In 1960 it was relatively accurate to divide the world into the “First World” and “Third World”, the “rich” and the “poor”, the “developed world” and “developing world” or the Centre and Periphery.
In 1960 we were 3 billion people. The blue was the 1 billion at the top of the pyramid, dreaming of buying a car and a dishwasher. The green were the 2 billion at the bottom of the pyramid, saving for a pair of shoes and trying to feed their families.
In 50 years much has changed. 3 billion has turned into 7 billion. 4 more boxes have been added to the table.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, (the BRIC nations), are rising up. While the 1 billion blue affluent people now take planes to remote destinations for holidays, another green box of 1 billion people are buying cars, and 3 green boxes equating to 3 billion people are buying bicycles. We still have the 2 billion at the bottom looking for food, and saving for a pair of Havaianas. So an extra 4 billion in the middle mean a wider “gap” but that is filled in with a massive middle-class majority. Maybe we’d think of them as “Second World” or “semi-periphery” nations, or nations within nations seeing as the spread of income within nations also varies greatly.
So comes our familiar (and what I consider to be quite a horrifying) graph:
Now unless we want the whole world to look like the suburbs of Mumbai (no offense to my Indian friends who live there, but it really is a horribly over-populated loud dirty chaotic city), we can’t grow at this exponential rate forever…
Rosling gives a realistic picture:
Only 2 more boxes, 2 billion more people, bringing us up to a grand total of 9 billion. And I guess ideally, eventually, all those boxes are stacked on top of one another at the far right, enjoying their holidays all around the world.
Ho hum, and how is this, pray tell, going to come about?
Many, including Rosling, predict that the formula for a stabilizing population is to decrease poverty. A little family education for women and contraception availability (along with motivating men to wear it and Catholics to allow it) also helps. Apparently this is what the statistics say, loud and clear, so let’s go with it.
With poverty as it stands in 2010, with 2 billion at the bottom, by 2050 this 2 billion will be 4 – hence the 4 boxes on top of one another.
In order to stabilize population at 9 billion, these 4 billion people NEED to be out of absolute poverty – they need to be able to afford food and shoes, and be dreaming of bicycles and cars. If not by 2070 they’ll turn into 8 billion, bringing us up to 17 billion.
Following this line of thinking I see two questions that are imperative for anyone who doesn’t want to share the planet with another 16,999,999,999 people. These are:
How are we going to ensure those 4 billion are in shoes and getting on bicycles by 2050?
What can be done so that the 5 billion humans driving cars and flying planes don’t pollute the planet & exploit the non-renewables so much that all 9 billion don’t end up back at square one, scavenging off the left-overs from today’s greed?
Hm, tough questions, did I hear someone mention mining the moon and moving to Mars?
Daisy chains and love hearts are great and all, but most of us love a little conflict. Our books, movies, politics, religions, and even our conversations, are based on conflict. The stories we live and tell are based on the contradictions, the tensions, the heroes and villains, the differences of opinion, stories about the good times and the bad. How can we reconcile a love of conflict, with a desire for peace?
A student of Peace and Conflict Studies, preparing to present at a conference to theologians, philosophers and scientists in Krakow, I was going to need to be clear about my definitions.
And so, on the train from Stockholm to Copenhagen, I recapped some old notes and defined what is, in my mind, a clear vision of peace: Positive Conflict.
“Positive Conflict” is not an official term in Peace and Conflict Studies. I made it up. Scholars infer it, but no one has stated it as a vision. And I think it’s a useful one.
Positive Conflict is conflict that leads to constructive and creative consequences and is resolved in non-violent ways. Well that’s my working definition anyway.
For me, “Positive Conflict” is a more appealing objective than “Positive Peace” (see definitions below). Maybe because the word “peace” carries an image of what Whitehead calls its ‘bastard substitute, Anesthesia.’[1] Or maybe simply because I love challenges, and enjoy the mental, emotional and physical stimulation that comes from conflicted spaces.
I don’t like violence – but conflict, positive conflict, can be a lot of fun.
‘Peace is the understanding of tragedy, and at the same time its preservation,’[2] another Whitehead quote.
