An idea will almost always arise in one individual before another based purely on chance. That does not make one a "lone genius." The idea of creative individua

An idea will almost always arise in one individual before another based purely on chance. That does not make one a "lone genius." The idea of creative individualism as practiced by modern society is unrealistic and promotes marginalizing others for the sake of creating heros. The message is clear: you too can be a hero! One person can be 10000x more valuable than another! I disagree with you completely in your claim that it's well acknowledged that lone geniuses build off previous work. The general population credits lone geniuses with work they didn't even do. For example Steve Jobs and multitouch or Edison with much of Tesla's work. It's a huge problem and one that needs addressing. The majority of scientific and technological advances are the last step in a huge collective work explored by many people over decades or centuries. Even in one of the most popular examples of genius, Albert Einstein, this is the case. Consider his famous thought experiment about riding on a beam of light. Almost completely buried in history is that Camille Flammarion came up with this idea first, as well as some early ideas about space time. Einstein put the required last steps to form the theory, but still built on the work of others.