic products before they go on the market, nor do they require that toxic ingredients be listed on labels. “The Food and Drug Administration said in a statement that federal law doesn't require manufacturers to prove that cosmetic ingredients are safe before putting them on the market or even file product formulations with the FDA.” And speaking of genius, did you know some of those chemicals adversely affect intelligence? Scientists discussing the chemical in one that inhibits neurogenesis speculated it may play a role in the now-prevalent learning disabilities—hence one reason why the Flynn effect (the progressive rise in IQ from one generation to the next) appears to be plateauing and even regressing, and why our economy is sputtering. Every day, women (in particular) unwittingly slather on products that harm their bodies, minds, and moods, affecting them and subsequent generations.

I often wonder why I didn’t think of this innovation and other things long ago—how can a brain so seemingly stuck in neutral go into overdrive and stay that way?

I lost my filter that previously kept valuable ideas bottled up in my mind, rarely or never surfacing as aha eureka moments. Mercury was likely not the primary factor responsible for my creative surge but I think it played an instrumental role in potentiating the effect of other creative stimulants, which I will address in another article.

Thus I am not asseverating that mercury is some sort of creative panacea but merely that it may be an adjunct in some people, especially if given in the right doses at the right time and coupled with other pieces of the puzzle.

Creativity has little to do with memory or intelligence—and I wonder if IQ does, too. An employer with access to my educational records said my IQ was 160, yet at a family reunion I was a sitting duck for my Mom with a high school diploma who worked as a grocery store clerk and was determined to humiliate me. In college organic chemistry, after a professor asked how to synthesize X from Y, I figured out the 25 intermediate steps in a split-second. I inadvertently took the final exam of a class I never enrolled in and easily beat the hundreds of others taking that test, but for many years afterward, the dream I craved more than anything—inventing—largely remained a dream far beyond my abilities. Hence the blue collar job and people thinking I was an idiot for leaving medicine. Sometimes me, too.

I aced college and the MCAT exam but couldn’t invent worth a darn until my brain was so addled by mercury I often forgot 10-digit phone numbers seconds after looking them up—quite a change from medical school, in which I graduated in the top 1% of my class. My memory is in some ways still like a steel trap*, yet a rusty one with some gaping holes. After my mercury level rose, in two weeks I learned HTML, CSS, and to program in PHP and MySQL, going from knowing virtually nothing about them to producing interactive websites, but memorizing phone numbers (once such a piece of cake I never thought about it) are one of my weaknesses; clearly my brain changed, sometimes for worse, sometimes for the better.

* Trying to explain that apparent conundrum, I surmise that I can retain useful facts especially when I can connect the dots to form a big picture, but I quickly forget isolated trivial info—perhaps something all of us should do more often.

Incidentally, I no longer try to memorize anything; if it sticks in my mind, fine; if it doesn’t, oh well. Years ago I had a hunch I had too many facts stuffed in my mind (the urban legend about us using 10% of our brains is hogwash) and that I’d be more creative with less mental clutter—a corollary to how infomania (information overload) seems to be decimating our creativity. Instead of memorizing facts, I just make myself vaguely aware they exist so I can look them up if needed.

I’m also selective in what I focus on. In school, taking marching orders from teachers and professors, I memorized mountains of facts I now know are just mountains of bullshit with little relevance to the real world and specifically none to solving problems in it. I now focus on concepts, such as permittivity, force vectors, database structure and how information stored in them can be harvested to connect the dots in novel ways, such as enabling you to instantly find what you want on Google or finding the best job on LinkedIn.

As my mercury level rose, my creativity soared even more. That aforementioned track/wheel? I could now make it function as a complete vehicle (engine, transmission, steering, suspension) and give it so much traction an ordinary lawn tractor with a beefed-up frame could pull more than my 13,000-pound bulldozer. I figured out how to create computers out of stuff you have in your home that looks nothing like a computer—with that stuff forming Boolean AND, OR, NOT, NOR, NAND, XOR, and XNOR gates (the ultimate building blocks of computers) with input, logic (standard, fuzzy, or analog computation), nonvolatile or volatile memory, text or graphics color display that’s crude but functional, and with the ability to also function as a microcontroller—that is, to “do stuff” in the real world, not just on the display, and to do all of this without electronics or batteries, hence no recycling hassles.

