This posting is directed mostly at AI or Artificial Intelligence, but the AI acronym may more appropriately stand for Artificial Ineptness or Artificial Ignorance. Although I am going to outline briefly a few of the big issues, I do think AI could be used for some benefit in a rather small set of contexts. But these uses are as tools, not as a decision-makers or as some similar holders of power and control.
An example I use as a simplistic demonstration of the limits of AI is one that involves the car I drive. It’s a 2017 base-model of the Toyota Corolla. It does not have a remote door opener. But, it does have some AI systems, such as an alarm for getting too close to an object in front of you, and it will apply the breaks, if it (AI) thinks you’re actually going to have a collision. Another AI system is the camera system for keeping you in the lane. The third system, which is related to the collision avoidance system involves radar that is used to maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you while you have cruise control engaged. And, the fourth system uses the camera and radar to lower the bright lights when a car approaches and to turn them on when there are no cars in sight.
I do like all four of these, but I don’t really need them, and I do not trust them. The lane control system often confuses tar repair lines in the middle of a lane for the “real” lane markers, so you have to muscularly override the car’s attempt to move you back into the lane, which is actually moving you out of the lane. The collision avoidance system starts blaring if you’re rounding a curve with concrete construction barriers along the side of the road. Even though you are moving smoothly around the curve, the AI system thinks you’re going to collide with these barriers. The high beam control is never more than 60% accurate. It’ll think house lights are car lights and it’ll miss many oncoming cars. And, it almost never turns off high beams, when there are cars in front of you going in the same direction. As with any technology, the information we get from the technology needs to be confirmed by us, real, thinking, human beings.
The next example is a bit more bothersome and important. I just got a notice from my home and car insurance company saying they were dropping the insurance for the home that is co-owned with one of our sons. His name is on the policy; he pays for that part of the bill; and he lives in the house. The reason for the notice was that we, the owners, were not living in the house. The reason this happened was, you may have guessed, the AI system the insurance company uses, checks for inconsistencies in policies, like home owners’ policies for home in which the owners don’t live. Such a task is far too time-consuming to be carried out by employees, so an AI system is great to have. But, when the AI system is the decision-maker, notice letter writer and mailer, there are huge problems. A human is more likely to catch such seeming discrepancies. The appropriate way to use AI is to have them send alerts to the humans who can check out and verify the situation. As it stands, AI decisions can drive customers away. I came within a few seconds of cancelling all of our policies with this company and going to another company. Pissed off customers are not good for business. Such situations are easy enough to avoid, if the corporate higher-ups cared enough.
Such situations get even more critical and more dangerous when we have AI driving cars, making medical decisions, and other life-on-the-line contexts. AI can help go through huge amounts of data and information, and alerting people to specific areas of concern. But, it should be up to the people to make sense of the information and formulate plans of action, such as a treatment plan or surgery.
The other pet-peeve area of concern I have is having AI write. Writing with a pen and paper, and writing on a computer, which is a bit behind handwriting, is a powerful means for deeper and more complex learning. As far back as I can remember, I always hated studying for tests, after which I never felt like I learned very much. But, when I had to write a paper, I felt like I had really learned a lot. And, that is still true today. I love to read and to write; and they usually go together. But, just having a computer write a paper for you is a complete waste and a huge act of aggression towards oneself. And, the same holds true of scientists and academics of all sorts, who use AI to write that paper that needs to get published. It’s just another sham and a terrible disservice to oneself and to ones’ readers.
My Blog entries came to a screeching halt a year and half ago, although it seems much longer to me. Time seems to be moving very quickly and very slowly at the same time. It seems like I have a birthday every few months, but then events that happened not very long ago seem to have happened a much longer time ago. I blame some of this on age, but I’d rather not dwell too much on that three-letter word. My body is screaming at me that I’m getting older, but my mind — for the most part — still feels like 40. My life seems to have veered into two, or maybe more, intertwined worlds. One world is a surreal visionary combination of Salvador Dali, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini with twists of Luis Buñuel and David Lynch, while the other world is intensely real — whatever that means — and riddled with the suffering indicative of being alive, while also riddled with moments of joy and clarity. Surprisingly, these seemingly different worlds occur in conjunction with one another. The last year and a half, but actually more like seven years, has been a joyful, painful, insightful, and very bizarre and surreal period of time.
In the midst of caring for one of my sons, who’s been chronically ill for 18 years and living his own version of a real—surreal, painful—joyful life, my own body’s aging issues — daily headaches, brain fog, and ongoing muscle and joint revolts, and a wide assortment of everyday life issues with home and car repairs, fighting with corporations who wrongly bill for services or goods not provided, and other issues that seem to be indicative of collapsing social systems. During this particularly intense past 18 months, I haven’t been particularly productive in terms of writing or working on other projects. I’ve started writing a book that has been gurgling along for a couple of decades. But, this project seems to have fallen into a rut in the fast lane construction zone. I’ve started a couple dozen articles and blogs, but they are backed up in long lines of bumper-to-bumper traffic. I’ve also dabbled in several photographic and multi-media projects, but most of these are still in various stages of development.
How do you like these excuses for not accomplishing anything?
But, this very question is a symptom of our real—surreal world. “Accomplishing” is like the gnawing desire to speed along in the fast lane… weaving in and out of traffic… avoiding any connection to the real people in their cars, while tail-gating and cutting them off, barely avoiding collisions, just to get where you’re going a minute or two earlier. But, it’s an adrenalin-rush… that could be deadly… but rarely resulting ins a traffic stop and speeding ticket. Yesterday, I was keeping up with the flow of most of the traffic in a 65 mph speed zone, but going 75 mph, when a state trooper drove by going at least 85 mph. He or she was just cruising by and not in pursuit. “Accomplishing” something just like trying to get somewhere faster and “better.” It’s factory work on steroids. Wanting to produce more, more, more, while desiring more, more, more money and “stuff.” While I was seemingly not “accomplishing” much over the past year and a half, I actually did quite a bit. I help my son with food, appointments, shopping, house repairs, and, I really hope, with maintaining some sense of well-being and some progress (whatever this is) in dealing with his wicked illness that most doctors just don’t understand, and don’t want to understand. I did more plumbing in his house, my other son’s. house, and my own house in the past couple of years, than I’ve done in my entire life… and, of course, I really dislike plumbing… much more than electrical, which isn’t far behind, structural, and painting. And, my aging body doesn’t like any of them any more. I hope I helped alleviate some of the intense stress for my wife in dealing with many of the same issues. However, I also managed to think about all sorts of topics and issues, I want to develop into various writing and/or multimedia projects. I have taken notes and written paragraphs, taken photos, recorded videos, and sketched out various ideas. Will I “accomplish” anything? Well, I already have. I’ve delved into many topics, read more in these areas, and hopefully learned something in the process. But, hopefully, I will produce some of this material for public consumption, but most will probably stay in my notebooks. I still love physical notebooks, but also use notebook apps on my phone and computer. But, there is something deeper, more flexible, and more aesthetically pleasing and stimulating about writing with various colored pens and pencils in real paper notebooks. Many of my notes will never move beyond the notebooks, but will always be there to ponder and expand upon. Others may make their way to documents or other types of projects. But, for me, time is running out…. it’s something I ponder more often now as age is taking on a new meaning that is both real and surreal at the same instant.