This Taoist “dipolar” way of thinking of peace is a challenge when one encounters acts of horrific violence, as I would soon discover on a visit to Auschwitz… but I’ll leave that story for another day.
Definitions: [3]
Negative peace = the absence of war. It is the peace of the Pax Romana – often maintained through repression.
Positive peace = presence of desirable states of mind and society including ecological harmony & social justice. This kind of peace minimises/eliminates exploitation and “structural violence”. It is the peace of the realpolitik, advanced by Johan Galtung, the founder of Peace and Conflict Studies.
The aim of peace is to avoid/resolve:
Direct violence = observable eg war, physical harm
Structural violence = hidden, caused by unjust social structures, eg hunger, suffering, environmental harm, deprivation of self-determination
Cultural violence = often makes direct/structural violence feel right, or at least not wrong, eg racism, sexism, other forms of discrimination
[1] Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (London: Cambridge University Press, 1964). p. 283.
“The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.” (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970: 21)
Paolo Freire wrote about a sort of revolution in personal and collective freedom.
A Brazilian in the 1970s, Freire’s focus is more on economic/political oppression, and the education (and lack of education) maintains it. He looks at revolutions but says they must be conducted carefully. The must involve reflective participation of all involved.
Freire describes the process of conscientization – a process of unveiling different levels of reality, of becoming aware of the stories and assumptions behind the stories, which combine to create our lives.
It is a process that has no ending. It is a process driven by one thing: curiosity.
If you don’t know him already, I’m pleased to introduce the inspiring old man, Paolo Friere:
Like Paulo Freire, I think it’s good to be a curious child, and a curious adult. In this process we may discover more about ourselves, our world, and the worlds of people around us.
“Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift.”
The end of the questioning is the sign of a new form of oppression.
So be curious. Question!!!
Reference:
Freire, Paulo. 1970, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, (Penguin Education: Baltimore)
It’s like going on a diet to lose weight. We all know in the long term, diet’s don’t work!
If you wanna reduce carbon there’s a very simple solution (which works for losing weight too): REDUCE YOUR CONSUMPTION.
We need to redesign our lifestyles in a way that reconnects us with the beautiful planet from which we came from and from which we cannot live without. We don’t need carbon to live the good life.
We can get over our addiction to burning carbon in a similar process as getting rid of an addiction to McDonalds. When you come to realise the grotesque nature of consuming McDonalds hamburgers and fries, and you wean yourself off the fat and sugar, you don’t miss it one little bit.
When we start using clean energies, breathing clean ear, enjoying healthier ways of being, working jobs we enjoy that are making our world a better place, we will look back at our lives today in amazement and say:
– how did we ever work so many hours doing jobs we hated?
– how did we allow industry to pump such gross amounts of pollution into our air?
– how did we allow so much destruction to our very source of life?
And (hopefully) we will look back with relief that eventually we did something, we used our creativity to find solution, and to design a better world for ourselves and our children.
I highly doubt we will look back at our politicians debating over carbon tax or carbon trading, with an ounce of honour. It is the ones who decide to tackle the real problems with real solutions, those who make a real difference, that will go down in history.
Three years ago, before I went back to uni, I voted Liberal. Why? Three reasons: (1) Because my Dad voted Liberal. (2) I wasn’t interested in Politics. (3) I didn’t know the difference between Liberal and Labour (Australia’s Right and Left). Not a good place for any voting citizen to be. And certainly not the best intellectual place for a person who has just enrolled in a Master of Arts. But that was why I was there. I felt an abyss of lacking knowledge and a desire to try to fill it.
I thought in case some of you are in this place it might be worth sharing some of my notes.
Some definitions, and possibly a more accurate and simple model is the continuum above – showing Left to Right.
The picture blow locates key political ideas in a circular diagram, with left and right to the sides, classical liberalism on the bottom, theocracy at the top, and anarchism in the middle. I’m not sure if this is completely accurate, so please let me know if you think some elements might be put around different ways. I’m actually not sure what inspired this, or how I came to locate these where they are.
