Tradition & Energy: Calculating Our Educational Power Bill

Seeing an orbital image of planet Earth at night you immediately become aware of two things. Firstly, how much energy is used to maintain the human experiment; secondly, how inequitably it is distributed around the globe. As James Lovelock recently observed, “civilisation is energy-intensive” yet the real energy that is involved in human existence cannot be seen as easily as the orbital photo of our nightly planet suggests.

The real energy driving the human experiment is psychic energy. There is undoubtedly some correlation between the physical energy emitted each night by our cities and the psychic forces that are driving late-modernity, yet this tells only part of a much bigger story.

Much of the psychic energy driving the human experiment is bounded by traditions. In fact it is quite a plausible proposition to claim that traditions are energy streams that draw on energy from the past, condense and focus energy in the present and, like a torch light, channel and project energy into the future. The fibre optic cables and satellite transmissions that bring speed and flexibility to the planet and its globalising economy and culture, as well as the urban incandescence of the Earth at night, are in fact the by products of an invisible but clearly defined confluence of energy generating traditions.

Roots & Rivers

Rabindranath Tagore, one of India’s great poets, describes creation as a waking up, an explosion of energy. Not the traditional Big Bang, but something akin as Brahma awakens and its joy is boundless. The roots of the Indic tradition lie in this expression of boundless-joy. Today this story has merged with many others like the course of the Ganges as it first meets the great rivers of Yamuna, Ghaghara and Kosi and goes on through twists and turns, finally spitting again and again in the monsoonal Delta of Bengal.

Similarly, the turbine engines of culture are alive with the dynamic dance of traditions, churning away like the great river Ganges as it makes its (untidy) way to the sea. The stories cultures tell themselves are the source of much energy, the dreams (and nightmares) that inspire nations, drive business and political leaders are more powerful than nuclear energy. The myths and metaphors that frame our unconscious daily coming and goings are what we need to turn to when seeking to rethink civilisation and our role in its maintenance.

The Educational Power Bill

When you think of traditions as conduits of power it is possible to look at any social structure and ask about it: What traditions power it? Who pays? Are there alternative energy sources?

Take one of societies most complex and contested institutions: Education. Far from being monolithic education is a veritable power grid generating huge energy for the expansive and predatory economic and the cultural practices of a globalising world.

The energy of this system draws on an array of traditions each bringing to the current system energy in the form of values, practices and beliefs. The humanism that drove education for centuries has been absorbed by the utilitarian needs of a rapidly globalising society. The pragmatic concerns of utilitarianism are at least in part off set by an opening up of democratic processes and a greening of the school. Furthermore, we also have the romantic tradition placing the child at the centre of the learning equation. Thus we find humanist, utilitarian, democratic, environmental and romantic strands at work; all provide energy and work to maintain the coherence of the system.

And the cost? The humanist tradition privileged the old elites, where culture and money and power coalesced, the poor payed; the utilitarian, as power shifted from the old elites to the new, a new form of education emerged and the user pays, ultimately the poor are excluded and as money flows upwards, they pay again.

The democratic offers a way out, as does the environmental: both stem from traditions that challenge hierarchies, yet both are too fragmented to challenge the dominance of the utilitarian, their effect is ameliorative but they contain the potential energy to challenge this dominance should a shift in the world-system cause a ‘power failure’ – such a shift could be either social or environmental. And the romantic? Child centredness is powerful, as it is the root of both soft and hard individualism, but it is too easily coopted by the dominant cultural elites, particularly those seeking a cultural ‘off-set’ for the vacuum created by the loss of humanism to utilitarianism.

Alternative Energy

We have lived in a resource rich world that at the physical level is coming to recognise its limits. What has been left largely unharnessed is the natural capital essential to traditions: human energy. To date human psychic capital has been focussed on the control and manipulation of the physical world. It has been largely shaped and directed by the materialism inherent to the Enlightenment and the drive to generate capital.

Holistic solutions embrace spiritual energy. This is energy locked in ancient traditions such as that Tagore describes above. Captured by the so-called ‘Protestant work ethic’ creation becomes an act of toil; schooling as a result is about ‘hard’ work, productivity and accountability. Add to this a healthy dose of capitalist rhetoric with ‘user pays’ and ‘choice’ on the menu and we end up with an entropic system that consumes energy, in the form of the lives, heart and imaginations of people and communities, rather than generates it.

This formula can be turned on its head with creation becoming an act of joy. Creative, life-affirming neohumanist traditions generate energy. If we infuse education with spiritual energy drawn from the practices, values and commitments of the great spiritual traditions we produce a system that channels powerful creative forces into the future. The turn is inward and thus saves us from the materialist despair inherent to the thinking of James Lovelock who can only measure energy at the physical finite level.