Early on, installing plastic slatwall alongside one of the smartest people I know, another white-collar expatriate, I developed installation tools and methods that were overlooked by the million others who worked with slatwall before I even knew what it was. Later, when the company filled with Ivy League grads asked me to solve problems on subjects I knew nothing about, I’d quickly go from zero to having dozens of innovations and—just for fun—I’d add tangential spinoffs, such as a new way to protect police officers and three new ways of exercising, two of which would cause your jaw to drop.

Whenever I post an article that mentions where I began (derided as “slow” by my sixth-grade teacher) and where I ended up, people invariably assume I am bragging—something that is an utter waste of time. My dunce-to-doctor-to-inventor metamorphosis contains valuable lessons you won’t find from other smart people, most of whom were figuratively born on third base, yet act as if they just hit a triple. Being dealt four aces doesn't necessarily make one a great poker player.

I began from way behind and overcame numerous personal and family challenges, including gut-wrenching poverty and an abusive father who vanished and abandoned us before he was murdered. My psychologist girlfriend is amazed that I survived such a hardscrabble life, turning that overwhelming collection of problems into solutions she thinks would make great fodder for a book or movie.

One of the effects of mercury was to sharpen my intolerance for people who couldn’t see what I did. Then it hit me: until the moment those ideas popped into my mind, they were mysteries to me, too, with me completely unaware they were possible.

Others affected, too

One of the strangest people I’ve ever met outside the ER was very bright (Google wanted her as much as I initially did, but for different reasons) and so beautiful I put up with her peculiarities long enough to discover what likely caused them: as a child, she spilled a large bottle of mercury onto her living room floor. Gravity being what it is, the mercury collected in large gaps between boards on their wood floor, where it stayed—they never cleaned it up! Quoting from the New York State Department of Health: “Liquid mercury vaporizes (evaporates) at room temperature causing elevated levels of mercury in indoor air.” Thus with every breath she took at home, she inhaled mercury.

Dentists are frequently exposed to mercury, making me wonder if the irritability I’ve noticed in many of them might be related. They also are at higher risk of depression and suicide.

Does Mark Zuckerberg have mercury poisoning?

“Mark Zuckerberg … was raised in the house where his father’s dental offices are located …” His father, Dr. Edward Zuckerberg, said “My kids all grew up around the office and were all exposed to computers.”

And undoubtedly mercury. His “mother, Karen, is a psychiatrist who stopped practicing to take care of the children and to work as her husband’s office manager.” Dr. Zuckerberg said, “my practice was so solo that I ran it out of my house for 33 years.”

A biography/interview states that “he owned his own practice in Dobbs Ferry, NY from 1981-2013;” Mark was born in 1984 (random thought: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four about “omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation”), thus Mark was very likely exposed to mercury beginning before birth. Prenatal exposure is especially damaging to the brain. During an interview by Dr. Howard Farran, a dentist, he noted, “what you [referring to Dr. Zuckerberg] did is actually illegal in most states. Most states health departments will not let a dentist live in their office …”

There are good reasons for that. Quoting from a ScienceDaily article based on research from the University of Georgia: “‘As toxicologists, we know that mercury is poison, but it all depends on the dose. So, if you have one dental filling, maybe it's OK. But if you have more than eight dental filings, the potential risk for adverse effect is higher,’ [Professor] Yu said. People with numerous dental fillings who are also exposed to mercury from other sources, such as seafood or work environments, are most at risk.”

In fairness to Dr. Zuckerberg, “inorganic mercury [the type from amalgam (‘silver’) dental fillings] … was previously thought to be a less harmful form of the toxic metal.”

