DaVinci was a polymath and brilliant artist...some of his ideas didn’t work but we still call him genius.(my last name is mathis but I’m not “miles”...I claim no brilliance of scholarship...ahem)
Some folks exist as what I call SIG’s...or “seminal ideal generators”. They come up with intuitively brilliant and perceptive thoughts, theories, and can generate on the spot solutions to vexing issues that a working group has given up on(ie...why a door(to a medical pyxis cabinet on a nursing floor) with interlocks won’t open when the digital mechanism has unlocked it...my solution..”an object inside the box is pushing on the door from the inside keeping the interlocks engaged. By pushing on the door from the outside and disengaging the digital mechanisms again allowed the door to open and for me to look like a magician)
A true SIG does that sort of thing all the time but often receives no credit for anything or real attention as he or she may not be the most degreed or pompous person in the world. Since their work and contributions enhance the world around them in useful but not ostentatious ways, others often take the credit for when things ultimately go right because of what a SIG has done. A Biblical example of such a SIG is found here...notice how such a person sinks back into the shadows after he has saved the city....
Ecclesiastes 9:13”This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me: 14There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: 15Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. 16Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. 17The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. 18Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good”
SIG’s are all around, many are plain sorts, not pretty, and many of them are Christians.You wouldn’t take much notice of them on the street.(quite a few are very good auto mechanics, I believe). Some are like that solitary man or woman in a church who run the sound board “just right” or do the most amazing flower arrangements for the church and when they die the sound never sounds right anymore and the flower arrangements just go back to looking store bought.
There’s always that one wise person that not a lot in a group associates with but one where a wise pastor often stops to have a chat with because he knows that that particular SIG has a good bead on things and the pastor, needing a good lead for upcoming sermons, will often garner a good nugget of insight from that SIG.
SIG’s are often content in themselves and will help without the wish to be helped, often to their detriment. I think they are often mislabeled as having Asperger’s but a good exam would reveal that the criteria for such a diagnosis won’t neatly apply to those folks.
When the Rapture comes, a lot of those SIG’s are going to disappear and with them much of the savoring salt that makes life on Earth liveable if not bearable with the loss of their touch of whimsy!
This is very good. I have experienced this also. It has taught me to never judge someone based on education or professional credibility. “Out of the mouths of babes” is a real thing, I have seen answers come from the most unlikely of sources so I now at least listen to them all with an open mind and have been surprised many times.
“They come up with intuitively brilliant and perceptive thoughts, theories, and can generate on the spot solutions to vexing issues that a working group has given up on”
I agree, that pretty much sums up Mathis.
His paper on the Titanic is a great example. So many books written on the subject and he’s the first to look at it and say, wait a minute, a ship got hit with an iceberg going from Southamton to Hew York? Did they go around the North pole? In April?
I looked up the latitude of the crash site and it checks out: same latitude as New York! No icebergs at that latitude. Even if I have a hard time with his conclusions, He comes up with some incredible out-of-the-box stuff.