Conventional wisdom in the West, influenced by philosophers from Plato to Descartes, credits individuals and especially geniuses with creativity and originality. Social and cultural influences and causes are minimized, ignored, or eliminated from consideration at all. Thoughts, original and conventional, are identified with individuals, and the special things that individuals are and do are traced to their genes and their brains. The “trick” here is to recognize that individual humans are social constructions themselves, embodying and reflecting the variety of social and cultural influences they have been exposed to during their lives. Our individuality is not denied, but it is viewed as a product of specific social and cultural experiences. The brain itself is a social thing, influenced structurally and at the level of its connectivities by social environments. The “individual” is a legal, religious, and political fiction just as the “I” is a grammatical illusion.