Individualism: The Power & The Liability

[Brett A. Veinotte]

English novelist Aldous Huxley once remarked, “the more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”  

Our history provides plenty of support for such a statement, as the embrace of new ideas is seldom an expedient process, if it even happens at all.  Some revolutionary thinkers have faced ostracism or execution, and even the most celebrated innovators and inventors were targets of ridicule in their time.  In 1872, Louis Pasteur's germ theory was labeled "ridiculous fiction" by one renown physiology expert. Just a few years later, communications experts at Western Union dismissed Bell's 'tele-phone' idea as one of "inherently no value."  And two decades after that, physics experts' dismissal of the Wright Brothers' flying machine earned Orville and Wilbur the unfortunate nickname: "the lying brothers." So-called experts do love the status-quo.  After all, it is the only circumstance in which they are 'experts.'  The greatest enemy is the expert is always the innovator, but in each of these cases, skepticism and mockery from experts eventually had to be replaced with praise and veneration for the innovator.

Innovation is the outward projection of individualism and imagination.  It is fortunate for humanity that the aforementioned figures were not deterred by the derision of their observers. Paradoxically, their unique dreams are now widely appreciated by a planet filled with people...who simply strive to be like everyone else.  

...people who quietly relinquish their natural imaginative and innovative abilities because they are scared of possible failure or inevitable scorn.  

...people who have lost sight of their greatest gifts.

As an educator, I have long wondered why the imaginative spirit of our childhood diminishes and often disappears completely as we become adults. Many would argue that we tend to let go of our lofty dreams and eccentric inhibitions as we become more in touch with the reality of the world around us, but such an assessment seems misguided.  If we take a quick look at history, we'll find that this reality has been a poor guideline for great minds with meaningful goals.  And if we look very closely at history, we see that this reality  is often shaped by people who have little to gain from telling the truth.

Many will hastily point the finger at our troubled public education system. We certainly cannot deny that school is where we find ourselves as our priorities change, our dreams fade, and those interests determined to be least realistic seem to be permanently set aside and forgotten.  There is an abundance of internet forums where students discuss their feelings about school. One of the most common phrases, "school sucks" (or some cases "suks" or "sux") is perhaps a bit more than  just a popular adolescent slogan.  When we first enter school at age six, many of our best personal attributes are already in place. We are curious, innovative, creative, unique, and hopeful in ways that we will rarely be able to replicate throughout the rest of our lives. Yet, by age eighteen, these great natural gifts have quite literally been sucked out of us. Our schools essentially function as processing plants; in goes the curious child, and out comes the obedient employee.

However, we don't need to cast school as the villain.  Having a villain to blame is a long way away from having a solution to embrace.  Our individualism is not really something that can be stolen from us, but it is something we must voluntarily surrender. In our efforts to conform to social norms, school guidelines, and the appearances and actions of our chosen cliques, too many of us slowly let go of our unique ambitions and identities. As children, we are not victims of school or society, but we are often very poor guardians of our natural gifts: imagination, creativity and optimism.  An essential lesson is included with the more tangible contributions of humanity's great thinkers and innovators. Those who changed the world had to persist through two often insurmountable  obstacles: fear and failure. Most of us never even get to the failure; we're immobilized at the starting line by the fear.  Conformity is comfortable.  Compliance is convenient.  Originality is a liability.

Unfortunately, there has never been any great reward, advancement, or achievement which resulted from a desire to be like everyone else. Indeed, there are many people who benefit from the status quo of today, just as there were many who benefited from the status quo of a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. And their resistance to change has always been formidable. However, if allegiance to the 'way it is' had always been the paramount concern of humanity as a whole, names like Thomas Edison, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Gandhi, Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King could simply be erased from the history books. And those names are only a few representatives of just one century.

The great achievements and advancements of humanity never originate in some committee or bureaucracy, as we're often led to believe. Instead, they grow from intangible ideas, formed within individual human minds.  Just like yours.