Socien's Blog

When a mentor becomes one, as I stated previously, he is one because the mentored has recognised him as one. The mentor I have in mind here, however, provides his services, per long-term and is unpaid: At least that’s what we observe from the first known man in history from an almost 3000-year-old work of Homer, the Odyssey. This particular historic Mentor was left by the king to prepare the latter’s son for the future, as the king left for war. The relationship between Mentor and Telemachius, the king’s son, was very much dependent upon not the king’s official appointment of the former, but the recognition of the former by Telemachius as his mentor.

If that recognition doesn’t make him feel honoured, it intoxicates him. Here is the list of symptoms of intoxication some recognised mentors exhibits:

• Complaining about roles taken by others in the mentee’s path: The mentee will seek help in other areas. His being mentored by the mentor was, in essence, accessing help. But that help isn’t all. It is philosophical. Material help and other forms of help will be required. The mentee will ask the services of others even when he knows that the mentor can help more in such areas, but he will ask for help from people he feels comfortable asking. Mentorship services are the only services he does not have to ask for. Others might even step in to address philosophical gaps that mentors couldn’t resolve on their own, without requiring acknowledgement from the mentee to do so. An intoxicated mentor will complain about this. He only wishes he had the power to stop the mentee from accessing help from others.
• The mentor engages in open activism against the new connections the mentee builds: The mentee is also gaining more freedom. He can’t bow down in exchange for the philosophical goods from the mentor because he now has most of them. The intoxicated mentor, aware of this status quo, feels that he is losing. He hopes open disapproval can reach the mentee’s ears and that the latter is a sphere of influence that can be easily changed by what the former says. This open activism is characterised by manipulation. The mentor knows what the mentee fears worst. He let the mentee see that the sources of the latter’s fears are the new connections built. For instance, if the mentee is worried that people who were never there during the build-up may come and take all the credit, the mentor can target such fears.
• Unworthy Protectionism. The mentor tries to reduce physical distance and barriers between him and the mentee: For the disapproval to be well heard, it must fall straight into the mentee’s ears. Once the distance barrier is reduced, the mentor finds it easier not only to disapprove and manipulate but to do so repeatedly. As such, he may be among the crowd convincing the mentee to move or to stay in areas that guarantee minimal distance between him and the latter.

One do not become a mentor because he provided material help. A mentor is recognised thanks to intangile philosophical help he provided. He, in a clever and unconscious way, make a philosophical lineage in which he and the mentored are part of. The latter, however, is a twist to the plot of practice and mentality about that philosophy. This is because in mentoring someone the mentor equips the mentored with all the guts its take to start thinking not with knowledge and strategies on how to think. The methods of thinking are ingrained deep into the mindset. The mindset derived the thinking. It cannot be mentored into someone easily and as swiftly as required by the demands of the time the mentored starts to interact with the mentor. When both meet, the mentor is already an adult and solid foundations of a mindset have been set; if new ones are to be discovered extremes of happiness or sadness, poverty or wealthy, you name it, can only unlock new mindset possibilities.

Both the mentor and the mentored, however, can approach a certain group of problems in a similar fashion. Their thinking about components that are core in the road to success such as failure, however, cannot be similar. For they see the causes and consequences of such components differently. From the onset, the relationship between the mentor and the mentored is all about rescuing and gaining a considerable level of control over the latter. As time goes on the latter’s mindset becomes to manifest. The mentor feels like he is losing control as the mentored emerges to become one he never set out to carve out. Mentors can only prevent their downfall by not preventing the mentored from going wild but providing philosophical essentials that can hedge against extremes. They don’t want to mentor what will become dictators. They want leaders, for instance. Mentors may not know, but their success is not tied to their original methods the mentored can project in practice over the rest of his life, but to essential changes the partnership has been able to bring to methods of thinking and practices.

Why mentors resort to “protectionism”

Mentors are all but visionary people who still guess that they have more to achieve,  except they can’t all by themselves. Their time passed. Or their age can’t allow them to go and fix missed chances. Yet, by mentoring the mentee up to recognition, the latter becomes the former’s emotional zone. No one was designed not to react when there are forces threatening to take their emotional cake. It’s quite similar to an example of a mother who appears to care about her son’s friend (or appreciates this dude’s qualities more) than her son. The son will secretly revolt to this by ending the friendship. Parents unintentionally terminate their kids’ teenage friendships this way.

Vision is part of the mix. A vision, as I stated in an article on it’s qualities, balances on its fears and hopes. For instance, a woman born in the 1960s would have feared getting into a marriage after 23. At 20, she got married. Forty years later, she becomes recognised as a mentor, typical of persons who are witnessing their professional decline. Her fears are still alive. But at this point in the history of humanity, some women are getting married for the first time as late as close to menopause. The mentor, acting to her fears, moves into protecting the mentee from a circle of helpers who are not only in favour of marrying late but have done so. The mentor in this case is intoxicated by the fears of the past not by recognition.