Pizza: Inside the Box, A Discussion of Mill's Aversion to Custom

Question:  Is custom inherently bad for the cultivation of genius?

Everyone has heard that the line between madness and genius is a thin one, or a matter of perspective. Without social structure, I would argue that there would be no line at all. Mill has an overactive aversion to any sort of uniformity and the central question of this commentary is first of all, why does he see all forms of uniformity as such a negative force, and secondly, is he right to view it this way? Premise 3 and 4 concerning the argument of Individuality concern genius and custom. The idea is that genius needs freedom to thrive, because, for Mill, divergent opinion breeds genius, and that conformity and custom inhibit the developing of faculties.

Mill is making an argument about the liberty of individuals and such is predisposed to make an argument (as a utilitarian) for the useful aspects of the freedom to form opinions. In fact, it is common sense that the most brilliant members of society tend to be out of the box thinkers, but without any intellectual/historical structure any genius would presumably not amount to much. I would argue that one can only be as intelligent as the smartest man of their time, that is intelligence needs structure upon which to build itself. For example, no one in the Macedonian empire would conceive of the atomic bomb, because not only would they be working from the structure of knowledge of nuclear power, but they would also not have the technology to create it. There may be genius's continually pushing society forward, but they owe much to the pre-existing structures and even conformity that Mill despises. Society has a way of preserving certain norms, and while some may need to be abolished, and all may need reform, they preserve potential historical structures which at some point were aimed at some good. All genius is owed to this historical development, for it as much as it is the geniuses moving history forward, so it is the opposite.

Mill's argument still holds water, in that revolutionary thinkers are just that, revolutionary. Though, without custom, brilliance would not have a language with which to speak, Mill is not speaking of a time without a large structure of history to build upon, he is instead speaking of the utility of a lack of constraint on free thought. It seems that persons are already enshrouded by their cultures and customs, born into them, and as thus, it is not very useful to praise them. The utility of freedom of speech and thought has obvious ties to an aversion to custom. The freedom to express new ideas is easily shown to be beneficial to intellectual pursuits, for if one could not express new ideas freely there would be, well, no new ideas. Diversity in thought is certainly beneficial to the progression of ideas, but all these diversities need structure through which to communicate these new ideas. To say that the faculties of a conformed member of society is useless is to go too far. Firstly, can it be said that any two people are so conformed by custom that they lack in some diversity between them. Simply by virtue of separate spacial existences they are bound to have different ideas in some respect, regardless of how related to custom. And secondly, perhaps the genius of pizza making has some revolutionary new ideas, but I still could go for a classic slice made by my run-of-the-mill pizzeria, whose usual recipe is most likely some version of a custom. That is to say, many customs become customs because they are good and should be remembered. Thus, while Mill is right that freedom of thought and speech has immense utility to the progression of thought, he does not give due credit to custom.