And, the idea of using AI to write blog entries and papers is somewhere beyond abhorrent, repulsive, and frightening.
Writing is a wonderful process that involves something like pulling teeth, sitting in a sauna then diving into cold water, and watching the sun rise over the ocean beach with the vibrancy of many lives waking up …. birds flying and singing, fiddler crabs looking for food, insects combing the beaches, fish jumping out of the water, and, maybe a deer or two walking along the dunes. Writing is both difficult and easy. It is cathartic, stimulating, clarifying. It points out very clearly what you don’t know. It helps you explore new crevices in your world. Writing is a set of processes of learning and growing. AI is none of these things. It’s hollow, lifeless, value-less, ….. (add your own descriptors and 4-letter words).
A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SOME OF MY THOUGHTS & PONDERINGS OVER THE PAST 18-MONTHS
BOOK — LEARNING & EPISTEMOLOGY — BUT WITH A MUCH CATCHIER & CREATIVE TITLE
Sounds boring and lifeless, but I’ve been trying to bring this project to life. I want to push away from the jargon and stifled writing styles of academia — styles of writing that are mindless, but formulaic and easy to do. What I’m trying to do in this book is look at learning as a fundamental set of processes that are descriptive of all living things. This perspective tries to stretch our understandings of shared experiences, but also our understandings of diverse and wonderfully complex differences. “Epistemology” is used, from the perspective of Gregory Bateson, to describe how we and all living things organize our own personal and socially-shared knowledge. I’m hoping this book will be of interested and helpful to teachers, future teachers, parents, and researchers, if they can stand reading a less formally and academically written book.
This is not at all in my area of expertise, but has become a growing and increasingly important issue to ponder. We’re now in the midst of crumbling political, economic, and social systems…. and not just here in the United States, but in countries around the world. Democracy seems to be completely unstable, with no viable ways of self-correcting. Autocracies are gnawing at the bit and threatening democratic forms of governments from both the inside and outside, like internal and external parasites. But, those autocracies that do exist are not doing well either. The entire set of nations is wobbling out of control. Our futures are more uncertain than ever before. And, all of this uncertainty and crumbling of social and political “structures” are occurring in a world of dwindling resources, a population that is completely unsustainable, and a growing divisiveness among people within nations and between nations. There is no ONE solution… and even MANY solutions may not be enough. So many intertwined and interdependent patterns of being and living and believing and thinking and desiring … And, to make it all work again is seemingly out of reach. Change can’t be forced upon others. Change happens whether we like it or not. And, all of humanity is unable to control the change. It seems that all we can hope for is to somehow find a way to get along with each other and to develop the flexibility to adjust to the changes occurring throughout the biosphere. Empathy and a sense of humor may be very helpful in this regard.
LEARNING & THE FEAR OF LEARNING PARADOX
I continue to be flummoxed by the fear of learning that appears to be ubiquitous within the United States, and many other countries. I can understand, but do not like or support, governments that intentionally dumb down children and adult students, so that they pose very little threat to the perpetuation of the power elite. But, people’s fears of learning is baffling to me. We have the capability of learning all kinds of things, but what we learn doesn’t necessarily have to threaten our personal or culture beliefs or our ways of being. We are quite capable of learning about autocrats without becoming an autocrat, or learning about psychopathology without becoming a psychopath, or learning about all religions without believing in one or any of them. Of course, this paradoxical situation is much more complex and is a situation I continue to explore.
THE DISCONNECTS & SCHISMOGENESIS BETWEEN SCIENCE & THE GENERAL POPULATION — OR — MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF SCIENCE AS PROPAGATED BY SCIENTISTS, SCIENCE TEACHERS, THE MEDIA, & POLITICIANS
Very little attention is paid to how scientists and the institutions of science have perpetuated and continue to perpetuate certain misrepresentations of science, barriers to understanding science as a process, and barriers to understanding scientific concepts. Scientists, as well as teachers, the media, and politicians exacerbate these disconnects, misrepresentations, and barriers to varying degrees. In addition, the institution of science and its members often portray themselves as intellectual elites and use ways of communicating that prevent even the educated public from understanding almost anything that is communicated. Science teachers pass on the same misrepresentations, since the vast majority have learned from the very scientists who perpetuate the somewhat misleading nature of science and scientists. The media and politicians can and often do twist everything about science even further out of whack. People are left confused, misled, and in a very mucky muddle of misunderstandings. No wonder people don’t trust scientists and doctors and are drifting into “anti-science” stance.
A 10-year old’s drawing of a scientist.
PANDEMIC OF DISTRUST
For millennia, distrust seems to have been a staple of leaders… from family clans and tribes to nation. But, in the everyday lives of people, trust was a necessary ingredient of relationships with others. Of course, the whole notion of “trust” has issues. Putting total trust in someone else, even in oneself, can be risky. There is a long history of a trusted leader turning around and killing his or her “trusted” advisor. Personally, I trusted my Doberman Pinscher more than I’ve trusted just about any person. And, I suspect she trusted me more than any other person, but I’ll never know. As for trusting oneself, I keep a little slogan by my desk and try to remember to repeat it to myself often: “Don’t believe everything you think.” My own thoughts can certain turn around and bite my butt, poison me, or lead me astray. However, relationships that depend on a fair degree of trust are beginning to fall apart as that trust is being destroyed. We see this collapse between doctors and patients, journalists and readers, parents and children, teachers and children, law enforcement and citizens, politicians and voters, priests—rabbis—pastors—mullahs—gurus—other-spiritual-leaders and their followers, and so on. What happens when such relationships fall apart? We’ve seen some of the consequences, but how have you experienced this collapse in trust? Although the demise of trust can have huge effects on large groups of people, such loss of trust can have very deep and devastating effects at a very personal level.