Of course, as with any definitions, words carry different meanings in different contexts, different places and at different times – as this clip of Noam Chomsky talking about Anarchism, Libertarian Socialism and the development of “renting out our labour”:
I am assisting the teaching of a master’s subject called The Political Economy of Conflict and Peace, at the University of Sydney this semester. My first presentation was yesterday and in the lead up to it I drowned myself in the political economic papers and books I wrote or read over the last couple of years. And searching YouTube for parts of documentaries that I have found useful in the past. This entry has become a bit of a dumping ground for me to refer and share again at later times… maybe you’ll find some of this random collection of thoughts and clips useful too…
The global economy today:
What does today’s global stage look like? I.e. What is the shape of today’s political/economical/social pyramid: tall or flat? What do people’s lives look like at the extremes?
How do the different stories, of individuals, groups and nations, told from different perspectives, from realist to liberal to marxist and all those in between, help us understand the dynamics of key actors and their sets?
Three basic theories based on three key actors:
Realism – analyses the world as states acting on their self-interests
Liberalism – analyses the world as individuals acting on rational self-interests
Marxism – analyses the world as classes acting on their rational self-interests
In The Structural Theory of Imperialism (a World Systems Theory), Johan Galtung describes a Conveyor Belt between the periphery of the Periphery (pP) pumping resources through to the periphery of the Core (pC) – this is clear to anyone who travels to places like South America, who grow the best coffee beans, sell them to the “north” for cheap and buy them back in the form of the horrible Nescafe Instant, which is all that is generally on offer to the citizens. Crazy! Same goes for all cash crops from cocoa to cotton, which prevent these people from growing food for themselves, causes slavery and human trafficking,
Demystifying Economics – Jim Stanford explains how the Booms and Bust are a necessary part of the system, and why it is the people at the very top of the pyramid who are bailed out, while the people with mortgages and jobs are the ones that have to pay.
Simms shows that on our current trajectory it would take 15 planets’ worth of earth’s biocapacity to reduce poverty to a state where the poorest receive $3 per day. In other words ‘we will have made Earth uninhabitable long before poverty is eradicated.’[1]
Did you know that half of all world trade currently passes through tax havens? Apparently they ‘allow rich people and corporations to stash trillions in assets that could provide governments with at least $250 billion a yearin tax revenues.’[2]
“At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world.These two groups have changed the world but not in the way either intended. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful. Together they created today’s nightmare vision of an organised terror network. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful. The rise of the politics of fear begins in 1949 with two men whose radical ideas would inspire the attack of 9/11 and influence the neo-conservative movement that dominates Washington. Both these men believed that modern liberal freedoms were eroding the bonds that held society together. The two movements they inspired set out, in their different ways, to rescue their societies from this decay. But in an age of growing disillusion with politics, the neo-conservatives turned to fear in order to pursue their vision.”
This three part documentary traces the rise of Neo-Conservativism in the U.S., with “disillusioned liberals” like Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz looking to Leo Strauss’s political thinking to come together with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Neo-conservatives come to power under the Reagan administration, using fear to unite the citizens (and unite with the radical Islamists) in a war against the Soviet Union. It traces this alongside the radical Islamist movement back to Sayyid Qutb’s visit to the U.S. to learn about their education systems but sees the “corruption of morals and virtues in western society through individualism” and returns to Egypt to and starts the movement. Qutb is executed in 1966 and one of his followers, a–Zawahiri, later becomes the mentor to Osama bin Laden. Then of course, the two radical groups then face each other head on in the “War on Terror”.
A much shorter and funnier version of the above: Pirates and Emperors
The Eagle and the Condor (the meeting of the Mind and the Heart, of Masculine and Feminine, of the knowledge and wisdom of our world, from Western individualism, to Eastern collectivism, to Indigenous connection to the land)
1. Change corporation law – redefine “corporation” so that they are NOT treated as separate entities in their own right that can be declared bankrupt in and of themselves. Corporation law must be adjusted to hold shareholders responsible for monetary and non-monetary profits and loss.
2. Change finance / stock market laws – in implementing the above, the ST money market would probably have to go, as would trading Derivatives and Options. The stock exchange would slowdown and be based on long term investments.