Physical energy is a measure of the psychic, but it is a symptom not a driving force. This is so, despite the obvious fact that both physical decline and technological advance, a la Moore’s Law, have momentums of their own once they gets beyond a specific point.

To harness traditions of power and depth and focus them into systems such as education is a powerful idea. Education that generates rather than consumes energy has the potential to return hope and creativity to the human experiment and enliven our daily dealings with the pressing environmental concerns that seem so overwhelming. Moore’s law and environmental catastrophe theories are certainly a pressing concern but they overlook the largely untapped power that lies within us all.

Why we Need to Take Risks

It does not matter if you are a Doctor, a Lawyer or an infantry soldier in the Army if you want to be the best and get ahead, you will need to take risks.

A doctor may have to take risks when working with a patient. The Doctor may have to experiment with different forms of medications or new surgical procedures when all else has failed in an attempt to help the patient.

A lawyer may have to argue a case in an unorthodox manner to win the case, but if the lawyer wants to become the top lawyer and make millions of dollars fighting high profile cases lots of risks have to be taken.

A soldier may have to take a risk and run thru gunfire to save another injured soldier, to complete their mission, or just to secure an area from being overrun by enemy troops, after going days with little to no sleep, but if a soldier wants to get promotions and eventually lead men into battle they also need to take risks.

These risks are not unlike someone looking to get rich in a casino, they have to be willing to risk everything they have to get that million dollar payoff. If you play it safe in a casino you may get lucky and win a big jackpot on the slot machines, but if you want to make millions you are going to have to play games such as Poker, Blackjack, Roulette and Craps . These are the games that with some skill, some luck and a lot of risk taking you can retire off your winnings.

The same can be said about life in general. No one gets ahead in life from playing it safe. You will not meet your special someone if you are too afraid to risk getting rejected by someone, you will never get that big promotion unless you take risks at your job.

It is very important to continue to take risks in life. To stop taking risks means to stand still in life. Standing still in life is one of the main causes of depression. These are usually the people afraid to confront the boss and tell him that they demand a raise; they are the ones that allow life to pass them by out of fear. The entire purpose of fear is to stop you from taking a risk.

Fear is nothing more then the unknown. If you have always wanted to quit your job and open a shop but you are too afraid to do it, this is because you are afraid of failing and risking what you already have.

It is important to learn to take risks in life if you want to be happy, you may not always get the things you risked for, but you will know that you tried, and in the end it does not matter in my opinion if you succeed or not it is how many risks you try to make that is the real test of how successful you are.

Just remember if no one took risks we would be a world without flight and probably no automotive vehicles at all, maybe we would have no electricity. So risk truly is needed to improve the world.

Online is the American Dream

Every generation has dreamed of a better life for their children, and many decided to pack up the family and move to America and that is how most Americans came to be Americans.

For 200 years people suffering from poverty, hunger or oppressive governments have dreamed of a better life for themselves and their families, and came to United States of America in search of the American Dream.

Many people around the world have to work 18 hours a day just to make enough money to survive; to these people the American dream is nothing more then a less hard life and a better education for them and their children, and to some it is getting rich without working hard to do it.

This is not much different from the mentality from an American who maybe builds houses, or works in a factory or some other type of physically demanding job that they hate, and at the end of the day they dream of winning that jackpot in an online casino.

Winning the grand prize and making enough money to put a nice roof over their kids heads, put the kids in a good school, money for college. This is exactly what the American dream is about.

Many Americans work 2 or more jobs a day to support their families, and have no way to get to a casino, they just do not have the time to get there. Does that mean that they should not be allowed to follow their dreams because they have to do it from home?

This is like telling a new immigrant that the American Dream has been outlawed because you may squander you money trying to achieve it.

What if a hard working man saved up some money and decided he wanted to open a restaurant and the government told him no, because the restaurant business is dangerous and most new restaurants fail within the first 6 months.

The law making online gambling illegal is a direct blow to why most of our grandparents moved to the United States.

The entire idea of the American dream is to be able to do better in life then the cards you have been dealt, just like in poker you are dealt your cards then after looking at them you have the chance to exchange your bad cards for better ones. The ability for a child from poor family to be able to get a good education and to make more of himself then the generation before him did.

Many people around the world are dealt a bad hand in life, but the American dream helps them rise above it to make what before may have seemed impossible become an every day occurrence.

Pure and simple the American dream gives hope to people who never expected to have hope again, and online casinos give people the same thing. The hope to improve their lives, and to deny people that chance is like putting a sign up for new immigrants to the USA saying Sorry The Dream is Over Please go home.