@dishearer
Active 4 weeks agoForum Replies Created
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One is epistemological (what we know of the other),
the other axiological (study of value, ethics/aesthetics), &
the third is praxiological (rapprochement or distancing oneself from the other in one’s actions).I found this sentence in your text very helpful, Noha – adding a brief sense of what axiological means.
To translate this into daily life terms, I’d say I know your name, your location, your face, some of your views, for instance – the epistemological. I value your quest for ways we might bring children up and ways in which we might live together differently (axiological). Then there’s the praxiological – praxis (action). I hang in with our exchanges because I want my actions to be modified, transformed … through these exchanges. I’m never deliberately ‘distancing’ myself from you, but in that our exchanges can’t fully embrace the whole of us – perhaps I do.
There is a lot in this conversation that I’ve yet to take in, but these are my morning thoughts.
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Just wondering Oria whether you are referring to the work of Ken Wilber when you use the word ‘integral’?
HIs is an all embracing theory of everything – but it remains far too philosophical. He pits the individual against the collective, and the interior against the exterior – so making four quadrants, then you can consider the interior individual (personal, subjective), the exterior individual (body and things), the interior collective (culture) and the exterior collective (systems). But you have probably used the term more generally. I’ll wait to hear.
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HI Noha,
Regarding the 40 values you enquired about, I’m spending contemplative time considering how I model this value (or otherwise) to children. So, for example, today’s value is ‘generosity’ and ‘sharing’. I’ve tried to picture myself being with a child who isn’t willing to share a toy or a sweet – and how I might cultivate this value in the context. It’s not easy. And values are never simple – it’s never black and white.
Yes, immense, Universal transformation. So glad to have your company.
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Thanks, Noha, for waking us up to this conversation again. I’ve enjoyed re-reading it. I’m also aware of your special interest in the raising of children without cultural or religious bias. I like the short-hand ‘ideo-theo’ – says so much.
My one response is that I’ve always tried to link new knowledge with ‘tradition’ in some sense. Almost need to say ‘traditions’ because they are mulitiple. We can’t find new ways of being, renewed consciousness without coming to terms with the ‘deficient’ up to now understandings. I’m endeavouring to work with 40 values/characteristics that can be cultivated in children. Not finding this ‘exclusive’ to any ‘ideo-theo’ – yet at the same time only really understood through grounded experience which can’t be separated from ‘culture’ of some sort of the others.
Do hope you find the academic context for researching all this soon. Keep chatting here and welcome back to each of you. Please update the topic with your comments.
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Thanks, Noha. The words l love most in your post are these:
“that children’s innate orientations are already originally directed toward adopting such positive attitudes as compassion & oneness”
and I’m sure a Ph D on this topic is well overdue. Hopefully the door will open to you. I’ve witnessed European children growing up in an indigenous context in Malaysia and I sense the truth of this. They are often far more accepting of difference than their parents. Certainly they learn a different language more readily than we do as adults.I suppose the other side of the coin is that siblings in a family often squabble more easily than they share (e.g. their toys). There’s some kind of innate selfishness/self-centredness as well. We all have to learn a different way of seeing things.
I have to confess I haven’t fully grasped the Deep Time approach, when it comes to how his affects our ‘tolerance’, our ’empathy’, our ‘compassion’. But I love what I have learned so far and hope we’ll all learn to learn in more accepting ways.
Thanks too for the real life examples you give. It helps people like me who don’t see such division on so close, or so daily a basis as you do. Please keep contributing.
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Thanks, everyone for your posts. I wonder whether some would use the word ‘compassion’ – experiencing and feeling together with – to ‘trump’ ‘tolerance’. It’s true that children are usually better at accepting difference than adults who have somehow formed a concreteness that doesn’t allow entry of the other who is different. So for the original question, I have to say I’m still very much a beginner in the ways in which we use cosmic education / deep time learning to counter ‘intolerance’. I’ve noticed that adults I work with are somewhat stunned into silence on viewing the Journey of the Universe for the first time. Perhaps the Oratorio does more to engage the emotions and draw us into a compassionate understanding/appreciation of the whole. Even so, something quite analytical and technical, such as the Capra book/systems approach still leads me to ‘wonder’ – the wonder that will guide us (Swimme). How might these adults become children again, how might we loosen up that which has become hard set within us? How might our sense of wonder be nurtured as we learn our way forward. Travelling with you … and very much looking forward to further replies.
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In my work with adults in intercultural communication contexts, I have seldom been content with ‘tolerance’ as a disposition. It’s has a negative odour rather than the positive ones which words like ’empathy’, ‘patience’, ‘approval’ bring into focus. I guess too that ‘intolerance’ is a milder form of saying one is ‘prejudiced’ or ‘narrow-minded’. Yes, I love the Cosmic Education – Deep Time Journey Orientation because it reverses these. ‘Open-minded’, ‘compassionate’, ‘fair’, ‘kind’, ‘soft-hearted’, ‘tender’ – these are words which ring with deep resonance. Whereas for me ‘tolerance’ has an element of ‘well I’d really rather you be different from the way you are but I’ll put up with you for now’, which is just another form of ‘intolerance’. Thanks Jennifer for your post. These two words are shorthand for all the positive dispositions that are out there and available to us. But let’s expand the words to their full relational and life-giving meaning.
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Yes, Brian, I’ve done the first three of the specialisation and am waiting for the fourth in the series which I anticipate for later in January. Meanwhile … now to read Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to the JOU. My copy arrived today. Let’s keep talking.
Please say more about the Jung and Teihard interweaving … if you can spare the time. Thanks, Di
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HI Orla, thanks so much for this link to ‘worldbeforeher’. I have purchased the film and will watch with great interest. Also the document introducing the film and the helpful study guide/questions. I grew up in conservative contexts (Christian) in a relatively poor family. Through life experience in Malaysia among indigenous peoples and through research on things ‘intercultural’, I’ve grown not only more ‘tolerant’ but far more positively accepting of different ways of seeing the world and living my life in it. This journey into Deep Time and Big History is currently providing even greater perspective and is so personally nourishing. A friendship with Noha has developed and is one I treasure.
So how do I counter ‘intolerance’ through this new perspective. Well, one way is with like minded folk in a University of the Third Age (for retired people and all quite voluntary). We combine spirituality and sustainability. Another is through a phone link up with three others North Americans every two weeks – a group arising from an Integral Evolutionary on-line course I enrolled in in 2009. But as for finding ways to open up meaningful conversation with those who still hold literalist ways of understanding our origins, I’m still at a loss. And even more to the point, I wonder with Noha how we are to ‘teach’, ‘bring up’ children (or learn from them as well). It’s key to our future as a global species.
It looks as if the film will help me understand ‘terrorism’ more practically. I’m asking myself ‘what is beauty’ when held up against the beauty queen culture it portrays. The basic tenets of ‘the good, the true and the beautiful’ cover all aspects of life. I recall the saying of Teilhard de Chardin ‘union differentiates’! How do we then take the multitude of understandings of these three tenets and live/work together.
Let’s keep the conversation going. It gets dense at times and I’ve tried copying it down to a word document to see where I want to say more – but then gave up. I’m really glad to make your acquaintance, Orla.
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