This is a great piece because it beautifully explains reification (quoting Ayer's great "Language Truth and Logic"!) and essentialism (as toxically propounded by Plato) and because it critically looks at the "Great Man" theory, and because it makes the case for "people power."

I was a friend of Steve Jobs in high school. At the time, I never thought of him as a "genius." To me, he was the "most interesting" person I met in high school.

He was not a "Great Man" in high school, but some of us saw a germ of genius in him. On the one hand, it's not a total surprise he invented the concept of what became the personal computer. But clearly if he had not leaned into the concept, someone else (maybe even someone else at our high school) would have come up with it. Also, he clearly rode on the shoulders of Steve Wozniak and others.

On the other hand, his imagination and energy (evident in high school) retrospectively evidences that it took a special person to catalyze the changes he made.

When I worked in educational software and talked with teachers, many said something to the effect of "we have to educate everybody, or we could well miss our next Einstein."

That to me elegantly affirms your conclusion that we need to be a society that tries to lift everyone. I'm definitely a believer in that! You can trace our failures as a society in part to our not having done more lifting of everyone.

Thank you for writing this piece.