Listening for guidance, taking the risk of thinking for ourselves
Listening for guidance, taking the risk of thinking for ourselves
Education should help us avoid complacent groupthink and encourage us to think for ourselves, exploring the mysterious depths of our own miraculous minds.
I have been thinking about risk lately, as I prepare to visit Europe for the first time in a very long time.
My first trip to Europe was in 1984; I went to study French in Paris, in preparation for my PhD program in comparative literature, for which I needed fluency, fast. Within a few weeks I arranged an apartment, registered myself at the Alliance Francaise, and away I went!
At age 23, I was in a totally unfamiliar place, on my own. I had a Frommer's guide to the city, travelers' checks and a Visa card, and I knew if anything went seriously wrong, I could always call my parents collect. But no one was checking on me. No one knew exactly where I was or how to get ahold of me on a given day.
How foreign that freedom seems now, in our era of WhatsApp, Facetime and Google Maps—how strange, and how risky.
It is becoming ever more unusual to spend any time disconnected from our hive mind, the great smartphone Google brain in the Cloud. We've gained a lot from all the technological advances of the 21st century. But at what cost?
It seems that even as cell phones and Wifi have given us more and more security, they have also, paradoxically, increased our fears. It's strange but true that the more tightly we are tethered to each other by the World Wide Web, the greater our fear of being alone and disconnected.
Parents fear not being able to find and help our children. Kids fear getting lost; and they also fear being found out. We fear what people will say or think about us; we fear missing out; we fear all the calamities our smart phones regularly display to us.
And behind the splendid achievements made possible by our networked minds lurks a serious shadow: it is getting harder and harder to think independently.
With so much information at our fingertips, we tend to assume that the answer to any question we might have can be found online, if we just look hard enough. Thus our job becomes to curate existing information, rather than make the effort to think for ourselves.
Over time, we lose the habit of puzzling things out for ourselves. We don't need to pore over a paper map when we can just ask Siri where to go. We don't need to learn a language with Google translate always at the ready. Who needs to learn history when the AI robot in our pocket can answer any question, any time?
It turns out that the fear of disconnection and the overconfidence of always having the answer is a dangerous combination. It leads to a complacent kind of groupthink that dulls creativity and deprives us of the thrill of venturing alone down an unfamiliar path, learning something new, taking the risk of thinking for ourselves and fully exploring the mysterious depths of our own miraculous minds.
Like the Earth herself, the human mind is much more than a machine. Although we humans have been clever enough to build machines that come close to replicating our own minds, there is an unquantifiable dimension to every manifestation of Gaia that cannot not be built or synthesized. Call it Spirit, call it Dream, call it the Cosmos or the Divine—it is a deeper, wider Source, not so much of information as of inspiration.
We come out of this Source at birth, bathe in it each night in our dreams, and return to it at the end of our lives. It is the immaterial matrix that animates all physical reality on the planet, and indeed in the known universe. It can never be reduced to an algorithm, or compressed on to a chip, or stored on a server, no matter how large.
Each one of us has unlimited access to this shimmering source of insight, wonder and power.
Each of us has the capacity to step off the beaten track of what our forebears built and what are peers are thinking and doing, and come up with radically new ideas that only someone with our lived experience—including our dreams and intuitions and the whispers of our Guides in Spirit—could imagine.
There is no GPS for creative exploration. The whole point is to get off the map, to boldly take a step into the unknown.
For people of the hive mind such as we wired humans have become, this feels quite risky.
For example, when I started this blog, it felt risky to put my standard in the ground and publicly proclaim my interests in ecology, mysticism, the evolution of consciousness and education as initiation. Would I end up hanging out alone, dangling on a rope from the mother ship, all fired up with no one to talk to?
The response to my small but meaningful act of intellectual courage has been gratifying: people cheering me on, recognizing the originality of this new path through existing thought, and sensing the potential of this line of inquiry to make a positive difference in the fraught and foundering field of education.