THE POLITICS OF HEALTHCARE & THE PROPAGATION OF LYING & DISTRUST: THE PATHOLOGIES OF DOCTOR—PATIENT RELATIONSHIPS
Photo of an Ivory Skull. From the Wellcome Collectoin.
As politicians, the judicial system, and law enforcement systems take more and more control over healthcare, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare workers are being caught up in incredibly awful double binds. They have to dispense medications according to some randomly formulated algorithm that has no relationship to the complexity of and variability among individual patients. Doctors can have their licenses revoked or end up in prison for caring about his or her patients and for making informed decisions about their care. Patients can end up in prison or psychiatric wards for trying to deal with their health issues when doctors can’t take the types of steps that need to be taken. And, then there is a public uproar about sick people committing suicide or becoming addicted to some street drug, when the care they need isn’t and can’t be provided. And, it’s the rare health professional who has some understanding about what “addiction” is and is NOT. Certainly, politicians, media pundits, and media commentators are clueless. Addiction is a deeply transcontextual or multi-contextual issue. While the “object” of addiction, such as oxycodone or morphine, is always blamed as the great evil monster, the object is only a part of the complete story. Addiction always involves the context of one’s own cognitive contexts. We are very good at making up stories and justifications for our actions, and justifying the taking of a particular drug is just one of many rationales for any kind of addiction. But, there are always one or more other contexts involved in addiction, as well. Someone, who is under incredible stress in the workplace or living in a dysfunctional family or trying to cope with being stuck in poverty or whatever, can often be driven to finding some way to cope with all these intense situations through addiction. Addiction is a way of learning to cope. It may not be a very healthy way of learning, but it is nevertheless a way of learning. And, most of us are addicted to one or more “things,” though we probably don’t want to admit it. Some common “objects” of addiction may include, Facebook, texting, Fox “News(????),” electronic games, gambling, TV, shopping, chocolates, anger, sexual gratification, hate, guns, aggression, our own ideas of who we are, and on and on. — And, here we are in the middle of a dangerous muddle of double binds, fear, anger, desperation, confusion, agony, despair, and nowhere to go, no one to trust, and seemingly helpless to make a difference.
THE DYNAMICS OF RELATIONSHIPS, IDENTITIES, & PERSONAL FEELINGS ACROSS GROUPS AND COMMUNITIES — THE STICKINESS, STUCKNESS, SUCKINESS, BUT HOPEFULNESS OF PEOPLE IN GROUPS
More and more frequently, I find myself pondering how humans almost always find ways to make things very difficult, painful, stressful, and confusing for themselves. I don’t think bacteria, fungi, plants, or any other kind of animal is quite as adept of creating such bizarre situations for themselves. Pondering such contrasts seems to lead back to the question of “what is intelligence?” Somehow one’s ability to survive as both an individual and as a group or species should be a characteristic result or process of intelligence. If that is the case, bacteria, fungi, many plants, and many animals seems to be much more intelligent than us. At the same time, there are glimmers of hope, when people’s courage, creativity, empathy and compassion, insight, and selflessness shine through and illuminate, even if just for a moment, our lives as humans. The processes involved in these contrasting tendencies are fascinating and complexly intertwined in ways that are often quite befuddling. But, maybe this befuddling quality is where human creativity and hope lie… if we can just figure out how to manifest this creative befuddlement in ways that will help humanity survive.
I’ll post Part 2 of this list of ideas I’ve been pondering as soon as I can. Please stop back, leave comments &/or questions, and share your thoughts and experiences.
The notion of scale can provide a powerful perspective to understanding. However, “scale” also can create greater confusion and deeply entangled, nasty problems.
Developing an understanding of the scale of the Solar System can be eye-opening. But, if not done appropriately can result in even greater confusion. In textbooks, the solar system may show the Sun and planets in scale according to size, but it is physically impossible to show the arrangement and distances to the same scale in a textbook. And, then there is a third dimension that is almost never represented or discussed, and that is time. To do a truly representative scale model of the Solar System, one has to find a do-able scale for size and distance. With my students, I’ve used a 1 to 20 billion scale. However, to do so makes replicating the size difficult, but the distances are pretty reasonable to scale down. We made the Sun and planets out of modeling clay, with the Sun at 6.95 cm and the Earth at about 0.6 mm (which was difficult to do and when done, was easy to lose). With each object constructed, we walked out the distances, which extended over 2.5 American football fields in length. When we included Pluto (it will always be a “planet” to me), Pluto averaged about 290 meters from the Sun, but Pluto’s orbit is elliptical and extends from inside the orbital path of Neptune to about an equal distance beyond the 290 meter scaled distance. To include the time dimension, we would need to scale down the orbital speeds by the same ratio. You can then add scaled down rotational speeds, as well. But, even doing all of this scaling down, we still misrepresent the actual solar system. And, this problem goes back to Korzybsky’s notion that the “map is not the territory.” Our representations, whether in our minds or with objects, can never completely represent the actual “thing” we are trying to represent. But, we can get close, and working towards accurate scale models can help us to refine our cognitive models.
Physical and mechanical systems are easier to scale, but not without issues. Physical and mechanical systems, such as cars, computers, etc., may be very complicated, but they are not complex. Complex systems are living systems. Such systems are unpredictable, self-regulating, and self-maintaining. Mechanical and physical systems are more predictable, but not entirely. Climate and weather systems are more unpredictable than other physical systems, such as planetary motion. And, this unpredictable quality is due to the interdependencies between climate systems and ecological systems. With mechanical systems, we may scale up some transportation system, say from bicycle to motorcycle to car to semi to ship to train to airplane. At each level of scale and change in context of use, the devices become more complicated. At each level, the variables that affect and are affected by the increase in complicated-ness make it more difficult to fully predict. And, then when we add the human component to the system, the complicated mechanical system becomes a merging of complicated and complex systems, which adds even greater uncertainty to the functioning of the complicated—complex transportation system.
Another application of scale that can be interesting, but which can become problematic involves working across levels of scale. Let’s say we identify some pattern in the dynamics of a relationship between two people or between a person and a dog. Maybe this pattern involves a lopsided control issue. One person tries to control the other or, in the case of the person and dog, the person or dog may be the one trying to control the other (I’ve seen both of these patterns of human—dog relationships). Then, say, you see two nations behaving in a similar way, where one nation is trying to control the other. This comparison across levels of scale can be insightful, but not without issues. The specifics of this more general pattern of relationship are not scalable. The danger is that we may get stuck assuming that there are more similarities to the dynamics than there really are. Within the general pattern of lopsidedness control, there are all sorts of other patterns occurring that are specific to the contexts involved. The dog—person contexts are completely different from the person—person and the nation—nation contexts. So, more generalized patterns may be interesting and informative to compare across levels of scale, while the more contextually specific patterns are much more difficult to compare.
