The Independent Minded Empath: An Origin Story

Unapologetically Idealistic (Part 2)

I am an idealist. Unapologetically so. Defiantly even.

It is both a blessing and a curse. I went into a career in education decades ago, riding on a wave of idealism and believing that the ocean I was about to swim in was filled with the same. It wasn’t. It isn’t. I hope someday it can be.

Until recently, I was a conductor. No, not the chugga-chugga-choo-choo kind with the overalls and matching stripey hat. The wear-all-black-and-wave-a-white-stick-until-the-music-stops kind. I loved it. I was very good at it. It nurtured and exploited my two great superpowers. The first being my ability to be contemporaneously aware of both the big picture and the minutia like so many pixilated dots. The second is my ability to be as cognizant of the past and future as I am of the present – the so-called “30,000-foot view”.

I see things.

I see them for what they currently are, how they became so, where they are going, what they could be, how to get there, and what to do upon arrival.

I hear things.

I am tuned into the changes in harmony, melody, balance, blend, sonority and to the things that disrupt each of them.

I feel things.

I connect with the humanity within and around me and understand what motivates, helps, harms, and encourages.

I challenge things.

Through a lens of idealism at first. Then pragmatism. Sometimes cynicism. Always empirical, analytical, and logical. Just the facts please. Now what do they mean?

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I’m no superhero.

But if I were to play one in the movies, my superhero dilemma would be the story of someone who constantly diminishes and suppresses his superpower so that the people around him don’t feel threatened by his abilities. It doesn’t matter that he genuinely just wants to help them. They don’t want it because it makes them feel inferior. Or challenged. Or accountable. Or siphoned of their power and comfort.

My kryptonic weakness has always been trying too hard to be respected and unintimidating enough to be able to use my superpower to help and contribute to a world that doesn’t want it.

I was a conductor in this world, the Academia Universe. The villains are many there. Both internal and external. The external ones we know – bad faith politicians, an apathetic and rapidly increasingly antagonistic citizenry, insufficient resources, etc. The public THINKS it knows the internal ones – performativity, wastefulness, unnecessary requirements, etc. But they don’t really know the deeply internal villains - the super villains whose treachery is revealed in Act 2:

• The systems that reward cronyism and insincere virtue.

• The vast discrepancies between stated values and goals and actual practice.

• The comfortably powerful who obtained status through longevity and artifice.

• The leadership whose Duning-Kruger fecklessness make them blind to their inability to lead, inspire, or elicit positive change.

• The meritocracy that rewards the banal, blasé, and bloated.

• The arrogant dismissiveness that made some stop reading this article at the first description of internal villainy.

They are the ones who don’t know the difference between elitism and idealism.

They can’t distinguish between idealism and condescension. Mostly because they stopped being imaginative and defiant but chose conformity and victimhood instead. The ones who talk of the need for critical thinking, just as long as the spotlight doesn’t shine down on them. You can see who they are. They are the ones who show up only when it serves them and only in ways that feed their egos. You can hear them too. They are the ones who talk about education and students with the language of business and politics, rarely of educators. You can feel them. It’s the air of superiority which feels big only to them and only within the small bubble they’ve built for themselves.

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I am an idealist and an empiricist.

That is the now.

I was a conductor and professional educator.

That is the then.

I am evolving from someone who sacrificed my peace and power to maintain my position to do just the opposite – to protect my peace and power, damn the position.

That is my future.

This is the origin story of The Independent Minded Empath. There is much more to come.