Some may counter that his son is a genius, so what’s the problem? The problem is that without mercury exposure, he may have been an even greater genius, minus the personality problems that—trust me, I speak from personal experience—are painful.

Mark Zuckerberg exhibits some classic signs of mercury poisoning, such as being easily embarrassed. During an interview at SXSW in 2008, tech journalist Sarah Lacy “mentioned his awkward sweatiness (there's that sweat issue again) when they first met.”

Interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the 2010 D8 technology conference, “Zuckerberg had kind of a bad night.” Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis said that “Zuckerberg had a Nixon moment tonight,” referring to Nixon’s famous propensity to sweat profusely when nervous. Yes, Mark was responding to a question about Facebook's privacy issues, but CEOs routinely handle questions far more challenging with ease, and he said he is also awkward around friends. Calacanis continued, “People at conference are talking about the most insane meltdown ever.”

I know exactly what they’re like; I had numerous ones when my mercury level was high. And Mark, in case this ever reaches you, I know an effective antidote (besides lowering the mercury level, obviously).

Mark has been called “the weird billionaire,” “a strange mixture of shy and cocky,” “socially awkward,” “obsessive,” and more. “The typical complaint about Zuckerberg is that he’s “a robot.” One of his closest friends told me, ‘He’s been overprogrammed.’ … Asked if he’s the same person in front of a crowd as he is with friends, Zuckerberg responded, “Yeah, same awkward person.”

That awkwardness may not be him but mercury affecting him, which in many ways is a carbon-copy of what I experienced. The irony: it’s treatable and to some extent reversible, but even though Mark is surrounded by smart people (his wife is a doctor), none of them seem to have connected the dots.

“While full-blown Asperger’s Syndrome or autism hold back careers, a smaller dose of associated traits appears critical to hatching innovations that change the world. … To be great, you can’t think like everybody else, and you probably won’t fit in to the herd.”

“Time suggested that the intensely awkward Bill Gates is autistic; a biographer of Warren Buffett wrote that the Oracle of Omaha, with his prodigious memory and ‘fascination with numbers,’ has ‘a vaguely autistic aura.’ … Craigs-list founder Craig Newmark, noting his poor eye contact and limited social competency, blogged that Asperger’s symptoms ‘feel uncomfortably familiar.’”

To me, too. Based on the timing of my mercury exposures, I know that they triggered symptoms similar to what Mark has experienced. My psychologist girlfriend likes to kid me that I have a touch of Asperger syndrome, which is probably correct. In my semi-autistic world, for the life of me I can’t figure out why people prefer, say, watching sports or going to the beach instead of coding and making invention prototypes.

Henry Ford said that “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.” That harmonizes with research I’ve read, yet it floored me when I heard it because I cannot fathom why thinking—the greatest joy in my life—isn’t universally relished.

As a physician, I like to explore the root causes of diseases and conditions—their etiology, in medspeak. By doing that, I’ve found ways to help people (and myself!) in ways that other doctors miss by just treating symptoms instead of questioning why they exist. An increasing pile of evidence indicates that behavior is affected by some things (such as infections) that are commonly viewed as just physical problems.

POP QUIZ: Another behavioral characteristic of Mark Zuckerberg endangers his long-term health and may imperil his brainpower so the illustrious genius won’t achieve as much as he otherwise could have. That behavior was shared by another famous billionaire, with the behavior being both a manifestation of a problem and contributing to it, thus creating a vicious circle. What Mark is doing negatively affects others in his midst, especially his daughter. What is he doing? What are the risks? What published research substantiates them?

Nota bene: I don’t recommend that anyone try mercury as a creative adjunct; some of its effects are so personally debilitating and painful I’d gladly swap being an average Joe for being an inventor. Those effects are now subsiding after I took steps to reduce my mercury burden, and thankfully the creativity remains—perhaps analogous to learning how to ride a bike and never forgetting—at least during the day; previously I might have two dozen inventions per night. For many years, I suffered from objective tinnitus (that made restful sleep impossible), not realizing how it was triggered by mercury.