Another version of “scalability” that is problematic from the start involves applying some strategy or approach that works well at a small scale and then trying to apply that same approach at a larger scale. The minute we try to “scale up” some approach that in any way involves living or social systems, all sorts of unexpected problems pop up. We may try to scale up the idea of community gardens then lose sight of the contexts that allowed one community garden to be successful. Every community has different characteristics, dynamics, issues, needs, and so forth. And, every community is comprised of distinctively different people. And, communities exist among diverse types of ecosystems, from deserts to rain forests. The “idea” of scaling up some great approach in one context seems wonderful, but that “idea” does not account for the complexity of each individual context or set of contexts, and especially in terms of the exponential increase in complexity encountered when “scaling up.” Even naturally increasing sizes of “things” creates tremendous difficulties. When a democratic form of government was first established in the the United States shortly after getting its independence, the designers of the system were dealing with a population of about 2,000,000 non-slaves and non-indigenous people. And, of people who could vote, that population was about half that size (women could not vote). The contexts that were at play involved a history of colonization, of a dependence on slavery, of women as of lesser status than men, of the natural and physical environments in which people lived, of the technology of the time, and so on. Even from the beginning, the democratic process was bumpy. And, much of this bumpiness arose from the unpredictability of complex social systems. As contexts change, the entire political system can crumble or, at least, face huge challenges in maintaining its stability and functionality. And, as the population increases — a naturally occurring scaling up — the difficulties of maintaining the original system increase exponentially. These “created” complex social systems never seem to address ways of adjusting to major shifts in contexts, major challenges to the viability of the system, and so forth. In the U.S., we seem to be at just this point of near collapse of the original system, where scalability fails.
During my career as an educator, which started off as a leap off of a cliff into a raging fire, I became increasingly concerned with the issue of “what to teach.” I began teaching as a middle school science teacher in New York City. It was a great environment with good, but challenging, students. However, I was generally clueless, even though I thought I had a lot to offer. With the help and support of my principal and a French teacher, I began to see the errors in my thinking and approach. I began questioning many of the assumptions I had about teaching and learning. And, then I studied with Gregory Bateson for an intensive summer program on education. That summer turned everything upside down. Bateson’s ideas slowly soaked in over many years and even decades as the processes of developing deeper understandings percolated. About 8 years after the Bateson program, I entered graduate school. I entered the graduate program with a kind of selfish attitude. I said to myself that “I don’t care about grades or the professors’ styles of teaching. I am going to learn as much as I can from this experience… just for me.” As I finished my masters degree, then doctoral degree, I left feeling like I was embarking on a path of continual learning, of challenging my and others’ ideas. And, now, having retired from the academic path, I am still learning and challenging.
But, what was it about the learning that occurred during this initial period that changed the way I approached my interaction with the world? I certainly slogged my way through many boring and seemingly irrelevant courses, which were really quite deadly. However, there were many more professors who enlivened the material being studied and who focused heavily on challenging the status quo. And, studying with Gregory Bateson was entirely a process of upending the assumptions of how we think, learn, relate, and live.
However, the big issue is how the system of education fails our children and, for that matter, many, if not most, adults going through colleges and universities. This issue has been plaguing me for decades. From the institutions of education, we get more “national standards,” more “teacher accountability,” more “testing,” and more “teacher-proof curricula.” All of these actions just continue to deaden the entire system of schooling.
Today, I started reading an old book by the noted philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead. His book, The Aims of Education, was first published almost a century ago in 1929. Below, are two short summaries with quotes about “what to teach” and “testing.” Reading books from this time period is slow going. The way the English language was used was different, so I’ve summarized most of what he wrote, but have included key quotes.
What to Teach (from page 13 in The Aims of Education)
In teaching children, “…above all things we must beware of what I will call ‘inert ideas’ — that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.” …. Throughout history, education at one point may be “alive with a ferment of genius,” but in later times, education becomes pedantic and routine. “The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful—Corruptio optimi, pessima.” [The corruption of the best, the worst — from https://www.latin-online-translation.com]
Testing (from page 17 in The Aims of Education)
Whitehead describes the issue of how best to teach as dependent upon the teacher (intelligence, knowledge, etc.), the students (intelligence, knowledge, etc.), the students’ potentialities for later life, and the contexts (physical, social, cultural, etc.) in which the students live. “It is for this reason that the uniform external examination is so deadly.”
And, here we are almost 100 years later still suffering from the “deadly” approaches to schooling. During the mid- to late-1800’s, politicians and those with influence over education were quite explicit about not providing a good education for the masses. In John Gatto’s well-researched chapter, “Some Lessons From the Underground History of American Education,” he describes a pattern of control exerted over education that had the intention of control over children in order to control them as adults and keeping all but the very elite under-educated.
Here are a few choice points from this chapter:
A School or A Prison?
1857 — effort to have schools take complete control over children through behavior modification, so that they took over the role of parent.
1906 — William Torrey Harris (U.S. Commissioner of Education said on page 279, “Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual. — The Philosophy of Education (1906, p. 270)
Just before World War I — Woodrow Wilson said on page 272: “We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
1917 — (page 272) “…the major administrative jobs in American schooling were under control of a group referred to in the press of that day as ‘the education trust.’ The first meeting of this trust included representatives of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the National Education Association. The chief end, wrote the British evolutionist Benjamin Kidd in 1918, was to ‘impose on the young the ideal of subordination.’”
And, in the contexts of present-day education, not much has really changed. We do not use the same words and phrases to describe what should happen in schools. Instead of being straight forward with our intent, we couch our language in words and phrases that may imply more positive goals, such as “raising standards” and “holding teachers accountable.” The strategies used to dumb down our children, to segregate the classes, and to control our children have become more insidious, but are still the major influences on what is taught and how that information is taught.
We have done a wonderful job of preparing our children to be adults who welcome authoritarianism, who will be obedient and subservient, who will not question authority, and whose thinking abilities have been blocked and strangled. And, here we are in 2021, in a society dying from decades of psychological violence against its citizens.
References
Gatto, J. T. (2002). Some lessons from the underground history of American education. In R. Kick (Ed.), Everything you know is wrong: The disinformation guide to secrets and lies (pp. 274–287). New York: The Disinformation Company.
Harris, W. T. (1906). The philosophy of education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University.
Whitehead, A. N. (1929). The aims of education. New York: Mentor Book/New American Library (Macmillan).