3. Change banking laws for money/debt creation and collection – limit their ability to print money via debt, decrease bank’s profits, and maybe all debt cancels after 50 years, I’m not sure. Something needs to be done to regulate them though.
4. Change balance of power in the WB, WTO and IMF – give more votes to the poorer nations and create fairer trade policies
5. Create international tax laws – to crack down on tax havens.
Personally:
6. Philosophically, a self-examination of our values – what makes a life “good”? Two shifts: shift from valuing capital to valuing creativity; and shift from EGO to ECO.
7. Women might reconsider what they find attractive qualities in men – see the attraction of a creative and caring man over a rich and selfish man. Then maybe men will change in suit.
8. Write letters to corporations telling them you won’t buy their product until they stop slave trade and ridiculously low paying 80-hour weeks in sweatshops, and treat their workers in a way they would like to be treated.
9. Public shame of the ridiculously rich – unite in an attempt to decrease the obesity of the rich, and as a consequence decrease the hunger of the poor.
10. See what we might be able to do to campaign to change the laws above.
Essentially I’m talking about setting a limit to the lifestyle of those at the very bottom and very top to the pyramid. There’s nothing wrong with inequity. As my friend said, “if you wanna work smart and hard and eat lobster all the time, and if I wanna work little and eat noodles, then that’s cool. But we both should have food and shelter. It’s just a matter of cutting out the extremes and increasing social mobility between the classes.”
[1] Andrew Simms, ‘Trickle-Down Myth’, New Scientist (18 Oct 2008). p. 49. Andrew Simms is the policy director of the New Economics Foundation in London. In this article Simms steps through the mathematics to show the system is designed such that for the poor to get ‘slightly less poor, the rich have to get very much richer’. This means it would take ‘around $166 worth of global growth to generate $1 extra for people living on below $1 a day’.
[2] Susan George, ‘We Must Think Big’, New Scientist (18 Oct 2008). p. 51.
Last week I wrote about the gap between school and life-there-after, and I gather from the feedback quite a few of you agree.. Well today I’m going to write about some other gaps in our society’s distribution of knowledge that I’m sure many of you have noticed:
1. A gap between knowledge within the university and the rest of the world.
Deep and wonderful ideas that could inspire and improve the lives of many seem to get lost in the theoretical and abstract language, meticulous referencing and practically incomprehensible vocabulary and word games of the world of academia.
Not that these words and rules don’t have their purpose. I appreciate the ability to find a know exactly where an idea has come from, to know that the right person is getting their deserved credit and that the ideas being discussed have a history as opposed to being pulled out of thin air. Even the complicated language has its use, and brings with it much satisfaction once you actually “get it,” (after numerous readings, google searches and flicking between pages.) The world of academia serves an important purpose but it’s not for the layman, and if the ideas are not translated into an everyday language their potential goes unrealised.
So that’s one gap that I’d like to see bridged a little more.
2. A gap between disciplines within university walls
Politics can get in the way of sharing ideas between disciplines within the university walls.
For example in a class about historiography (the study of the different ways history has been written) I learned that history and archaeology rarely talk. The former looks at written stories, and the latter makes guesses at stories behind objects. To me, these are two parts required to tell one and the same story of our collective past, joined not only with archeology but with biology and and cosmology and philosophy as well.
Many new “inter-disciplinary” opportunities are arising. Working in “Peace and Conflict Studies”, which is consciously an mixed-discplinary discpline, I feel lucky to be one of a growing number that are seeking to bridge this gap through cross-discipline conferences, cross-discipline research opportunities, and cross-discipline subjects that look at sociology, philosophy, psychology, political science and religious studies all from a peace vs violence lens.
3. A gap between the exclusive fundamentalist brands of religion and inclusive ones
I’ll take Fundamentalist Christianity as my example, noting that the general points may apply to fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist versions of other religions too. Fundamentalist Christians are brought up with the belief that either:
1. Their religion is completely, literally, absolutely true which means they better behave so they don’t be sent to hell; or,
2. Their religion is wrong, life is meaningless so they may as well steal, commit murder or just kill themselves. What’s the point in struggling through eighty years or so of life if when you die you end up in the same state of nothingness as everyone else?
