Life is an experiment. I recall someone calling it "one continuous mistake," which sounds pretty gloomy at first, but I actually don't think so. Mistakes get a pretty bad rap. I'd say that most of what happens in life can be considered a mistake. That's the nature of the thing, since we're always experimenting. But the problem is that experiments usually don't go well. It's the way nature works, through trial and error (perhaps informed trial and error is more accurate). Every option is given a fair shake, only most of them have no chance from the outset-they're inherently problematic.
The funny thing is that our existence is the end result of a series of successful experiments, out of the many many more unsuccessful ones. It's funny though, how things never settle for those successes, there are always more experiments to carry out... most of which will fail. If I were to characterize the nature of, nature, I'd say it's pretty resilient, pretty hardy. Stick to those guns! Maybe that's why we admire that trait in our heroes.
So we go through life, behaving in accordance with the nature from which we emerged: finding options, making attempts, running into roadblocks and paying the price. Only we have new tools at our disposal: memory and cognition.
Rather than blindly stabbing about in the dark, we can organize our experiences and use them to make predictions about future endeavors. We can limit the number of blunders through a systematic reduction in doomed enterprises. And we can build on our successes, much as nature has done through eternity, to construct broad, trans-generational perspectives. We call this process, when carried out systematically, science.
But there's a larger piece to this, and it has a lot to do with our social nature. Even when our developing understanding is not systematized, even when it's semi-consciously carried out and logged, there is an element of understanding that passes into the collective passively. This is the informed part. Nature works this way.
All things, knowledge, systems, constructs of any sort, are built upon a hierarchical structure; there is a base structure, from which higher order systems emerge. Consider a human body. Molecular structures allow for cellular ones, which in turn allow for body systems that collectively maintain a living body. Now here, I'll go into conjecture:
The trial and error of the lower order systems yields a kind of "process knowledge" that is transferable to the higher order systems. This minimizes the number of doomed experiments, since the process systems that govern molecular success also control body system success, for example. Co-constructive methods of functioning (non-zero sum interactions) are favored at every level, so that the number of zero sum trials can be minimized once this is learned. While this doesn't eliminate doomed experiments, it does minimize redundancy and reduce the near infinite failures to a manageable number.
The highest system level to date is social. We are currently experimenting with ways of socializing. Most of these experiments fail. Still, we appear to be making rather wasteful experimental decisions, beating the dead horse of zero-sum self interest, long ago proven ineffective. I'm rather certain, however, that this is driven by a minority of egocentric social leaders.
Further conjecture: when we are in the zone, flowing, or experiencing enlightenment, we allow ourselves to feel the billions of years of systems knowledge and make decisions that align with the way of nature.
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Man vs. Nature
The universe is chaotic. We are floating in a frigid airless expanse full of scorching radiation and speeding rocks the size of many countries. To make matters worse, things are continuously changing; weather is marginally predictable, resources run out, geological events alter the face of the planet, suns explode, the universe expands... Our reality hangs on by a thread, or at least it seems.
A natural reaction to this is one that we, in our civilization, embraced some millennia ago: to create safeguards against the forces of change; to remove, or at least reduce, the unpredictability of the natural world. Such has been the charge of technological innovation, and we have had great success, at least in the short-term. We have managed to control the flow of water in order to maintain a steady supply of food. We have developed ways of tapping into chemical energy stored in the earth to keep our towns lit at night and our homes a comfortable temperature.
We have made the necessities of life so consistently available that people have time now to fret over what sort of shoes might go best with their new designer handbag. The chaotic has become rather static, and we have filled our lives with new sorts of worries that never occurred to our ancestors.
There is a major psychological consequence for this shift. In a static reality the universe is knowable; it is possible, in theory, to acquire a grasp of all that is, to become knowledgeable. And we have been at it for some time now. We hold in high regard those who are best at knowing, and feel ashamed of what we don't know.
Naturally, our educational system reflects this. We are taught to seek knowledge, operate within a structured, rigid construct, and pursue a particular ideal character, regardless of our individual uniquenesses. We are assessed only on our organizational skills and our mental capacity for- and dedication to- collecting details, while genuine understanding, and the tools to acquire understanding, is often neglected entirely. With our sense of self now reliant on knowledge, we cling to our internal libraries of static information, protecting them, occasionally to our detriment.
