The problems of humans
are many. Children are dying from hunger, war, poverty, disease, and pollution
of the air and water. Humanity is in trouble. Dissolution of the social units
that once supported community caring, such as the family, neighborhood, tribe
and village, leave nothing but the schools to teach humans how to think, how to
act, how to feel. The outcome is crime, loss of hope, vulgar desires for
superficial symbols of success, a corrupt political response, more hurt, drugs,
unwanted pregnancies yielding unwanted children, and on, and on, and on.
And environmental degradation continues.
Billions of living things that are not "us" are victimized each year
as we invade the habitats upon which they depend to live. This we know. The
protective ozone womb of the mother of us all has been violated by compounds
that we create for our own convenience. This we know. Millions of our own
species are starving and dying on our televisions, while we watch. This we know
too. Thoughtful people know but don't feel. When we are fully attentive, that
is both thoughtful and feeling, the sense of confusion and despair is so great
that we stop paying attention. Feeling hurts too much, so we either think
without passion or just stop thinking altogether about that which we don't want
to see. We know and don't feel, or we distract our minds with television shows
we don't really see, food we don't taste, music we don't hear, or shopping for
things we don't need. Our minds grow dull and our hearts grow hard from lack of
exercise, and spirit wanes.
The human mind, faced with the facts of the
human condition digs itself a hole and covers itself with a layer of
self-deceit. While some might decry this lack of thoughtfulness, this may be
the only rational thing to do with thought. After all, thinking has gotten us
where we are today. The act of thinking has built weapons capable of destroying
everything we love. Thought has degraded ecosystems, created cycles of poverty,
and allowed us to introduce poisons into our bodies that dull the pain.
Thinking "alone" cannot solve the problems that thinking has created.
To solve the problems of humanity, we must go beyond thinking, beyond reason,
beyond thought. Thought is necessary but not enough. Thought only produces
knowledge. Today we need both knowledge AND wisdom, where wisdom is defined as
the awareness of what has value in life. Learning for wisdom will require the
integration of thinking and feeling, mind and body, science and spirit,
knowledge and values, head and heart, yin and yang. Learning for wisdom will
require more coherence (literally, a hanging together) than learning for
knowledge. Learning for wisdom will require more education and less schooling.
Even the "best" knowledge-focused
schooling today only provides learning for the head. Information is handed over
to pupils in safe, officially approved packages to be handed back to teachers
for them to judge and reward. The interchange of information between teachers
and pupils is little more than a mental handshake in which a thought is passed
from an old head to a young one and back again. Like a handshake, the
connection between the teacher and student is safe and brief, resulting in the
transfer of information without meaning, disconnected from life. We need more
than mental handshakes to learn how to solve the problems we have created. We
need a connection that is deep and lasting to produce learning for the heart.
To understand how more meaningful learning might occur, we should look at the
early years of human growth.
The early years of learning are ones in which
feeling and thinking are coupled and intelligence grows through intuitive
leaps. The child learning to examine and manipulate her fingers at will is an
act of raw, unguided learning. This learning experience is full of wonder and
awe, a miracle of personal achievement, so different from the teachings offered
in school and university. The environment of the early learning experience is
one of support, challenge, caring and love. This process is coherent, in that
feeling and thinking are fully intertwined. The process of coherent learning
that begins with the infant is lost early in life as socialization rewards
thinking and discourages feeling. Passions are buried, sometimes to explode in
destructive behavior but never to be employed in a coherent learning process in
which "intelligent" feeling is encouraged.
Thinking is necessary but insufficient to
coherent learning since it suppresses the role of feeling. To understand the
difference between the coherent learning of the infant and the incoherent
learning of the adult, imagine an adult who has never seen the sunrise over the
eastern ocean. The first time this "uneducated" adult sees the ocean
sunrise might be thought of as a moment of wonder and unfiltered learning. This
childlike learner might see the ever-changing depth of color in the water, the
brilliant reflection of the morning sun as it dances on the crests of distant
waves. She might see the majesty of the ocean swells, and hear the roar of
those same swells relinquishing their power as they crash one after the other
onto the beach. She might feel the spray on her face, leaving a drying crust of
salt, which is the same salt of her blood. At that moment, the childlike
learner might ask what or who made this monument to the wonder of the earth. At
that moment she might believe in God.