It’s all or nothing. The bible is either all true, or it can be put out with the rubbish. But is the history, the books, and the ideas that religions are based upon really so black and white?
Does looking at religions in their historical context show, that as with any writing, the motivations of the writers, the limitations of their sources, and the limitations of our own interpretive techniques, render black and white as two ends of a continuum, with myriad grays and colours visible in between?
Might the writings that proved enlightening for a particular group of people at a particular point in time, contain more-than-literal meanings in the mythos and midrash that the writers used to convey these messages?
One result of this all or nothing – “we are saved, you are going to hell” – mentality, is that many people judge all religions on the rules and destructive exclusivity of the fundamentalist versions, and write-off religion altogether as a man-made power-hungry institution.
I think that if one goes back to the philosophical roots of the religions, reading the “holy books” in their intended historical context, filtering the words through today’s higher levels of post-slave and (in general) post-slaughter-the-enemy morality, and explores the ideas in combination with one’s own experience and our scientific understanding of the universe and evolution… well I think that in this combination, religion does have something to offer.
Fundamentalist versions of religions are not the mainstream, but it is from these extreme versions that many non-religious judge religious on. In Australia the largest Christian denominations are Catholics, Anglican and the Uniting Church, all who (except the “Sydney Anglicans”) are inclusive of other religions (ie believe all religions connect with the divine powers behind life), read the bible in historical context, and engage in interfaith dialogue (see: http://assembly.uca.org.au/rof/interfaith-dialogue).
I think that in order to bridge the gap between fundamentalism and non-fundamentalism, it is good for us to study the gray areas, and to comprehend the alternative interpretations and meanings for ourselves. This brings me to my next point:
4. The gap in distribution of knowledge about others’ religious traditions (without presenting them as “evil” and “wrong” – especially if you are brought up inside one religion, or atheist)
I think the cross over and sharing between different religious traditions is not encouraged enough. I also don’t think that the connection between religion and science doesn’t have to be explored as either/or, but both/and.
Why shouldn’t all religions learn from the connections that others have had with the divine powers at play behind life? Why would any be so arrogant to think they know it all and that, call it “God” or “Allah” or “The Great Unknown” wouldn’t reveal itself in different ways to different groups of people around the world?
Doesn’t it make sense that the nature of science would be to explain how the universe began and how we evolved, and religion and philosophy to contemplate why and what is good or bad about the various ways we can use this gift?
Even if the expansion of the universe is a completely random event, the fact that we exist in a state that is able to contemplate our own existence is pretty fantastic. For me the magic of life the whole evolutionary process in the realm of divine awe. Our psyche’s, our conscious and unconscious, and the relationship between my unconscious and your unconscious, is pretty amazing.
Just because we can put some names and describe the process of one particle becoming two doesn’t negate the spark of magic that this process involves. And from two particles, into atoms, into life forms, and into planets and into you and me… how can we not think “wow”!
Who is to say that science doesn’t put into words the processes that a macrocosm we personify and call “God” sets in motion? Not a man in the sky, but a live and conscious universe made up of smaller conscious beings including you and me? I don’t see the incompatibility between religion and science, I really don’t. This, again, leads to another gap:
5. A gap in terminology to describe non-religious people who still believe in “something”
I believe this is a big gap in our language – a name for the large and growing number of people who have rejected religion on moral grounds, and hence hesitate to identify with any particular religion however who also don’t consider themselves atheist, or even agnostic.
A name for (what seems to me to be) a growing majority of educated people who are happy to accept the unknowns, and still think themselves assomething beyond the boundaries of their own skin and short lives.
This group doesn’t seem to feel a need to name it, to join any institution that tries to gain power over them from it, and who allow theirintuitive senses to connectto the mysterious energies at play and use this connection (via meditation, prayer, intentions) to benefit their or other’s lives.