This mental game of acquisition has a physical parallel; there is a material outcome of this training. In the tangible world, many of us in our society find ourselves obsessed with objects. Our civilization is built on the idea of a life full of stable and secure possessions, cordoned off from others. We are protective of what is ours, and fence in our corner of the world, mirroring the confining and limiting nature of our intellectual reality.
There is a conflict. We are products of the universe, and the universe is continuously in flux. Our nature is to work within this chaotic sea of change, but yet we fight to control it, and ourselves, and we waste a tremendous amount of energy doing it. We limit ourselves to something static and almost immediately obsolete in the quest to bolster an ego whose foundation is unnatural.
But there is another way. We can choose to value the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, with no judgment for where one might find themselves on that journey. We can teach our children the processes by which they might seek understanding, and trust them to find their own understanding. We can embrace diversity, flexibility, and the creative nature of exploration.
I am a science teacher. I teach students to pursue truth, their own truth, through empirical methods. I work to encourage them to seek truth on their own terms, coaching by presenting them with challenges to their ideas and asking them to consider the quality of their methodology. My classes are science methods courses that, incidentally, lead to some new knowledge and understanding.
But the knowledge is not my primary concern. I, like most of my peers, was not instructed in this way. Science, as I once conceived of it, was a collection of information. My memories of science from public school involved memorizing periodic tables, anatomical structures, and right hand rules. I was successful, and I felt good about myself as a future scientist, but not because I knew how to do science. I had memorized the "scientific method" and could regurgitate it verbatim, but I had never knowingly applied it myself.
It wasn't until I had been teaching for several years that I finally learned that I was actually a pretty good scientist. As details started escaping me, replaced by conceptual conjectures and analytical exercises, my notion of science started to resemble the pursuit that it actually is.
But the real breakthrough for me occurred when I chanced upon a group in Seattle teaching physics instructional methodology in a whole new way (to me), and my eyes were opened. They were putting the learning in the hands of the learner, simultaneously handing responsibility and respect over to the students. Everything that they were doing seemed RIGHT to me; it was what had been missing from my own education. When I began applying this in my own classes, the response from students was incredible, though particularly so from the younger students, who are less indoctrinated in the knowledge and teacher-pleasing games of industrial-model classrooms.
With some, however, it was excruciating. To be expected to create their own conclusions is terrifying, particularly for those who have already acquired a substantial body of information and now consider themselves to be excellent students by 'traditional' standards. Again, I have found this to be more common with age, and have heard stories of furious educators walking out of such an instructional demonstration feeling toyed with at not being handed "the answer." But this should be, and is in reality, the norm in science.
I heard something beautiful the other day from a professional on the cutting edge of science education. She said, "if you're not comfortable with uncertainty, then you cannot do science. And this reminds me of the universe, in that it is vast, and fundamentally unknowable, though we can certainly do our best to approach an understanding.
I talk about science because it is the area that I have studied most. This is but one road and one skill set. There are paths for all of us, but the unifying idea is the search; the journey. If we honor each person's path through life, we can begin to do something bold and transformative for society.
Here are some of the possible changes that would take place in the world if we stopped fighting to control possessions and embraced the journey, the chaos, so as to finally begin working with the nature of things instead of against it.
I propose that we shift our paradigm. We should move from a vision of the world as discrete, static, and controllable to one that embraces the continuous flow of things. Our innovation has been sorely limited by an insistence on attachment to what came before. Our capabilities have been bridled by an artificial perimeter to our reality, and those who have broken out of the box have either been heralded as genius-heroes or crucified for their heretical objection to their contrived containment. We have shown what we can do when we put our minds to something, now the next step of our social evolution is to step back away from our egos, view the world and ourselves as we truly are, and return to the endless flow of change.
A natural reaction to this is one that we, in our civilization, embraced some millennia ago: to create safeguards against the forces of change; to remove, or at least reduce, the unpredictability of the natural world. Such has been the charge of technological innovation, and we have had great success, at least in the short-term. We have managed to control the flow of water in order to maintain a steady supply of food. We have developed ways of tapping into chemical energy stored in the earth to keep our towns lit at night and our homes a comfortable temperature.
We have made the necessities of life so consistently available that people have time now to fret over what sort of shoes might go best with their new designer handbag. The chaotic has become rather static, and we have filled our lives with new sorts of worries that never occurred to our ancestors.