I was also frequently exposed to lead, which didn’t help in any appreciable way. No surprise there; the big surprise is why mercury may have screwed me in some ways but blessed me in others. The mercury tidbit has little utility other than being an intriguing footnote in history and a hint of what the world might reap if the billions of people in it had their filters dialed back a notch or two. I serendipitously found safe ways to temporarily curb the filter (described in another article) with almost immediate effects, and with their efficacy corroborated by witnessing how they helped people I know and by reading of how billionaires used functionally similar substances to gain creative insights giving them a competitive edge.

My goal is to heighten your creativity, which can enable you to escape the rat race yet do more for the world. Trust me, you know all or most of the basic facts I’ve used to generate innovations that will fundamentally improve everyday life in surprising ways, and you can connect the dots just as well as I can—but like I was most of my life, what my subconscious mind conceived remained locked in it, ensconced if not permanently jailed by the filter functioning as a cognitive Iron Curtain. All those years with the filter having the upper hand—I wonder, what did I miss? What did you and others miss? Very likely solutions to every problem we face and stuff we can’t even dream of. I have several such quantum leaps up my sleeve, with the stack piling up waiting for investors who are now so convinced game-changing breakthroughs are impossible they waste their money and time on trivial crap: websites, apps, Theranos, the Juicero, and a long list of other things that don’t amount to a hill of beans.

Money can fertilize great ideas, turning them into wonderfully helpful products, but when it is poured onto figurative weeds, they don’t flower into anything special. Thus the world seems caught in a vicious circle: investors not spotting crackerjack ideas so they instead fund trifling ones, and with those inconsequential plans reinforcing investors’ suspicions that moonshot ideas are no longer being generated or are too impractical to implement.

Nonsense; I have ones that could be commercialized for peanuts, pronto. I could pick one, even on my shoestring budget, commercialize it and live happily ever after, but to do that, I’d need to forget about my thousands of other inventions because building a business around one is a full-time job. To end this stalemate (with investors trapped in negativity and skepticism), I’m offering some of my best ideas free to the companies optimally poised to implement them. This will help them, spur our national recovery, and erase doubts that I am just a bullshitter full of hot air, hence helping get my foot in many doors, hence providing more opportunities for me to catalyze progress directly and indirectly by educating others on how to amplify their creativity, the secret sauce of success.

The election of Donald Trump signals that Americans have had it with business as usual; voters clearly want much more than past leaders could deliver. I thought of how roads could be plowed free, more often, and more quickly after snowfalls, and how taxpayers could pay less while those who receive from government get more while helping bring us together instead of the perpetual divisiveness and class warfare. I also conceived ways to make healthcare, education, and defense markedly more effective at substantially less cost.

You could wait forever to hear equally innovative ideas from politicians, not because they are stupid (many are brilliant) and not because they wouldn’t love to differentiate themselves from their opponents but because they typically have superb filters that work overtime to censor themselves.

“Most people tiptoe through life to make it safely to death.”— Billionaire philanthropist John Paul DeJoria

Politicians typically tiptoe through life to make it safely into office, but what’s safe for them proved to be the death knell of American prosperity: since 1970, the percentage of household income by America’s middle class plunged almost 20%. Only half of America's 30-year-olds earn more “than their parents did at the same age.” Contrast that with the 1970s, when 92% of 30-year-olds did. “After decades of progress, the earnings gap between black and white men is back at 1950 levels.”

Over the past decade, the poverty rate doubled in the Midwestern Rust Belt, which suffered a decline in manufacturing jobs that “exceeded the rate of loss in the Great Depression.” Economic stress may contribute to the increasing U.S. death rate. The American death rate from drugs, alcohol, and mental disorders nearly tripled since 1980.

The lyrics to Billy Joel’s Allentown (“Well we're living here in Allentown, And they're closing all the factories down, Out in Bethlehem they're killing time, Filling out forms, Standing in line”) might as well be the American national anthem. Less aspirational, but surely more realistic and currently applicable. That’s why we see articles such as Americans Have Lost Confidence ... in Everything and Why America’s middle class is lost: The middle class took America to the moon. Then something went horribly wrong. In God we trust … in our futures, we don't.

