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############################Colleagues,
Never ever have I bothered about US elections but this time. It is really interesting. But I assure my colleagues and friends there will be no doomsday any which way, if US democracy is what it has been professed for decades. Its just the close call that makes it heart skip moment. Quite like 20-20 cricket match!I think the fact that America voted in hoards is a great sign.
TY
DL
On 11/4/2020 7:59 PM, Lene Rachel Andersen - Nordic Bildung wrote:
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Everything seems to be bigger in the US, incl. the disasters. Really terrible situation now: two moral worldviews splitting the population in two halves.
Big hugs to all from Copenhagen,
Lene
On 04-11-2020 15:05, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx wrote:
############################Hi TOK Folks,
Well, that was an interesting night, huh? Pretty much setting the stage for exactly what I hoped would not happen.
The clash of identity that is unfolding before our eyes is epic.
If you get to the end of the UTUA story I shared, I think the lessons remain as important as ever.
Try to orient your energy toward love and wisdom in the days to come.
Big hugs to all,
Gregg
From: Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx
Sent: Monday, November 2, 2020 8:00 AM
To: '[log in to unmask]' <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: TOK The Quest for the Scepter of UTUA
Hi TOK List,
As Zak Stein has so brilliantly noted, one of the most profound ways to understand the current metacrises in this time between worlds is to consider it a crisis of education and teacherly authority. Zak means this in the broadest and deepest senses of the word “education”. As such, it becomes akin to socialization and the failing authority is found in the institutions that stretch far beyond K-12 schools, and include higher education, politics, and the capacity for intergenerational sense and meaning making to cultivate the necessary knowledge and practices for valued states of being in future generations. The Unified Theory adopts a new perspective on knowledge and the human condition and our 21st Century cosmic coordinates. It seeks to both serve, to quote Zak Ali, as “the ultimate sense and meaning making tool” and to play a role in the transitional, kairotic period that that we find ourselves in. The idea here is that we have a 20-30 year period to upgrade our mental-cultural operating systems and reframe the way we process data into information into knowledge into wisdom.
Toward that end, I am sharing with you an educational product from what I call “The World of UTUA”. It is an educational journey that imagines what schooling might look like from the vantage point of the Garden. It is structured in a way that is designed to be fun and pull on the archetypes of older elementary/middle school kids. As you will see, it is especially designed for boys. This is mostly because of the origin of this product was a question from my younger brother, Tim, whose three boys were 8, 10, 11 at the time it was made. As such, it is clearly titled toward the masculine. I make no apologies for this,. Indeed, it is strongly justified in the larger context. If there is a center of crisis in education, it is, very arguably, found with boys (see, e.g., here).
The prompt for the original slide deck in 2017 was my brother’s question: What does the Unified Theory say is the most significant problem of the day and how would it address it? This product was my answer. I have added a few very minor alterations, but what I am sharing is essentially the original form (summer of 2017). What is added from the original (here) is a better color scheme and the narration, both on the slide deck itself and then the explanation of what the symbolism means. A reason I wanted to do this is because over the past 8 months many people have been added to the list that have more of an art and technological skill set. One day perhaps some one with real skill in those fields will advance this product.
Here is the narrated video:
The Quest for the Scepter of UTUA
Here is the adult/educator version that explains the symbolism:
Explanation of the Symbolism of the Quest for UTUA
Here is the no voice slide deck (please note that the font appears off here, in the translation in to google slides…happy to email the original slide deck in anyone wants it).
A couple of notes if you go first with the narrative.
First, you will see that it is embedded in a political commentary. I want to state here, much like I did with my “morning after” letter, is that the focus of the commentary is on a single individual and his character. The rest of the implicit commentary is on the general state of political crisis, and the idea that we need a wise metapolitical position to emerge that can help us generate a much healthier political body that can do what it is supposed to do, which build common ground to cultivate the social-environmental commons that we as citizens participate in. I hope that is apparent by the framing.
Second, people are often asking: “Well, given your theory, what can you do with it?” I have developed some basic answers. CALM-MO, for example, is a quick but also deep entry point to some foundational principles and processes of psychological mindfulness. The longer answer is complex. What it does depends on what you know and can learn. And it requires that you learn. In fact, it is unapologetic in that way. Unfortunately, that is the exact opposite of the convenience and efficiency mindset that people have been socialized in this culture to expect. After all, we have at our finger tips access to so much that is immediately “valuable”. Think of the iPhone. With the products of Steve Jobs to compete with, an intimidating, unusual knowledge structure that seems to both convey commonsense and offers a cathedral of depth that doesn’t promise any immediate reward is not exactly well-placed to activate a dopamine squirt and cultivate base investment and the eager clicking of more. Oh well. Marketing has never been my thing. Indeed, I think marketing and deep knowledge of human psychology is a dangerous combination. There are good reasons my intuition has been to wrap my theory up into layers that need to be peeled back like an onion over time.
Third, unlike the pre-adolescent boys that this product is geared for, our “test and quest” is not told in twenty minutes, but rather is on the arc of 20+ years. As adults on the cusp of profound phase shift, we must be engaged in a “long game”. My sense is that there are seers out there who are seeing. We need a way to connect them and develop the tapestry of understanding that allows us to effectively knit together a frame. The UTOK identifies as this kairotic moment as the 5th joint point. As someone like Jordan Peterson would quickly note, we face the masculine project of “hunting the dragon in the dark”. We have to net him and bring the prize home to the tribe. Then, we need to get that understanding to the community. This is the feminine project of pulling apart the dragon and digesting the story of his conquest wisely for the community/communitas. Doing so allows to build the mythos that allows us to remember where we have been and what we need to do to avoid disaster in the centuries to follow. Finally, after the weave of understanding emerges and is found in a community, we need to cultivate the proper nest and socialize the children accordingly. This is the long game developmental project that allows us to transform the trajectory of mother earth, which seems headed for the ultimate Titanic calamity, such that we miss the iceberg and sail off in to CALMer seas in the back half of the 21st Century.
This week is an important one. Fingers crossed Humanity still has the time we need to be heroes.
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 the Unified Theory Of Knowledge homepage at:
https://www.unifiedtheoryofknowledge.org/
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--############################
Lene Rachel Andersen
Futurist, economist, author & keynote speaker
Co-founder of Nordic Bildung and the European Bildung Network
Full member of the Club of Rome
Nordic Bildung
Vermlandsgade 51, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark
www.nordicbildung.org
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