Dear Reader,

I’ve been thinking a lot about the myth of the genius—that monumental achievements come from monumental minds. Picture him at his typewriter, clacking out the great American novel. See him there with hands reaching skyward, leading humankind to its rightful place among the stars. My eyes, at this point, roll so hard I fear I may get whiplash. But this image is all-pervading in Western heteropatriarchal epistemologies—the iconoclast, the visionary, the pioneer, almost always White and male. He is the one who sees farther and thus must always take the lead.

My hot take is that (surprise surprise) the figure of the genius is a colonial one. He is framed as a maverick, the non-conformist breaking free and standing apart. He strikes out into intellectual terra nullius, where he relies on no one but himself to tame the wild frontiers of human thought. And if things are starting to look familiar to you in this image, there’s good reason. Here in the genius is the idealized settler, who comes to conquer but calls it discovery. We get all the greatest hits: the rugged individualism of the frontiersman, the myth of virgin lands, the “Great White Father” repackaged as a tech bro, wielding AI in place of plow and musket. But of course this is all nonsense.

The tech bro is simply the latest iteration of the settler genius, and AI is only his latest weapon of conquest. But there is a deep and abiding insecurity at the heart of AI that stems, at least in part, from the myth of the genius. I imagine him standing before the bathroom mirror, speaking his tech bro affirmations: “It’s you, it’s you, it’s you,” he tells himself. “You’re the only one who might save this world.” But something tickles at the back of his throat, the doubt that grips all human hearts. What if I am not enough? I am the Boy King, the Nerd King, this world’s Tony Stark. I am the genius—so why am I feeling so human? So they’ve pushed AI on us, built it from stolen words and stolen art, and promised it would fill the gaps of human frailty. Dear chat, please give me something smart to say. Dear chat, my species has a problem. Please tell me a solution that I may pass off as my own. A genius stands above. A genius works alone. (But oh this little voice keeps saying, Our problems can’t be solved alone.)

No human endeavor is ever the result of a single person’s actions. The genius as constructed in Anglo-American epistemologies does not exist. All that we do as a species, for better or worse, takes hundreds or thousands or millions of hands. Without the larger collective of working people turning abstract ideas into concrete reality, Caesar stands alone. AI exists to hide the fragile genius from this simple truth.

Think about it, dear reader, and as always, thank you for reading,

Leon

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Leon Perniciaro, Editor
Haven Spec Magazine

© 2026 Leon Perniciaro