The One-Bookie Leader (Coda): Intellectual Descent
On re-reading the last few posts, I realised that I mentioned one loose end which I have not yet tied off. What kind of person mentors a future monobibliarch (or One-Bookie Leader)?
The sad thing is that as far as I can tell, the mentor of a future monobibliarch (FUMBA) is normally an innocent professional educator. The ones I've met are innocent in the sense that they are non-toxic (that's what 'innocent' means in Latin). They thought they were trying their best, and in at least 95% of the time, those they mentored turned out right. The main problem, as I see it is that they produce another 5% who are even greater monsters than the average monster.
This is the penalty for selfless endeavour in a fallen world. The thing is that if you are a particularly intelligent person who doesn't mind who you teach stuff to, there will always be a small percentage who will take what you teach, turn it to some less-than-benign purpose, laugh at you, and then deny that you ever taught them anything of consequence.
I think that if you're a FUMBA mentor, you should thank God for small mercies. The fact that he will deny your teaching lets you off the hook because nobody will blame you for being part of the MBA's intellectual journey. You will not have to live with, "You taught Hitler how to paint, how come he turned out the way he did? Did you teach him to paint with human blood and agony?"
I am sure that is how Aristotle felt when he taught Alexander the Great about the 'Golden Mean' and was later told that the fellow had gone and conquered the world just to spread Aristotelian thinking and other aspects of Greek culture. So take heart, FUMBA mentor, you are in good company. The intellectual antecedents of an MBA, the line of his intellectual descent, all this will be purged from the files and reviled in public so that the MBA can go on with his one-track cognitive cycle.
I once had the privilege of dealing with every single one of a certain One-Bookie Leader's mentors. For more than 40 years, I have known his supervisor, his mentor, the man who gave him his big opportunity, the man who tried to teach him by role-modeling... I knew them all. And you know what? In each case, I got the same response: "He's smart, but he has no principles, he's very ungrateful to those who taught him, he doesn't value other people and his very suspicious of anyone who doesn't repeatedly prove his loyalty to whatever new idea he has. He once said he doesn't even trust his wife, in public."
Well, that ends my sequence on the OBL, or MBA, or whatever you call this kind of person. It's an interesting study; expanded to 50 pages, it won't compete with Who Moved My Cheese? or The Iceberg Is Melting!. I wonder if I could give it a catchy slogan-like title and con the man into adopting it as his credo for the year though... Heh.
The sad thing is that as far as I can tell, the mentor of a future monobibliarch (FUMBA) is normally an innocent professional educator. The ones I've met are innocent in the sense that they are non-toxic (that's what 'innocent' means in Latin). They thought they were trying their best, and in at least 95% of the time, those they mentored turned out right. The main problem, as I see it is that they produce another 5% who are even greater monsters than the average monster.
This is the penalty for selfless endeavour in a fallen world. The thing is that if you are a particularly intelligent person who doesn't mind who you teach stuff to, there will always be a small percentage who will take what you teach, turn it to some less-than-benign purpose, laugh at you, and then deny that you ever taught them anything of consequence.
I think that if you're a FUMBA mentor, you should thank God for small mercies. The fact that he will deny your teaching lets you off the hook because nobody will blame you for being part of the MBA's intellectual journey. You will not have to live with, "You taught Hitler how to paint, how come he turned out the way he did? Did you teach him to paint with human blood and agony?"
I am sure that is how Aristotle felt when he taught Alexander the Great about the 'Golden Mean' and was later told that the fellow had gone and conquered the world just to spread Aristotelian thinking and other aspects of Greek culture. So take heart, FUMBA mentor, you are in good company. The intellectual antecedents of an MBA, the line of his intellectual descent, all this will be purged from the files and reviled in public so that the MBA can go on with his one-track cognitive cycle.
I once had the privilege of dealing with every single one of a certain One-Bookie Leader's mentors. For more than 40 years, I have known his supervisor, his mentor, the man who gave him his big opportunity, the man who tried to teach him by role-modeling... I knew them all. And you know what? In each case, I got the same response: "He's smart, but he has no principles, he's very ungrateful to those who taught him, he doesn't value other people and his very suspicious of anyone who doesn't repeatedly prove his loyalty to whatever new idea he has. He once said he doesn't even trust his wife, in public."
Well, that ends my sequence on the OBL, or MBA, or whatever you call this kind of person. It's an interesting study; expanded to 50 pages, it won't compete with Who Moved My Cheese? or The Iceberg Is Melting!. I wonder if I could give it a catchy slogan-like title and con the man into adopting it as his credo for the year though... Heh.
Labels: Intellect, Leadership, Mentorship, Research
etched with acid at 6:33:00 pm
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