The following image and images like it have been bouncing around Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. In such posts, the reader/viewer is struck at an emotional level while appearing to be a rational question to a specific issue. But, the image, the question, and the entire context of this “problem” point to a deeply embedded and insidious pattern of education in the U.S. and elsewhere.
A Facebook Post that Continues to Make Its Rounds in the Virtual World
This post can grab you emotionally and get you to make a definitive decision about the issue of cell phones in classrooms. Because is states “share if you agree!” and the post continues to repeatedly make its rounds, one must assume that viewers agree that teachers must take away student cell phones while they are in the classroom. And, as pictured in the post, the students seem to be quite compliant with the teacher’s mandate.
However, this “issue” of cell phones is not quite so simple. In fact, this post points to a much more complex set of contexts, issues, and patterns of schooling and society than one may think. But, we all have been “processed” by the same contexts and patterns of schooling. As a result, we look at this photo and it feels familiar. The patterns of response are ingrained in our thinking. And, we automatically know –whatever that is– “right” from “wrong.”
Hmmm…. And, this situation is what frightens me the most.
Schools in this country have been designed — for well over a century — to produce compliant, conforming, and obedient adults who do not question authority and who have been “educated ” just enough to function in society as a worker and to be easily influenced and manipulated “voter.” The power elite — politicians and big money brokers — have never wanted a society of deep and critical thinkers, who have been well-educated. Such people are a threat to their holding onto money, power, and control.1
Schools have not been designed to teach children how to participate in a democracy. Nor have they been designed to develop children’s innate intelligence and abilities to think deeply, complexly, creatively, critically, independently, and interdependently. They are not taught to care, empathize, develop a strong and deep sense of integrity, and understand other people across an array of wonderful differences. Schools — and let me state right here that it is NOT the fault of most teachers who are subject to the same dysfunctional pressures as children — have failed our students and our countries.
Underneath this schooling agenda is an agenda geared to support authoritarianism. From the beginning, the hidden curriculum of schools focused on the rules and nature of authoritarianism. The “explicit” curriculum promoted the teaching of fragmented and decontextualized bits of information, while portraying itself as rigorous, deep, and extensive. Such a portrayal was “enhanced” by curriculum standards, high-stakes testing, and accountability. But, the bottom line of this entire approach to education has been to keep our population dumbed down. And, again, the “blame” is not with the students or people who have been dumbed down by the educational system. Our entire society functions as a support system for the system of dumbing down. Such processes of dumbing down and rewarding those who have succeeded in that system are difficult obstacles to overcome.
As is evidenced in the photo, above, people immediately are drawn into agreeing with the teacher depicted in this scenario. We assume that teachers are the authorities over knowledge, behavior, and thinking. We have been unwittingly taught to behave, obey, conform, comply, and keep our noses clean.
The authoritarian approach only creates further issues. Such approaches undermine and break relationships that are so vital to creating classroom communities, where students can learn how to participate in a democracy. And, where they can learn to care for others, to question and explore all kinds of ideas, and to develop identities of creators of knowledge through the arts, sciences, and humanities, if we care to separate these inseparable ways of knowing. Authoritarian approaches promote distrust, resentment, and hatred. These approaches undermine the development of responsibility, initiative, caring for others, and so forth.
If phones are seen as a problem, the problem is much more extensive and complex than the phones. In a democratic classroom community, any problem that arises is a problem for the community. Of course, if this were a real classroom community, where students had a sense of ownership over and responsibility for the community, the problem such as phones probably would not arise in the first place. But, if it did, the problem would have to be discussed and remediated in some way by the entire group or classroom community.
Authoritarianism is threatening our country as we read this blog post. And, much of the “welcoming” of authoritarianism has its roots in schools, as we’ve just discussed. It’s not a big leap from growing up in a mini-authoritarian culture to feeling comfortable in a larger authoritarian context.
If we create classrooms and schools as caring, thoughtful, democratic communities, we just might produce citizens who resist authoritarianism and fascism.
Footnote
1 Gatto, J. T. (2002). Some lessons from the underground history of American education. In R. Kick (Ed.), Everything you know is wrong: The disinformation guide to secrets and lies (pp. 274–287). New York: The Disinformation Company.
Some of us may be quite fortunate in having one or more people outside of our families, who have a huge, positive, and lasting impact on our lives. One of those people for me was Gregory Bateson. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Gregory, he was the son of William Bateson, a biologist who coined the term “genetics.” As a young adult, he was an anthropologist in the South Pacific, where he met and later married Margaret Meade, his first of three wives.
During his time in the South Pacific, his thinking began to expand beyond the typical bounds of anthropology. Over the years, he was involved in studies of communication, learning and cognition, psychology, biology, evolution, systems thinking, and cybernetics. His thinking has and continues to influence diverse disciplines and domains of interest. He was one of the great intellects of the 20th Century, whose influence was much more expansive than his popularity among the general populace.
In 1975 and after my year as a middle school science teacher, I had the opportunity to study with Gregory during a 5 week, live-in workshop of education, at what was known then as Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado. There were only about 12-15 people in this class. And, we all stayed in a big house near the base of the Flatirons, the steep cliffs at the start of the Rocky Mountains. We ate all of our meals together, some of which Gregory prepared, including Oxtail Soup. This experience allowed all of us to be totally immersed in thinking about some of Gregory’s key concepts: relationships, patterns, double binds, context, epistemolgoy, cybernetics, systems, and so forth. But, much of what learned went beyond these intellectual pursuits. We also learned a great deal from being together, exploring our own humanity. Gregory manifested tremendous generosity, kindness, humility, ordinariness, endless curiosity, humor, and so forth.
Re-enacting Shakespeare
He was a remarkable human being. And, to this day, I value having had this opportunity to get to know Gregory and soak up mostly the curiosity and patterns of thinking, as well as some of his major ideas, which have continued to influence my own thinking.
Exploring Pond Ecology
This is dedicated to Nora Bateson (who was present in 1975 at 7 years old), who has picked up the Batesonian torch and taken it to even greater heights…. and to all of the people around the world, who are working on keeping Gregory’s ideas alive and expanding them in a multitude of new directions and contexts.
Many years ago, during my second year of teaching middle school science in Brooklyn, New York, we took our students to a 5-day long, environmental studies program. The program took place at a summer camp during its off-season. It was late May in the Adirondack Mountains. We had taken these same students to a different program in Vermont the year before, which is where the students, who were new to the middle school, went this particular year. The principal of the middle school and several teachers went with the group to Vermont and several of us who had gone the previous year went with the “veteran” students to the Adirondacks.
