"Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that the way to succeed is through following "the rules." In fact most such rules are just hacks to manage large groups efficiently."
Reminds me of something Seth Godin (?) once said - that the whole purpose of school is to institutionalize mediocrity
The main tool used by schools to manage large groups is competition. Whenever you get two or more people to compete then they have to be, by definition, doing the same thing. The rest of the rules are only there to cover the corner cases that competition misses.
Similarly, no one who is the best at something can ever, by definition, push the human race forward. Because to be the best at something means you have to be, by definition, doing the same thing as everyone else. C.f. here:
To move forward you have to, by definition, be going in the same direction. The freakish geniuses change the human race, but it's the loyal hard-workers who move it forward.
[sorry to quibble over semantics, but it was too obvious an opportunity to pass p]
"To move forward you have to, by definition, be going in the same direction."
The idea that progress has directionality is just a metaphor to aid visualization. It has no basis in reality. Your argument is a logical fallacy; I forget the name, but it involves using the same word in two different senses.
Progress must have direction (at least implicitly, relative to that which is not progress), or we wouldn't be able to define it; it would just be "change".
Moreover, to say that freakish geniuses "change" the world would be a truism, except for the fact that "the world" doesn't actually change unless everyone else follows the freak. So the parent comment has merit -- you need the people who do weird things, and you need the people who do the hard work of filling in the gaps. Progress is defined by the movement of the whole, and not the movement of an individual.
You can't have an idea of progress without some way of distinguising better from worse, forward from back, more progressed from less progressed. it's been part of the word all along (latin 'progredi', to step forward) - not that etymology always matters, but in this case the metaphor is essential to the concept.
If we have a clear idea of what "pushing the human race forward" is (more knowledge? less famine? better morals?), then somebody can be the 'best' at it - even if they are the best by being somehow innovative.
I'm not sure that this is a fruitful discussion to be having, though - except that people often seem to talk about progress without reflecting on what they mean. Besides, you started it with "push the human race forward" ;)
Reminds me of something Seth Godin (?) once said - that the whole purpose of school is to institutionalize mediocrity