Hypomanic Edge Winners!
If Steve Jobs said he felt personally destined to speed up human evolution and bring world peace, you'd probably think he was off his rocker. It's completely irrational right? But that's precicely what Andrew Carnegie thought - a thought that spawned the industrial revolution. If tomorrow, The Donald came out and said, "I am the messiah" - OK bad example, because he HAS completely unscrewed all of his nuts and bolts - but that is precisely what Chris Columbus believed, supplying him with the drive to discover. Both Carnegie and Columbus display what John Gartner calls Hypomania - a genetically based mild form of mania - and it's the same trait that for centuries has been peculiar to Americans, driving us to unparalleled innovation and material success. The Hypomanic Edge is one that you should all read and digest, because I'm sure a number of you readers are in the same boat.
I love the subtitle - The link between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America. But what is the foundation of America's (A Little) Craziness? Gartner plainly says that America is so hypomanic because it is populated primarily by immigrants. It's maybe the boldest self-selection process ever conducted. Think about it, the people that came here had the (often irrational) will, optimism, and daring to take the leap into the unknown, and these traits have continued to be passed through the generations.
Hypomania is not a full-blown clinical illness, it is a "temperament" that endows us with unusual (again often irrational) energy, creativity, enthusiasm, and propensity for taking risks. Hypomanics tend to jump on every idea, even absolutely crazy ones, and often that has led to brilliant inventions. And this often irrational energy is why Americans have tended to have enormous entrepreneurial zeal, drive for innovation, and maybe more than any other culture or nation, drive for material success.
By looking at case studies of nine "Great Americans", Gartner represents this phenomenon of hypomania. From Columbus to Carnegie to the Mayer and Selznick families (who helped create the peculiar American art form of Hollywood film) to Craig Venter, who decoded the human genome, yet was despised by his peers for colleagues for his arrogance, even as he spurred them on to great discoveries.
If only for the brief histories of the crazy men, The Hypomanic Edge is worth it. But better yet is Gartner's theory in general. Hypomania is a fascinating psychological conclusion - one that seems to perfectly represent the few centuries of American history. I'm mean, just play Oregon Trail for a while. Who else would deal with all that crap just to get some gold or spoils. Just think of people swimming across rivers, or floating on make-shift rafts, all to get to a land of promise. That's the mentality that makes America the richest nation in the world, and one that maybe we should all contemplate for a moment given this current political immigration battle.
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