Middle school kids during the first trip to Vermont.
When we arrived at the camp, the kids came off the buses and cars and started running around in their typical fashion, while cursing and laughing and letting off steam after a long ride. Shortly, after arriving, the camp personnel held a meeting, where they laid out the RULES. “This is an elite camp. There is no cursing. The boys’ cabins are off-limits to the girls and the girls’ cabins are off-limits to the boys. Blah, blah, blah…” And, so it went on for 30 minutes. We, the teachers, were looking at one another and rolling our eyes. The kids were squirming and rolling their eyes.
Afterwards the kids were sent to unload their packs in their assigned cabins. The teachers obediently went to the cabins to which we were assigned. When I walked into my boys’ cabin, they were diligently unpacking, while cursing and laughing and groaning about the camp personnel. I, of course, cursed at the kids to stop cursing. It broke the tension.
We then met for the first set of activities. It was hot and humid, and the black flies (if you are not familiar with black flies, they are small and aggressive biters) were eating everyone alive. The activities were boring and lifeless and mostly involved being talked at by the camp people.
The next day was rainy and very chilly. The kids and teachers survived another day of dreadful activities. And, the kids were amazingly patient with and tolerant of the people running the program, but their patience was running thin. In the middle of that night, a camp counselor came into my cabin and woke me up. “I just wanted to warn you that we’ve had 2 feet of snow and all of the power and phone lines are down, and the roads are impassable,” he whispered.
No one packed for winter. We arrived in shorts and sneakers. I packed rain boots and a raincoat, with a sweater and light jacket. In addition, a small group of our kids went on a 3-night survival trip… in sneakers and light clothing. By the time they arrived back at the camp after their first night out, they all had hypothermia. A few of the boys, who in most schools would be the troublemakers, leapt into action. They went around to all of the cabins talking other kids out of extra blankets to use to get their hypothermic classmates warmed up.
The entire trip became a survival trip, which in an odd way saved this trip. All of the rules were dropped and everyone helped in dealing with this unforeseen event. On the last day, the principal who had gone to the Vermont trip, showed up. The other camp had had the same snowstorm. He left that camp as soon as he could to come check on how we fared.
It took a disaster to prevent a disaster at the Adirondack trip.
In looking back on this trip, the school, the teachers, and the kids, a few things jump out at me now. Although I really liked the kids, the teachers, and the school at the time, I was still near the bottom of my multi-contextual-learning-about-teaching arc. I don’t want to call it a “learning curve,” because the learning doesn’t go up and then down, the learning just keeps going, while getting deeper and more integrated with one’s life. But, now with many years of experience and learning under my belt, I’m finding this story, and many others, to be very interesting. In one sense, which I will not go into here, there are glimmers of various themes that developed and grew into major guiding “frameworks” for my own thinking and practice as an educator and ordinary human being — by the way, I don’t like the word “frameworks,” because it is much too static. In the other sense, I can look backwards and see how “advanced” we were at the time, as well as to see how many of the ideas involved in complex systems were remarkably evident.
Relationships
As far as I can remember, as teachers, we never really talked explicitly about relationships. But, most of us seemed to work on developing relationships with the kids and with one another. Going to the camp and sitting through that awful initial meeting was a shared experience of shock and disappointment. The teachers knew it and the kids knew it. And, my going into the boys’ cabin and saying, “Stop the *$@#& !&%@#! cursing,” was a way of connecting into that shared sense of relationship. The kids laughed and we moaned together, while comparing how different this year’s trip was to the previous year in Vermont. But, the relationships went much deeper. We all showed our vulnerabilities, even though some of the kids tried to hide them. We also trusted and respected one another. The kids were never shy about giving teachers advice, any more than we were shy about giving them advice.
Taking the helm. These kids could always be relied upon in a pinch.
As teachers, we tried to work with the kids to share in the running of the school… in making decisions, dealing with issues, and so forth. We weren’t always successful in this endeavor, but I do think that such an emphasis played out in situations where they could step out and take control, such as with helping the kids with hypothermia on this trip and on a sailing trip where most of the kids were seasick and the ones who were not sick manned the helm and ropes, when the others couldn’t. No adults ever needed to tell them what to do.
Complexity
In order to understand complex living systems, we need to see the webs or matrices of relationships that are involved, that arise, and that disappear. There’s a fluidity in these relationships. When the kids were reprimanded in the beginning of the trip by people with whom they had no relationship, it broke the relational potentiality and trust. But, as a group of kids and teachers who had developed relationships of trust, at least some degree, the group “identity” and relationships were maintained. Had we, the teachers, sided with the camp counselors, we would have threatened the integrity of our complex system. As it was, the interaction between the two systems of the camp and our school group was problematic, but to our own group system, this interaction was more of an interruption or interference to our more established system. Our group system recalibrated and adjusted, while maintaining our own relationships within the system. After the snowstorm, our more established system recalibrated again and self-organized to meet the newly imposed demands. The camp system became irrelevant except as the source of local knowledge.
Improvisation
The highly structured and mechanized system of the camp with its strict set of rules and regulations (could be policies, laws, etc. in other contexts), had little flexibility to address drastic changes in the context. Even though the individuals within that system changed their approaches, the camp system faltered. The relational “structure” cracked. However, the school group system was inherently flexible. Middle school children are in the midst of testing limits, exerting their own control, and of becoming adults. Trying to restrict and solidify the boundaries and processes in this age group is self-defeating. But, this school’s approach provided the space and contexts for children to develop within a supportive environment and, in reflection, as a complex living system. As a result, flexibility was built-in. With such flexibility, the kids and the teachers were free to improvise. The notion of being a leader was not some static and singular entity. Yes, the teachers were leaders, but not autocratic. The children were free to jump in and be leaders.
Having been prepared for a spring trip, but finding ourselves in a winter environment, forced kids and teachers to improvise. My summer rain and shallow wading boots along with layers of socks became tolerable winter boots. Layers of clothing worked for everyone helped us deal with the cold. Improvisation became a survival strategy.
Learning
The learning that took place was more aligned to the type of learning described by Nora Bateson: Symmathesy or mutual contextual learning (SEE the symmathesy chapter in Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing Through Other Patterns). This type of learning is at the interface between contexts, systems, groups, and/or individuals.
Note that individuals, groups, contexts, and systems are all the same. Each of us is a context made of contexts, as are groups. Each of us is a system made of other systems and connected in various ways to other systems. You can even use “system” and “context” interchangeably.