Now lets send this person to the university to
study oceanography and learn about the physics, chemistry and biology of ocean
systems in a classroom far from shore. When this student visits the ocean over
a lifetime of study, the wonder of that first look is lost, as knowledge
replaces awe. The first experience of the ocean was one of pure, coherent
learning. Later perceptions of the ocean are filtered by memories, thoughts and
facts acquired in the classroom. While this knowledge is useful, it is not
coherent if it displaces the wonder of the first look. The learning which
results from thinking alone yields a human mind capable of creating
technologies or practices which pollute the ocean environment. Learning
resulting from both thinking and feeling might contribute to a more balanced
mind.
Our big brains seem to be particularly well
adapted to retain thought (both of thinkings and feelings) through memory. This
memory allows the body to repeat certain physical acts as well as to bring
forward stored images into the active, living present. These images are both
cognitive and emotive, with emotive being the more powerful. For example,
memory of previous experiences can bring forward feelings of fear, anxiety, or
happiness to affect current experience. Thought (being that which has been
experienced in the past, stored in memory, and carried forward into the
present) includes previous feelings and thinkings which interpenetrate each
other and become hard wired into a common structure within our memories. The
process of thinking and feeling not only create thought, but are themselves
influenced by thought, since observations of objective reality are received
through a filter of previous thinkings and feelings. Thought influences, even
controls our current feelings and thinkings. While infants (or our
"uneducated” adult learner with her first look at the ocean) may be more
open to new, unfiltered and coherent learning, adults are programmed to think,
feel and act by "reflexive thought."
Thought which is the result of previous
thinking and feeling influences current thinking and feeling through an
instantaneous reflexive act. Of course it is not possible to control the
reflexive nature of thought, since the control will also be based on thought.
But we have to wonder if it is possible to solve the problems of humanity that
were created by thought, using a thinking and feeling process that itself is
influenced by thought. Is it possible for "authentic" learning to
happen as long as reflexive thought interferes with learning? Is the human
species just a snake trying to swallow its own tail?
To break out of the circular pattern of thought
controlling thinking and feeling, physicist David Bohm, approached the
reflexive nature of thought by trying to understand something he called
proprioception (or self-perception). This is the awareness of the internal
system which controls routine activities such as eating, brushing teeth and walking.
While these activities are usually "automatic", it is a simple matter
of will to shift from reflexive treatment of these acts to a more attentive
awareness. If we choose to, and practice, we can become more aware of the act
of brushing our teeth. The proprioception or self-awareness of the body is
easily developed, if generally underutilized by most adults. Proprioception of
thought on the other hand is not well- developed. If however, mind and body are
one it should be possible to develop such self- perception or awareness of
thought. Trying to control thought is not likely to be possible since the
reflexive response is too fast, however it may be possible to suspend and
observe reflexive thought (including thinking and feeling) producing what Bohm called
insight. Intuitive discovery or insight is a spontaneous coherence at a level
not possible through thinking alone.
Bohm proposed that it was more likely to
achieve direct insight into the working of thought in group settings of twenty
to forty people in a process of inquiry he called dialogue. While it is
difficult to imagine a lone individual learning to become aware of their own
reflexive thought process, it might be possible in a group. With practice,
perhaps a group could develop a more mature and communal version of the
unfiltered coherent learning experience of the infant in the dialogue process.
If this was possible, we might begin to understand the complex issues of the
day in a more coherent way. Then maybe, just maybe, we might be better able to
create solutions together from a foundation of wisdom and build a better
future.
While education is indeed the path to discovery
of solutions for humanity's problems, the incoherent teachings of the schools
and universities divert us from the learning we need. We need an education of
rigorous intellectual activity motivated by awe and wonder. This kind of
learning should be nurtured by an environment of community caring where
thinkings and feelings are both honored, and the values of happiness, health,
friendship, love, justice, freedom, responsibility, democracy, and productive
work are explicit, desired outcomes of coherent learning. Thought is necessary
to this kind of learning, but thought "alone" (either separate from
feeling) or "alone" (outside of a community) is simply not enough.
Thinking and feeling must be done in the company of other humans, working and learning,
to heal ourselves, our communities, our planet - together.
John
M. Gerber
March,
1997
Converted by Brian Gerber