Post type: Short Excerpt
Thought I should do a little bit of writing while in the midst of massive load of homework and midterms to clear my thoughts and regulate my study habits.
Last year in psych 101 I was exposed to the idea of Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, which is essentially, Einstein's famous quote that ego is inversely proportional to knowledge.
Certainly, there are many [materialistic] reasons to choose teaching as a profession - abundant time for family, time to explore one's hobby, job security, summers off, good benefits (at least in Canada), etc. But ultimately, sometimes there are people that give reason for choosing the profession is "passionate about teaching", and "wanting to help people", or at least use these reasons to cast the materialistic benefits that tagged along with the profession - and ironically, it's often these "passionate" teachers that give off a self-obsessed, god-like, show-off-ness.
But come on, who doesn't like power?
As an aside, institutions love power. (See my previous post about my struggle with co-op)
In fact, I think because I was so immature and ignorant at grade 10, I was not aware of my intrinsic god complex obsession. Looking back, I can almost guarantee that the driving force for my single-minded devotion to the profession is my latent god complex.
I am generally a lazy person, yet I daydream of achievements, but often falling short of them, and thus I hate myself. But this anger and dissatisfaction with myself has definitely given me a more sympathetic eye for my surroundings.
The desire to feel like a god, and have a powerful influence and control in some way over other people's lives can be such a strong motivational factor. I have met people who work very hard, excel at school or other aspects of life, but that through their actions, they echo the god-complex so loudly that being around them makes me unable to hear other things.
I love to help people, it feels great to have helped someone. It makes me feel like a god.
But just how entitled are we to help someone, if the motivation behind "helping someone", is to gain personal satisfaction of one's sense of power?
This has been my core moral dilemma in the last 2 years when I started to question my choice of profession. I began to question whether it's right to be "helpful" from my own point of view.
I began to think that having a self-entitled god-complex is so wrong that it's shameful. So I stopped taking on leadership roles in extracurricular activities, started taking a diminished presence, and sank into a deep identity-moratorium (identity crisis) phrase.
Maybe it's because I have met [too many] teachers that were my mentors but gave off this god-complex feel, and that presence echoed so hard with my own inner demon that I've tried so hard to hide. You know those teachers that give off the feel of "lookit me, I am so smart, and I want all your attention"? It was as if they are in the profession because it's easier to show off their greatness - and certainly they are great in their field of expertise - to a more vulnerable group of people, and that they are obsessed with being god in front of these people.
Also not to mention jadedness - personal opinions after occasions of testing that seemed to be correct (by seemingly empirical evidence) is naturally taken as a fact.
Wouldn't these teacher, given how capable they [want to express themselves] are, be better off and find greater satisfaction in a career that challenged their intellectual capability more than a profession where they gain satisfaction by showing-off-in-front-of-kids-and-colleagues? Don't they feel vacuous in the long rum?
Looking at myself, am I really morally correct to be in the profession in the first place? I
don't think that my motivation factor is any better than people who are in the profession because of the pension or holidays or the ability to get-paid-well-to-slack-off.
And going back to the Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, is it because I am too much of an underachiever, that I have been lazily content with what I have, when I have really, seen nothing yet, that I have this god-complex?
But even as I hide and coward it so much because I am so ashamed of my inner god-complex, I still cannot seem to focus to find a way to get rid of this desire, and straighten my vision so that my root motivation for being a leader in the classroom do not include an artificially improved sense of self-ego.
Just exactly how can I become a truly genuine teacher who is there because I love young people, and I want to be part of their lives as they are part of mine, MINUS the intrinisic show-off desire?
How do I kill a part that is a part of me?
If someone has a cure, I would love to buy it off you, and maybe I'll spread the word to my teacher-gods.
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