Drawn to philosophical ideas like Resolution Theory in the book Shantaram, Taoist notions of good and evil being two sides of the same coin, and what I am learning about in my studies of Panentheism and Process Theology. As you can probably tell, this is me. I like the word Panentheists – the belief that everything is inside “God” – that is, our universe is a macrocosm with a similar relationship to us, as we have to the organs and cells that make up our body.
5. A gap between the knowledge distributed to rich and the knowledge distributed to poor
Finally I just want to mention the gap in knowledge distributed to rich and poor, as I reflect on howeducationis used to keep the poor poor and make the rich richer.
Bridging the gaps…
The ability to bridge the above five gaps, I think, lies in the hands of those with power: religious authorities, governments, media, legal institutions, and economic regulators.
Like every idea I explore lately, particularly in relation to distribution of knowledge and hence control of power, I return to The Pyramid.That power-hungry annoying big monster pyramid that gets in the way of all my idealism. But more about these gaps and bridges and using the pyramid for good and not evil, some other day.
Photo: Machu Picchu, the “Lost city of the Incas” so high up in the mountains of Peru… just one example of the ingenuity of mankind. December 2008.
Does school prepare us for life in the real world? Is knowledge passed from academia to public spheres? Are we learning from the past, or do we continue to make the same mistakes? How well do we really understand ourselves and others in our geopolitical, social, and historical context?
It seems to me there are major gaps within our distribution of knowledge.
Today I want to focus on one of those gaps, the gap between life in school and life after school. Over the coming weeks I will look at other gaps, and then at ways they might bridged.
Schooling in Australia comes down to one result: the HSC. (For non-Australian readers, HSC = Higher School Certificate)
This seemingly life-determining series of exams is ridiculously stressful for students. Suicide, chronic fatigue and depression are among many of the disasterous mental and physical consequences.
After the HSC I have noticed that many students are left feeling high and dry.
The choices may seem too many, or too few, but either way many (including myself ten years ago) feel confused about what to do next. I mean, how many 17 year olds know what they want to do when they leave school? And of those who at the time thought they know, how many look back ten years later and realise that, well, they didn’t?
Whether motivated by guidance from friends, siblings or parents, by money-incentives, or some other not-very-well thought through reasoning, many of us go straight into university and waste 1-3 years doing, or starting to do, a degree in something irrelevant to our future.
Even if we are one of the new generation of Aussies who head overseas for a ‘gap year,’, most return home to face the same dilemma that they faced when they left: they still don’t ‘know what they want to do when they grow up.’
So the next stage of the majority’s life story ends up either drinking at university parties as they go to minimal classes to earn that obligatory piece of paper; or working a 9-5 job answering phones, waiting tables, or driving trucks, in order to pay off the credit card or HECS debt.
Maybe things have improved in the eight years since I finished school, or maybe the non-denominational (a la fundamentalist) Christian school I attended was an exception? If so please do point out my errs.
From my observation the gap between finishing high school and finding one’s role in society is a widely felt phenomenon in Australia, and maybe among other western-capitalist countries too.
Through trail and error of various degrees and jobs I have discovered many career options that at high school I never knew existed. Why didn’t I know about these things???
Instead of encouraging a thirst for knowledge and the intrinsic rewards that comes from creativity, our schools seem to encourage a regurgitating of words and formulas in order to gain the extrinsic rewards of good marks, good university & eventually a good salary.
All of this so that you can pay back your university debts, get a mortgage and work towards the Australian Dream: owning your own house.
Translation: join the system, perpetuate The Pyramid.
Those who control the distribution of knowledge, controls the minds of the people.
Now, please don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing against The Pyramid. Unless I have some visionary solution to power paradoxes of the human condition I don’t feel I am in a place to criticise. The Pyramid might be the only way a society functions, so maybe our education system is the best it can be.
So let’s put The Pyramid in the parking lot for a moment. How could these gaps in education, should The Pyramid allow it, be bridged? These are some suggestions:
1. Empower children to think for themselves.
I think children could be more involved in the direction of their learning (as in Montessori schools). I think the focus should be on teaching them how to think rather than what to think, helping them develop the critical thinking skills that allow them to do this.
