Charles Xavier is a fictional Marvel comic book character, but a lot of people feel like “mutants” in real life…
Persecuted. Misunderstood. Or, depending on your perspective, freakish.
I can’t speak for all the freaks, but to me Seth Godin is not a bad proxy for a real life Professor X.
Indeed, his dome is very shiny.
He’s not bound to a wheelchair, thank God.
Seth’s School for Gifted Youngsters is actually located in Westchester County (it may or may not contain an aircraft hangar).
The real life leader of the X-Men has operated numerous Danger Rooms over time, from the Marketing Seminar to the Alt MBA, to Krypton Community College to Squidoo to Seth’s Blog, where his students can practice before getting down to the business of doing the work.
Seth communicates with thousands of mutants everyday, seemingly without fail through the Internet, the contemporary equivalent of telekinesis.
He is able to influence the psychological, physical and economic systems of thousands of individuals, with simply his thoughts (and the latest Mac version of Cerebro).
I loved comic books so much as a kid, the X-Men and Spider-Man in particular.
It was impossible for these heroes to fit in, so they became outcasts. Some wandered alone, absorbing excruciating pain. Some died. Others quit or tried to live “normal” lives. Some gave in entirely to the resistance and joined Magneto.
Professor X attempted to work with them to get them to realize that they could do great things with their powers, if they could just learn to control themselves.
He founded Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters to encourage the mutants to explore their gifts.
The resistance the X-Men experienced was profound… But along the way, the heroes I love learned to deal with it.