We are not always aware of this kind of symmathesetic learning. It occurs in the immediacy and intimacy of our interactions with others and other contexts. It seems to me to be the most fundamental of learning that occurs at the level of perception. Although this learning is not the same as what we usually think of as learning, such as learning facts, concepts, theories, and so forth, symmathesy feeds the raw nuggets of information on relationships to this other area of learning that creates what we can think of as our individual and social epistemologies or sets of knowledge.
Disconnected Connections… New York City (Jeff Bloom, 1970)
From individuals to families to society to the global context, the connectedness or integrity of individuals, as well as social integrity is crumbling. Although throughout history there have been conflicts and acts of incredible aggression towards one another, we seem to be entering a new and frightening era of disconnection at all levels of scale.
We disconnect with ourselves, while falling into patterns of not engaging in our worlds, not being kind to ourselves, feeling sorry for ourselves or feeling somehow entitled, or acting out in ways that are hurtful and dishonest. Family life for many is similarly disconnected from the beginning. And, as families grow older, family members disperse with varying degrees of disconnection to others in the family. Schools and classrooms have become more like factories, where teachers, by not particular fault of their own, attempt to mold children into some sort of clones of “normality,” while focusing on teaching to tests and forgetting about the beautiful diversity, creativity, emotions, and individuality of each child. In societies, people rarely interact with one another in meaningful and empathetic ways. We’re divided by politics, religion, skin color, language and accents, nationality, livelihoods, how much money one has, or how many and what kinds of “things” one owns. We also suffer from lack of long-term relationships. People move away from their childhood community, then continue to move chasing dreams and money or running away from oneself or various forms of aggression, loss, and upheaval. The same patterns of disconnects are occurring globally. As we’ve become a global “society” of sorts, we’ve also increased the psychosocial, emotional, and cognitive demands on people from extremely diverse cultures and belief systems.
The pressures on individuals and social groups that have been leading to massive changes in the dynamics and relationships within oneself, between people, and even to our environments and to learning itself, has not been a recent onset of some singular cause. This trend has been going on for millennia.
From the beginning of humankind, people have clustered together. We are social animals, after all. We have always wanted to be loved and appreciated. At the same time, we have helped and cared one another, we have protected our social groups, and we have worked to maintain the integrity of our group. Some current tribal cultures that have kept and valued important aspects of their lineages, of their belief systems, and their ways of life. As a result, they have been able to maintain a certain individual and social integrity. David Maybury-Lewis’ wonderful TV series and book, Millennium: Tribal Wisdom in the Modern World, provides a powerful examination of the wisdom found in such tribal societies. And, that wisdom is based on notions of connectedness and interdependency, as well as on the relationships to their environments, to their ancestors’s wisdom, and to one another.
However, the increasing disconnectedness across most human societies has been due to a variety of changes in technologies, in the way humans have organized their societies, and in the way that philosophies and religions have viewed people and the living natural world. From the first wood and stone tools to huge passenger jet airplanes, humans and their societies have undergone huge and dramatic changes periodically. This sort of pattern of big changes after periods of very little change is similar to Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of punctuated equilibrium in biological evolution. I suppose we can refer to these big social and cultural changes as “punctuated equilibrium in cultural evolution.”
Some of the big moments of changed occurred with the technological advances of manufacturing of wood and stone tools and of controlling fire. All of a sudden humankind could hunt more easily, keep warm, and cook food. Pottery allowed food to be stored and even transported. And, with each transportation advance can huge changes in the mixing of culture and trade. Horses, the horses pulling vehicles with wheels, boats and ships allowed travel up and down rivers, across lakes, and then across the oceans. Trains provided for fairly rapid travel from one place to a distant location. Motorized vehicles suddenly made huge differences in travel to places of work and even migrating across one’s country or to other countries. Propeller planes and then jets made travel across the country or halfway around the world possible in only a matter of hours instead of days, weeks, or months. Each such change made huge differences in how we related with one another, with our environments, and with ourselves. These changes transformed violent conflicts from face-to-face battles in relatively contained areas to remote killing and destruction from an armchair or from miles above ground. The extent of disconnection has seemed to increase exponentially. Even when driving a car, we can curse and disparage other drivers and drive in ways that are like video games, but with much greater risks. We can shop without ever talking directly to another person. And, we can sit at family dinners and be totally engrossed in a remote world, while never even talking to our families. We can walk through forests listening to music or talk shows and never hear a cricket, a bird, or the wind rustling the leaves of trees. We no longer allow time to relate to our own experiential worlds or to wonder about big questions.
Although all of these advances are not necessarily “bad,” we have allowed the technologies to usurp our hearts and minds. As with technologies, we also have succumbed to ways of thinking that separate us, from the Biblical notion of the Earth is here for humans to use as desired to the separation of humankind from nature by René Descartes to the Ayn Randian ego supremacy and to the notions of technology as savior. As a result of all of these changes mixed with greed for power and money and the separation of the elite and wealthy from everyone else, we are now facing major intertwined issues across all sectors and contexts of our lives and our environments.
As Robert Bly discusses in The Sibling Society, we live in a society of adolescents and run by adolescents. The lineage of increasing disconnects and superficial learning and thinking promoted by schools, families, and societies has brought us to a point where our fellow citizens do not have “the thinking and conceptual tools” that have been side-stepped by the politics of schooling, where the agenda, under the guise of raising standards and improving teacher accountability, is to keep the general population “dumbed down” so that they can be controlled. A wide assortment of resources that discuss aspects of this agenda can be found in the Learning and Teaching section of The Exploratory Nook & Store, where many of authors follow the history of intertwined contexts and agendas that have contributed to our current state of affairs. Other authors offer ways to counter such agendas through the way we can create contexts of deeper learning and complex thinking.
A friend just posted something about how much he loves libraries, which initiated a whole string of emotions and memories of time spent in libraries. My reactions did not particularly involve “love.” I wouldn’t say they involved “hate,” either. My usual time spent in libraries, which have been mostly college and university libraries were highly focused on getting what I needed, maybe browsing a bit more widely while in a particular section, then getting out of there.
I also don’t like borrowing books. I always find that I want to highlight something or write some comments, and I just won’t do that in somebody else’s books. For some reason, books are more like family members. And, these family members are my mentors, my guides, my conceptual challengers, my inspirers, and so forth. My wife, who lives in libraries and reads a lot, is always bugging me about getting rid of some of my books. And, yes, I did get rid of about a third of my books when I retired. However, these books were like acquaintances and not even friends. They were the technical books of my profession that I used for reference and to lend to students, but really had very little to do with my core interests and passions.