2. Encourage a desire to learn rather than presenting it as an obligatory task.
Learning shouldn’t be something forced upon you. It seems so negative that a child is told they have to do their homework or else get in trouble from the teacher.
Instead, learning should be presented as the luxury it is. It should be presented as the passing on of the cumulated knowledge of humanity, with which it is up to the students to expand and build upon during their lifetime.
Isn’t that a much more exciting proposition than punishment/reward scenarios of learning just to get good grades?
3. Value creativity over conformity
Learning opens up the gates for a child’s imagination, for them to discover their individual potential. Learning makes people more interesting, gives people a better sense of humour, and enhances one’s quality of life in ways that money can’t.
Creativity is a source of pleasure and purpose, but it requires children’s confidence in themselves – getting over the fear of peers, parents or teachers rejecting or ridiculing what they create.
4. Teach more practical & useful skills.
Decision making, goal setting, managing savings, investing in shares or property, avoiding accumulation of debts, solving conflicts, understanding politics and democracy, and the history of civilisation on the whole.
Why don’t schools teach students a general introduction to university disciplines including philosophy, theology, development studies, anthropology, peace studies, and the like?
5. Notify students that the roles that society defines are not the only roles. They can create their own role, their own box.
Students should be provided with a broad perspective of their place in the world, be able to see their perspective in the scheme of other people’s perspectives, and see the similarities and see what factors have influenced the differences. We can’t know everything, but we can develop an understanding of the general areas knowledge or skills that are available, and with an understanding that new areas of knowledge and skills are created every day.
Students should be given the opportunity to find jobs that they will enjoy, that are not a means to an ends but are a day-to-day source of personal growth and giving back to society.
Maybe I’m too idealistic. Yes, I’m sure I am.
I do understand that someone has to take out the trash…
Of course in my mind this is done by computerised machinery, all trash is biofriendly and so even this job is maintained by creative-thinking programmers.
I think if we were encouraged to have a desire to learn, an ability to critically evaluate our world, and to think creatively, we as a society would evolve in the most incredible ways.
Creativity, motivation and critical awareness have the potential to stimulate innovation to new levels, foster ongoing improvement in all areas of life, from local to global and beyond.
Check out what Ken Robinson has to say on the issue in the TED talk “schools kill creativity”:
Content in living out your life: work, money, weekends, holidays, home, kids… and then something happens: a cataclysmic event changes everything.
Be it a sudden illness or a natural disaster like the flooding Brisbane is now facing, everything you know – everything you care about, everything you have dedicated your life to, everything you imagined for your future – can disappear in an instant.
As I write, Brisbane faces 12 people dead, 43 missing, 20,000 homes, and 3000 businesses under water. No words can convey my sorrow and empathy for all those whose lives have been upturned.
The events reminded me of an analogy I came across in my narratology studies. The analogy of a “Narrative Wreckage”.
Events like are described as an “ontological assault” that throws even the most ‘basic, underlying existential assumptions that people hold about themselves’ into disarray. [1]
I imagine many people living in Brisbane are presently feeling such pain, among the many physical ones.
Occurrences like this causeworlds to be “unmade” – one’s identity and thoughts about the future are thrown into sudden disarray.
One’s basic sense of time is destroyed. Storytelling takes a massive turn. One’s life-narrative must be reconstructed.
At points like this that the Buddhist philosophies of non-attachment show their value: the less attached you are to the things lost, the easier the loss is to deal with.
Even if attached to the things lost (which most of us are), the incoherence in your life narrative can still be repaired.
The repair, depending on the damage, will likely see the creation of a new narrative: one of renewal and redemption, one of hard work and incredible reward. I don’t know if in these situations it helps to consider “the hard road to the good life.”
In an article in the Journal of Happiness Studies, a collaborative group of narratologists write about ‘narrative variations on the good (American) life’ that describe:
‘a gifted (chosen) hero whose manifest destiny is to journey forth into a dangerous world in order to make it better (to redeem it), and who, sustained by deep (intrinsic) convictions, confronts many setbacks along the way, but learns from each of them, and continues to grow.’