As a result, my tolerance for risk has increased, and I have become ever more convinced that It is crucial that we fight the tendency of our time towards conformist herd mentality and groupthink.
To be successful in the 21st century, we are going to have to be creative, resilient, and adventurous, willing to strike out alone while also reaching out a hand to help others.
Education can help, but not by telling kids how much they've fallen behind; not by testing and comparing and judging according to a preset standard of achievement.
Education can help by encouraging young people (and all of us, really) to untether from the Google brain and listen for that intuitive inner guidance at the source of all creative thought. By encouraging people of all ages to take risks. To get lost!
We should never lose our toddler zest for trying new things, our willingness to take a first step even if it ends in a tumble.
Meanwhile, wish me luck on my adventures in Italy! I'll let you know how it's going, since of course I'll have not only my phone but also my laptop and wifi at the ready....but I also hope to get lost, just a little bit, and tone down all the noise so I can more clearly hear that still, small voice within....
The Duomo of Cortona, Tuscany, Italy.
You have shown us so many gems of wisdom here, Jennifer, a verifiable Indira’s Net. Two things to add here: Last night I facilitated a Holistic Education Dialogue with teachers and students from the Southern Oregon University’s Master Program. SOU is where I taught for 23 years until my retirement in 2015. Our guest of honor at this dialogue was Dr. Phil Snow Gang, the founder of Holistic Eduction back in the 70’s. He’s had a fascinating journey all over the world creating a Global Alliance for Teachers and Educators . He was good friends with Thomas Berry, as shown in this video which echoes what you’ve been saying all along. I recommend this video: ”To Educate Eco-Sapiens” (link below). He was inspired by Thomas Berry initially and soon added David Bohm (On Dialogue) and Fritjof Capra's Systems View of Life. (I just graduated from “The Capra Course,” so I know why he gravitated toward Capra's ideas. Dr. Gang is the ultimate Renaissance Man, like Leonardo da Vinci, another Italian Visionary.
Dr. Gang is still teaching World Wide, and like Joanna Macy, he is entering his 9th decade of life with a mind that is still as sharp as ever and a depth of wisdom that goes way deep from childhood. He lives and breathes Gaia, both literally and figuratively. His morning routine is to walk in the forest near his home in Portland, Oregon and talk to his favorite tree. I love every word he says in this video:
https://www.ties-edu.org/2019/01/17/to-educate-eco-sapiens/
Second, while in Italy if you are anywhere near Tuscany, try to go visit the Pari Center for Learning. at: Via Federigo Tozzi, 7, 58045 Pari GR, Italy
This is a Learning Center established by F. David Peat when he first arrived in Italy, lost and looking for a place to stay overnight. By chance he found a room in Pari, a medieval town up on a hill. He and his family ended up settling there where he lived until he died. Long story, but for now just a hint that you are going to be walking on a land of inspirational educators, scientists, mystics and philosophers such as F. David Peat and David Bohm, whose book “Science, Order, and Creativity: A dramatic new look at the Creative Roots of Science and Life” co-written with David Bohm in 1987. This book had a great impact on my way of thinking and knowing. I’ve never been to Pari, but have been taking their online classes for the past three years. The Learning Center is now managed by Peat’s daughter Eleanor and his grandchildren. In fact, I just recently completed a series called “Incredible Minds” which dealt with Sentience. It was truly an incredible series!
Excellent writing and thought. Thank you. I teach (and serve in administration) in the agricultural sciences and find the trend you write about frustrating, but I'm not giving up! The young people in my classes are so diverted from education due to work, marriage, and sometimes family responsibilities that its difficult to get them to take the time. Google, or group think, gets the job done. So its a challenge to me to both teach, design assignments, projects, learning activities that get them to truly think for themselves and know I am open to that risk--and they won't be penalized for it! Another bit that keeps students in that safe zone. I appreciate the reminder and inspiration to do this.