The irony: those who seem great rarely have great ideas. Perhaps that is why Abraham Lincoln said, “It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues,” and why innovative aerospace engineer Burt Rutan noted, “Usually the wacky people have the breakthroughs. The 'smart' people don't.”

“If someone had tried to describe today’s America to you 30 years ago, you would have listened in disbelief. Americans know that our nation is heading off the abyss of destruction.” — Dr. Ben Carson, in presidential debate 2-25-2016

If being constantly on guard is doing us any good, I don’t see it. I see the world mired in problems I couldn’t have imagined when I was young, and those challenges linger year after year, decade after decade, poisoning the minds of young people, many of whom couldn’t name a single big problem solved in their lifetimes, thus instilling them with a conviction that problems are inherently perennial and just pile up as new ones are added.

Wrong. America transformed our land from a giant wilderness to an economic and military superpower without precedent in record time thanks to prior generations routinely doing the impossible, such as building the 363-mile-long Erie Canal: an engineering marvel from the early 1800s constructed for a mere $7 million—about $100 million in today's dollars—without experienced surveyors, civil engineers, or skilled laborers, made primarily by hand supplemented with animal power. That low-tech digging created so much wealth the term “millionaire” was coined shortly thereafter.

We could have modern equivalents of the Erie Canal that create wealth instead of sucking it away; recent politicians have spent trillions with little to show for it and nothing that creates wealth or accelerates progress. But the primary obstacle to our success individually and collectively isn’t our leaders but ourselves—specifically brain filters that filter out your genius.

Our society has given filters the upper hand, putting them on an undeserved pedestal as our hopes and dreams sink lower and lower. We’ve let political correctness (and all the filtering that necessitates) wrap nooses around our necks, stifling our voices and strangling our prosperity—and the only ones happy about that are those with a flair for Machiavellian exploitation who use PC rules to control us and to pick the winners and losers so they and their second-rate ideas can remain on top of a highly dysfunctional system.

Screw the filters; let’s make America great again.

UPDATE: Dr. Mark HT Ridinger posted an article (Creative Heuristics # 3: Getting in the Mood with Good “Creative Hygiene”) that resolved a mystery: how did neurotoxic mercury impair my memory and judgment yet phenomenally boost my creativity? The answer: by making restful sleep so impossible for many years that I was frequently in hypnagogia: the “transitional state from wakefulness to sleep” without Edison’s key-drop method: resting in a chair holding metal keys directly above a metal plate on the floor, with the keys falling from his grip as he fell asleep, thus waking him so he could tune into creative insights.

Hypnagogia is typically brief but my sleep deprivation was so severe I often spent several hours per day in that limbo zone, neither truly awake or asleep. I was intrigued by how I could go to bed thinking of nothing in particular yet generate dozens of inventions per night, with some of it things I’d never before consciously considered. The fact that it popped into my mind suggests the subconscious mind isn’t idle; instead, it is constantly attempting to connect the dots between seemingly unrelated bits of information to see if it can be combined in useful ways. I am stunned by things my subconscious mind dreamed up—things formed from such unlikely combinations of info I doubt I would have ever conceived them consciously.

My conscious creativity is typically limited to incremental ideas: thinking of how to improve this or that. My subconscious creativity can do that too, but it can also generate game-changing quantum leaps.

There are downsides to such creativity: (a) I have so many thousands of inventions I can’t possibly develop even 10% of them and (b) mentioning this typically evokes profound skepticism that persists until people see proof. If you are a qualified investor, I can make your eyeballs pop out of your head, repeatedly.

One more thing regarding my typically long articles: there’s a reason for them; see my article Read like Bill Gates, boost your IQ.

References:

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

Book: The Inventions Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla

Chronic insomnia in workers poisoned by inorganic mercury: psychological and adaptive aspects