There is a major psychological consequence for this shift. In a static reality the universe is knowable; it is possible, in theory, to acquire a grasp of all that is, to become knowledgeable. And we have been at it for some time now. We hold in high regard those who are best at knowing, and feel ashamed of what we don't know.
Naturally, our educational system reflects this. We are taught to seek knowledge, operate within a structured, rigid construct, and pursue a particular ideal character, regardless of our individual uniquenesses. We are assessed only on our organizational skills and our mental capacity for- and dedication to- collecting details, while genuine understanding, and the tools to acquire understanding, is often neglected entirely. With our sense of self now reliant on knowledge, we cling to our internal libraries of static information, protecting them, occasionally to our detriment.
This mental game of acquisition has a physical parallel; there is a material outcome of this training. In the tangible world, many of us in our society find ourselves obsessed with objects. Our civilization is built on the idea of a life full of stable and secure possessions, cordoned off from others. We are protective of what is ours, and fence in our corner of the world, mirroring the confining and limiting nature of our intellectual reality.
There is a conflict. We are products of the universe, and the universe is continuously in flux. Our nature is to work within this chaotic sea of change, but yet we fight to control it, and ourselves, and we waste a tremendous amount of energy doing it. We limit ourselves to something static and almost immediately obsolete in the quest to bolster an ego whose foundation is unnatural.
But there is another way. We can choose to value the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, with no judgment for where one might find themselves on that journey. We can teach our children the processes by which they might seek understanding, and trust them to find their own understanding. We can embrace diversity, flexibility, and the creative nature of exploration.
I am a science teacher. I teach students to pursue truth, their own truth, through empirical methods. I work to encourage them to seek truth on their own terms, coaching by presenting them with challenges to their ideas and asking them to consider the quality of their methodology. My classes are science methods courses that, incidentally, lead to some new knowledge and understanding.
But the knowledge is not my primary concern. I, like most of my peers, was not instructed in this way. Science, as I once conceived of it, was a collection of information. My memories of science from public school involved memorizing periodic tables, anatomical structures, and right hand rules. I was successful, and I felt good about myself as a future scientist, but not because I knew how to do science. I had memorized the "scientific method" and could regurgitate it verbatim, but I had never knowingly applied it myself.
It wasn't until I had been teaching for several years that I finally learned that I was actually a pretty good scientist. As details started escaping me, replaced by conceptual conjectures and analytical exercises, my notion of science started to resemble the pursuit that it actually is.
But the real breakthrough for me occurred when I chanced upon a group in Seattle teaching physics instructional methodology in a whole new way (to me), and my eyes were opened. They were putting the learning in the hands of the learner, simultaneously handing responsibility and respect over to the students. Everything that they were doing seemed RIGHT to me; it was what had been missing from my own education. When I began applying this in my own classes, the response from students was incredible, though particularly so from the younger students, who are less indoctrinated in the knowledge and teacher-pleasing games of industrial-model classrooms.
With some, however, it was excruciating. To be expected to create their own conclusions is terrifying, particularly for those who have already acquired a substantial body of information and now consider themselves to be excellent students by 'traditional' standards. Again, I have found this to be more common with age, and have heard stories of furious educators walking out of such an instructional demonstration feeling toyed with at not being handed "the answer." But this should be, and is in reality, the norm in science.
I heard something beautiful the other day from a professional on the cutting edge of science education. She said, "if you're not comfortable with uncertainty, then you cannot do science. And this reminds me of the universe, in that it is vast, and fundamentally unknowable, though we can certainly do our best to approach an understanding.
I talk about science because it is the area that I have studied most. This is but one road and one skill set. There are paths for all of us, but the unifying idea is the search; the journey. If we honor each person's path through life, we can begin to do something bold and transformative for society.
Here are some of the possible changes that would take place in the world if we stopped fighting to control possessions and embraced the journey, the chaos, so as to finally begin working with the nature of things instead of against it.
I propose that we shift our paradigm. We should move from a vision of the world as discrete, static, and controllable to one that embraces the continuous flow of things. Our innovation has been sorely limited by an insistence on attachment to what came before. Our capabilities have been bridled by an artificial perimeter to our reality, and those who have broken out of the box have either been heralded as genius-heroes or crucified for their heretical objection to their contrived containment. We have shown what we can do when we put our minds to something, now the next step of our social evolution is to step back away from our egos, view the world and ourselves as we truly are, and return to the endless flow of change.
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