I love my own library and I tend to love other people’s private libraries. I also love used bookstores, as long as I have enough money to spend. New bookstores tend to be out there with public or university libraries. If I go into a new bookstore, I’m usually looking for something specific and get out of there as quickly as possible. Gone are the days of the family-owned new bookstore to which I reacted differently. I could spend hours in these bookstores.
I think what I’m reacting to in terms of personal vs. public libraries and used vs. new bookstores has to do with atmospheric factors. I do not find public libraries and new bookstores to be particularly inviting. They have a cold and disconnected atmosphere. The quiet of libraries is almost morose, and certainly lifeless. Although the new corporate bookstores are not necessarily quiet, they do share in the lifeless quality. Both public libraries and corporate bookstores tend to be sterile and lacking in character, warmth, inclusiveness, and connectedness.
Walking into City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco or Strand Bookstore in New York City is like entering a new world that is stimulating, exciting, yet is warm and inviting. You can spend hours looking at books and reading. Years ago when my children were relatively young, we were looking through Strand’s. At one point, my younger son asked me where a restroom was. I had forgotten, but asked a middle-aged man sitting on a footstool reading a book, if he knew where a restroom was. He gave my son detailed instructions. I said something like, “you must spend some time here.” He said, “I practically live here. I’m here for hours almost everyday.”
In Arizona, there is a small used bookstore chain, which I still go to occasionally, but they went from a very warm and inviting atmosphere to one that was much more sterile and corporate. It lost its charm after their “idea” to upgrade. But, for many years, they maintained a great little place to hangout and explore. You could bring your dog (they always had treats), order and drink coffee, and sit in comfortable chairs, while browsing an ever-changing stock of used gems. They even carried some used musical instruments, electronics, albums-tapes-CDs, and DVDs. They still have a trading system, where you can bring in your own “stuff,” and get trade credit (or cash, but a lesser amount). But, this chain was still family-owned, and had some of that flavor.
But, this is the world we live in… a corporatized, sterile, disconnected, and cold world. As with libraries and bookstores, the same pattern of warmth vs. sterility is characteristic of the family-owned vs. corporate-owned restaurants, coffee shops, retail shops, auto repair shops, and businesses of all kinds. Unfortunately, most of the locally-owned businesses have disappeared as the corporate versions moved in. And, now, as online corporate entities have become more popular, they are even putting the local corporate chain stores out of business. Amazon treats their employees terribly, but have mastered the customer relations part of their strategy (e.g., making returns easy and usually with very little or no resistance). Personally, I have begun my own boycott of Amazon, unless there is absolutely no choice. I don’t buy into Prime any more. And, I’m finding small family-owned local or online businesses that offer the same or similar products for less money and cheaper or free shipping.
In addition to the library and business world of warmth vs. sterility, the same pattern applies to changes in schools, colleges, and universities. Over the past few decades, the process of corporatizing educational institutions has been changing these institutions from what were once warm and inviting (at least a fair number were like this) to what are now devoid of passion, compassion, warmth of any kind, character, and so forth. In fact, the windowless public schools look more like prisons and university classrooms look sterile, clinical, and lifeless. And, then online courses, put the world shebang of the teaching-learning dynamic into the garbage can. But, universities are making tons of money through online programs.
Windowless Elementary School… the new approach to subjugating children.
See my blog entries on online courses and related issues:
Over the span of
my life so far, I’ve been noticing some disturbing trends, which may very well
be contributing to our current situation on the brink of disaster, if not
extinction. Some of these trends probably have been in existence for hundreds,
if not, thousands of years, while others are more recent. And, some seem to be
more characteristic of one country (or a few countries) or region.
An increase in aggression becoming our default response to uncertain situations or more intense situations..
An increase in our emotions driving our decision-making in almost all contexts…. From fear to desire, from joy to repulsion….
Tending towards a complete loss of empathy (not to mention compassion) towards fellow human being
Tending towards a complete loss of empathy and disconnect from other living beings, from pets to wildlife and our critically important invertebrate cousins.
The development of a total disregard for the environments and ecosystems in which we live and upon which we depend
An increase in mind-less buy-in to the myths of capitalism
An increase in the mind-less buy-in to religious dogma and a loss of the connection to the core meanings of different religions
An increase in intolerance, if not hate, of those who are “different”
An increase in racism
An increase in addiction to our devices (phones, TV’s, cars, etc.), to our foods, to careers, to substances of all kinds, and to our own neuroses and habitual patterns of thinking and behaving
An increase in the loss of integrity – decreases in trustworthiness, dependability, reliability, responsibility, honesty, forthrightness, and so forth.
These tendencies
are just a few of the more “ig-notable” ones. I’m sure we can add many more to
the list. At the same time, all of these tendencies intertwine with one another.
There really are no distinct borders between one and another.
I am sure there are multiple factors that have contributed to the increases in these tendencies. Technology has certainly played a big role in disconnecting people in various ways. The concerted effort of the “institution of education” to dumb down the population has had major effects on these tendencies. Political and corporate brainwashing has been a major factor. “Religious leaders” – who do not have deep and extensive training in their spiritual disciplines and in their religious teachings and who edit what teachings they know to conform to their own egotism and biases – have contributed to many of these tendencies.
The
corporate world and its greed and disregard for social and environmental responsibility
has had huge effects.
And,
again, there are many other contexts that have had and continue to have effects
on how we relate to the world.
Our complete buy-in to Objectivist, Positivist, Reductionist, Mechanistic thinking (from Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, and others) has been a core contributor to our disconnects to one another, to other life forms, to society, and to the ecosystems and environment upon which we depend.
At the same time,
human beings have so much potential. We can love. We can care for others. We
can create amazing powerful, thought-provoking, and/or beautiful music, dance, works
of art, novels, stories, film, and poetry. We can develop incredible
technologies and structures. We can explore and develop incredible scientific
understandings of our world.
Yet, we have
brought ourselves to the brink of destruction. Ecosystems are collapsing, Rates
of extinction are skyrocketing. Resources are being depleted. And, climate
patterns are changing so radically and so quickly that the weather-related
disasters that were once rare and becoming common events, which in turn is
creating havoc in some parts of the world. And, what is happening in a few
areas now will become commonplace everywhere else in the world over the next decade
or so.
Our global situation is absolutely beyond grim. However,
governments and other institutions will not be “the answer” to the
“wicked” problems we’re facing. But, they can make a difference in
providing a more workable context for change. And, that change has to come from
between the institutions (in the liminal spaces)…. In other words, change
needs to arise from as many people as possible working together to address the
very complex, transcontextual, and very slippery interacting systems and the
pathologies that are plaguing these systems.