The stories ‘celebrate personal growth and redemption stories’ while also affirming ‘the sense that one is special and destined for greatness, that the world is dangerous and in need of the protagonist’s reforming efforts, that the righteous protagonist should never conform but always trust his or her inner convictions, and that good things will come out of suffering, no matter what.’ [2]
This narrative is so familiar – in our literature, movies, religions and even in our daily stories – yet that doesn’t take away from it’s deep psychological value, nor the difficulty of the experience as it is being experienced. Hindsight is great.
Each of us may be an Average Joe yet through narrative we turn into heroic protagonists, setting out on our own quests and adventures, most likely with something narratlogists call a “generative” aim – leaving some kind of personal legacy, creating positive value for future generations, demonstrating the meaning of one’s life (be it lives created eg via making babies, or through lives touched eg through relationships). [3]
No doubt cataclysmic events like this change lives. It changes the future. You may even look back one day and be thankful for the path the cataclysm led you to.
As an observer of the cataclysmic trajectory humanity’s narrative seems to be heading, I hope it isn’t insensitive to think about what the Brisbane floods can teach us all?
Human induced global warming or not, our radical global population growth and unsustainable lifestyles indicate our collective narrative is near wreckage.
People may argue that our population will slow as people come out of poverty and women are educated, but where is the sign that either of these things will happen in the near future? The economic pyramid depends on the large base and a huge gap simply in order for the middle and top to move up and live better. The lifestyles of the rich rob the poor of their choices, and rob future generations of their resources. I am, in every aspect of my lifestyle, a cog in this system. While this system poses threat to the narratives of many individually, and collectively, the institutions and society we are born into is not easy to escape, and even harder to challenge.
At difficult times like the Brisbane floods we see the media, the government, the nation, and much of the world, unite in effort to help those in need. Our common humanity triumphs over the economic, cultural, religious, and ideological differences that so often tear as apart.
As we join together to restore the order, to help those in need get back on their feet, I am reminded that humans care.When we see others suffering, we know that it could be us in their place, so we treat those people how we hope they would treat us. Our more superficial aspirations may distract us at times but at the end of the day I think we each feel connected to everyone and everything that surrounds us and that we are a part of.
This gives me hope.
I hope we can find ways to repair the cataclysms that face us in this moment, and to avoid the cataclysms that (on our current trajectory) appear to lie ahead.
References:
[1] Crossley, Michelle, (2002) Introducing Narrative Psychology, Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. pp. 11-12.
Michelle refers to Narrative Wreckage analogy from Frank, A (1995), The wounded storyteller: Body, illness and ethics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
[2] Bauer, J. J., D. P. McAdams, et al. (2008). Narrative Identity and Eudaimonic Well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9, p. 98.
[3] Baddeley, J. and J. A. Singer (2007). Charting the Life Story’s Path: Narrative Identity Across the Life Span. in Handbook of narrative inquiry : mapping a methodology. ed. D. J. Clandinin. Thousand Oaks, Calif., Sage Publications: xix, 693 p. 191.
Only 2 more boxes, 2 billion more people, bringing us up to a grand total of 9 billion. And I guess ideally, eventually, all those boxes are stacked on top of one another at the far right, enjoying their holidays all around the world.
“The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.” (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970: 21)
I am assisting the teaching of a master’s subject called The Political Economy of Conflict and Peace, at the University of Sydney this semester. My first presentation was yesterday and in the lead up to it I drowned myself in the political economic papers and books I wrote or read over the last couple of years. And searching YouTube for parts of documentaries that I have found useful in the past. This entry has become a bit of a dumping ground for me to refer and share again at later times… maybe you’ll find some of this random collection of thoughts and clips useful too…
Last week I wrote about the gap between school and life-there-after, and I gather from the feedback quite a few of you agree.. Well today I’m going to write about some other gaps in our society’s distribution of knowledge that I’m sure many of you have noticed:
Does school prepare us for life in the real world? Is knowledge passed from academia to public spheres? Are we learning from the past, or do we continue to make the same mistakes? How well do we really understand ourselves and others in our geopolitical, social, and historical context?
Content in living out your life: work, money, weekends, holidays, home, kids… and then something happens: a cataclysmic event changes everything.