Hi TOK Society List,
I hope this finds you all well. I have been traveling, and while doing so I had the privilege to listing to two outstanding podcasts from Emerge<https://anchor.fm/emerge>, which were done just about a month ago. Let me describe them here briefly. I strongly recommend you check them out. They are both highly consonant with the vision a mission of the TOK Society and ToK Unified Language System.
The first I want to highlight was by Zak Stein<http://www.zakstein.org/>, who is a futurist and "meta-theorist" for the 21st Century who is focusing on the nature of education, broadly defined. He has recently released a brilliant book (Education Between Worlds), and the podcast he does reviews the history of education, explores<https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/emerge-making/zak-stein-the-meta-crisis-is-ALJV-6WQq3i/> why it was build as a "complicated system" that was designed to impart knowledge and train folks how to fit into society, but why that is now breaking down and why we need to fundamentally rethink the philosophy of education. He offers a powerful vision of a "metapsychology" and reviews the central place of education in society and how we might shift to a more "complex adaptive" system that is open and dynamic and more process-oriented. His vision included an embrace of education as being fostered by the love of the educator who draws out the curious learner and cultivates an attitude of life long learning and discovery. He also explores how we need to update our foundational assumptions from a "social capital" version of economic production to one that is much more ideational, informational, emotional and relational.
The second outstanding podcast was by author, teaching and organizational leader, Bonnitta Roy. She has a wonderful perspective that pulls on Integral Theory and phenomenology and many other holistic traditions. In podcast, she delineates six ways to go meta<https://anchor.fm/emerge/episodes/Bonnitta-Roy---Six-Ways-to-Go-Meta-e4fve7>. The first three are quite traditional and include "meta-synthetic", "meta-deconstructive", and "meta-cognitive". In general, meta-involves taking a step back and then seeing/experiencing/using/becoming one with the "whole" (or at least a higher order level of analysis). Meta-synthetic involves building comprehensive synthetic philosophical systems, with Wilber and Hegel being examples. Meta-deconstruction involves observing and critiquing or being-in-relation to experience in a way that normal categories and sense-making breakdown. She gives the example of post-modernists as doing this with language/justification systems and many Eastern traditions doing this with experience and thus losing the self. Meta-cognitive involves the traditional process by which one creates a space between the observer and observed. She then explored three other more novel forms, which I found both fascinating and helpful. I will not describe them here, but just let you follow her trail. Also, although she does not get to much into "metaphysics" directly, this clearly is relevant to her thinking. Here is a concluding paragraph from a recent paper.<https://integral-review.org/issues/vol_15_no_1_roy_why_metaphysics_matters.pdf>
So, why does metaphysics matter? We need a new mind, and metaphysics can help us sample and create new architectures of thought. The new architecture would cut out the epistemic complexity and more perfectly cohere with the rich elegant complexity of the real. By adopting a process understanding of reality, metaphysics could become a suitable guide for a Metamodern praxis, one which integrated perception and participation with the free play of imagination and memory. The task at hand is radical. It would be like swiping a hard drive clean, and uploading completely new software, from scratch, mostly through trial and error, gesture and response, sensing and acting our way forward until the moment when the reality we are situated in, collectively satisfied our dreams of the future "our hearts know is possible." It would not be a task we could formulate beforehand, or even know afterwards. It would be something that, like human speech, would realize itself through processes of creative becoming. It would never be something we could know, but it is something we could learn to do. Thus, it would take more than intelligence to pull it off. It would require a highly conscious species, to realize this learning journey. Such a consciousness certainly exists as a potential future state of our infinitely creative universe. Will this consciousness rise up in us?
As I hope you can see, this narrative is both very consistent with the arguments I have been making for the ToK Metaphysical picture and the need for a "Meta-Cultural Consciousness" to emerge if we are going to tackle the Digital Identity Problem. I strongly recommend both these interviews. They will entertain, inform, stretch your imagination and lay out the key issues we are facing in the 21st Century.
Best,
Gregg
___________________________________________
Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
(540) 568-4747 (fax)
Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.
Check out my Theory of Knowledge blog at Psychology Today at:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge
Check out my webpage at:
www.gregghenriques.com<http://www.gregghenriques.com>
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