The difference between genius and insanity is accuracy of assessment

I wrote in my previous post about mental illness and brought up the topic of genius. Someone once said there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and I think that difference is the accuracy of the assessment of the world. Geniuses are able to gauge the world or a field in a new way that is “correct” or “better” than what their contemporaries know or are able to, while insanity presents a more delusional version of reality that is “incorrect” or inherently “false”. Perhaps it’s true that you cannot have genius without some insanity, because no one gets it right all the time. 

Yet, I’ve written previously about what constitutes genius. Genius is a term that an individual’s peers ascribe to him or her and is more or less a democratic process. To think oneself a genius is an exercise in inflating the ego and perhaps a step toward insanity. Geniuses reinvent and create new knowledge to revolutionize whichever fields they’re in, while, say, a prodigy is merely really good within a given framework he or she operates in: geniuses reinvent the frameworks. 

That further gets me thinking about change and the time it takes for meaningful change to occur. It’s true that the world does not just bow down to any one individual, at least not anymore. New ideas and ways of doing things bring friction to established norms. In Creating Minds, Howard Gardner argues that some tension between the individual genius and his or her world is necessary for true innovation, because novelty does not occur without friction.