The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 71 Degrees
I’m going through a five hour presentation by John Taylor Gatto, former New York School Teacher of the Year. They published it on YouTube as well here.
It’s fascinating as he traces the history of how school was designed to eradicate your ability to use your imagination.
It’s rather eye opening as he explains that compulsory schooling was really created for one purpose – and that purpose was to create workers that could follow rules. Nice.
Is it a wonder why the length of the average school day happens to be the same as the length of the average workday?
So what happens when someone loses the ability to imagine things that don’t yet exist? What happens when an individual is trained to have a Pavlovian “need to please” response to authority? What happens when success requires nothing more than memorizing and regurgitating useless facts with little or no substance?
I can tell you what happened, because I was amazing at that. I could regurgitate volumes of information without really thinking about it. I was Mr. Obedient, Mr. Straight A’s., Mr. He Has No Clue What’s REALLY Going On.
I look back with great respect at the folks school called “rejects” or “misfits.” They refused to be tamed. That’s why they created so much turbulence.
The product of a routine like that is an obedient automaton. Someone who has completely forgotten just how powerful they are. Someone who regularly betrays themselves in favor of pleasing another.
People like this might become more valuable to a factory that is looking for robots, but they become less valuable to the world at large.
What exactly do your clients pay you for? If they’re paying you to “do stuff,” then most likely, the long term prospects are not good. Because there will always be someone who can “do stuff” quicker and cheaper.
But if they’re paying you to show up and see things they can’t, to piece together good ideas in new ways, to help them imagine a future they can’t quite see yet, then that’s what we call REAL VALUE.
Value is hiding in your imagination. It’s a muscle. You have to work it just like you have to work your biceps.
Your imagination is so powerful, there’s really nothing it can’t do. It’s so powerful that, to “the system,” it’s considered public enemy #1. Why do you think they try so hard to get rid of it?
Because it can’t be controlled. It can’t be told what to do. It can’t be forced to submit.
And that’s where your value is hiding. Just start to use it and you’ll get better at it. It’ll become easier, more powerful, with less effort.