Did you ever stop to think about the great leaders throughout history? Not just political leaders but leaders in art, science, social values, etc.: Gandhi, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Lincoln, the Beetles, Elvis, Da Vinci, George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinem, Harriet Tubman, Eleanore Roosevelt, Nelson Mandella, etc. What made them great? What made them revolutionary? What was the one common thread that each of them shared in the tapestry of life?

They weren't afraid to rock the boat, go against the flow, change direction at a moment's notice, and try something different. They didn't do these things just for the sake of being rebellious. They did these things because they believed that they are following the right path and stood up for what they believed in.

Sometimes you need to conform, so you can accomplish a goal that you couldn't do by yourself. Children conform to fit into their families because they can't feed or care for themselves without their parent's help. Conforming to laws, such as "don't murder people" and "don't steal things," is necessary to ensure that everybody feels a bit more secure without having to spend your life in a fortress like the Forbidden City. And conforming to the "everybody line up at the grocery checkout line" rule just makes good, logical, problem-solving sense to ensure everybody gets an equal chance to purchase the products they want to buy. Teamwork can get a big job done in the easiest and happiest way possible for everyone. But teamwork is only a beneficial tool when them team goals contribute to the individual goals of every team member. Without meeting the goals of the individual, you simply create a society of masters who are drunk with power and slaves who are paralyzed with fear. But in modern society, we don't like to use the words slave or subservient, so people in this system call them team-members, but a technically more accurate name to call them would be conformists.

Conformists are easy to manage. That's why many managers give rewards for conforming. Do what everybody else is doing. Follow the rules. Don't question authority. Do what you're told, and do it when I tell you to do it. If you don't conform, there will be punishment, everything from social clique rejections to witchcraft convictions and getting burned alive. Dictators, totalitarian governments, and cult leaders demand that everybody be a conformist, so they can stay in control. The people in power stay in power. The people at the bottom stay at the bottom. And no matter how flawed the system is, everything stays perfectly "the way we've always done it" under the codename tradition.

The great leaders of history recognize this problem. They challenge conformity, knowing that they will likely be rejected and punished.

I worry that we are teaching our children that there is more value in being a conformist than a leader. We take away their ability to make decisions for themselves, we don't allow them the freedom to lead their own activities, and we even ban them from embracing their own talents and ideas because they don't conform with what the masters want to see. We tell them what they should be good at and which of their accomplishments don't matter. We tell them to ignore their intuition, ignore their physical or emotional needs, ignore that little voice in your head that tells you to question what you are being told, and just do whatever the adults in authority tell them to do because it's easier for the adults to manage them.

What about creativity? What about embracing natural curiosity? What about thinking for yourself? What about exploring (true exploring, not just being told what to explore)? What about trying new things, making mistakes, learning from mistakes, and growing? Why are we force feeding meaningless trivia into our kids' heads? Why are we forcing them to perfect meaningless tasks? Why are we crushing their ability to decide what kind of life and future they want for themselves? What do we tell kids to dream big and squash them as soon as they do it?

So then I was wondering around on the Internet with these questions and worries in my mind today, and I stumbled upon a video that inspired me in the past and still does today. It's from the amazing TED Talks (now those should be required curriculum). It renewed my hope, something I truly needed right about now.
Sir Ken Robinson http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66

Labels: Deep Thoughts and Philosophy