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Imagine a 3-D World

This article was reprinted from the The New and Ancient Story blog, you can view and comment on the original article HERE:

 

PictureCreative Commons: Rebecca Pallard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Charles Eisenstein


On our way to see the latest installment of The Hobbit, I asked my 10-year-old Philip and his two friends, “Don’t you wish that the real world were 3-D just like the movies?”

“Yeah!” they said with relish. “That would be so awesome!”

The joke was on me, it seemed. A minute later I tried to explain: “Guys, you realize that reality already is 3-D, don’t you? I was making a joke.” 

“But it isn’t like the movies,” said the 11-year-old sitting next to me, “where stuff comes right at you.”

“Yes it is,” I said, pretending to swat him in the face.

The conversation soon turned toward other topics, and I was left with an abiding sadness over that boy’s words. Essentially, he was saying that reality is boring compared to its simulation on screen. I can see why: film, television, and video games pack in as much fast-paced, loud, intense action in a minute as real life does in a week. The nervous system, conditioned to such intense stimuli, becomes uncomfortable in the presence of the slow, the quiet, and the natural. As Lao-tau said, “Colors blind the eyes, sounds deafen the ears, flavors spoil the palate.”

All the more enticing the simulated world is when the real world is increasingly barren and controlled, a realm of fences, safety, and rules. Absent the freedom to roam, what alternative is there to the on-line adventure? Over-protected from the opportunities to make painful mistakes, what choice do children have but to press the “replay” button again and again, losing their virtual “lives,” sustaining painless “damage,” and recording inconsequential accomplishments? 

And yet there I was, taking them to the movies. I have tried to limit my children’s exposure to electronic media to little avail. It was possible when they were young, but now my teenagers spend most of their free time on screens. I’m not even sure if I was right to limit them. Perhaps their brains are making evolutionary adaptations to electronics that lead somewhere beautiful. After all, my eldest uses computers to compose music and make films.

Yet I am disturbed by the decline of the outdoor world of imaginative child’s play. Nothing will convince me that hours in front of the screen are an appropriate substitute for that. But sometimes I grow tired of resisting it. Maybe something is happening that I do not understand. It might be significant that 3-D is also a synonym in certain New Age discourses for the Newtonian world of linear force-based causality. Perhaps virtual 3-D is conditioning us to see material 3-D reality as a kind of illusion as well, whose laws are constructs springing from a deeper intentionality and intelligence. I am reluctant to glorify technology like this or to cast it into the role of savior that it has occupied in the imperial imaginations for three centuries now. Yet, on the other hand, I will not exclude any expression of our unique human gifts, including technology, from its role in the metamorphosis of our planet.

If 3-D simulations are meant to be some kind of conditioning to the idea that reality too is a construct atop something deeper, at least let us not infer that what happens in the world is like what happens on a screen, its consequences limited to the confines of the theater or game console, and that, therefore, humanity’s destiny is to transcend the “third dimension” and enter, as that New Age discourse puts it, the fifth. If we are in a dimensional transition (and I believe the metaphor is fruitful) then it won’t be an escape from materiality, but a plunge deeper into it. The fifth dimension is not outside the third; it is within it.

Significantly, 3-D films simulate only certain aspects of reality – vision and sound – but not the kinesthetic, not the kinetic. They leave out the impact of a force upon a mass, the visceral and the embodied. In parallel fashion, our civilization neglects its impacts, hiding the damage to the body of Gaia behind wall after wall of ideological and physical insulation. Even when we are shown images of bleached coral and stripmined mountains, they are after all but images, confined just as films are within the boundaries of a screen. But for the stories we tell about them, they do not hurt – not any more than we allow them, in our climate controlled environments where a less disturbing scene is a mouse-click away. Such is the illusion of control that we have assumed in the phantasmagoria we mistake for reality.

Of course, such an illusion cannot persist forever. We are embodied beings bound to the Gaian body, and when we accelerate to crash velocity no amount of virtual obfuscation can prevent a collision.

Where the conditioning of virtual reality might be useful, though, is if it encourages us to doubt the artificial reality that we live in, to question what is given to us as “normal,” and to see the constructs that bind us – the rituals of money, law, medicine, dominance, and so on – as mere agreements, mere stories that bear no more permanence, no more solidity, than the pixels on a screen – however three-dimensional they may seem. Much of what we take as real can, like a video game, be reset. Much of what we take for the rules of life can be reprogrammed. A deeper reality is revealed in its two aspects: the kinetic world of the physical, the living, and the sensuous, and the immanent intelligence of that physicality that orients events toward an emergent purpose. The first is revealed through impact: the bumping up against reality. The second is revealed as synchronicity: the meaningful coincidences that beckon to us when the veil of normal routines and beliefs is torn aside.

Such is the nature of the transition before us: not only a transcendence to the fifth dimension, but a homecoming back to the third.

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Radical Road in Scotland: Character Education

This story is about a new AERO member, Tila Morris, from Scotland. She and her partner, Ian McDonald, will be at the AERO conference in May.
 

This article from Tila Morris presents a reflection on the concept of character education and whether it can be successfully implemented without radical change in the education system. She also invites you to become a memeber of the Character Scotland network:


 

"The benefit of networks like Character Scotland is the ability to form"emancipatory alliances….[offering] a values-driven solidarity and a commonality of orientation so essential to those who work against the grain."(Fielding & Moss, 2012). My hope here is to spark debate on the best way to build character and virtues in young people. Therefore I invite you to join the alliance, continue the critical reflection on practice and nurture ideas for future action. Should you take up the invitation our shared motive is to create the space where young people's critical consciousness can be raised and entrust our belief in the power and potential of young people to be the force of positive change in Scotland."

 

You can click here to read from the book. 
 
 
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University’s Teacher Education Students Shocked by Visit to Free School

Adam W. Jordan, Ph.D.

 

"What is the purpose of school?"

 

When you ask that question to a group of undergraduate education majors you usually get responses like, "to help prepare people for democracy" or "to prepare people to be independent citizens".  I do not believe I have ever heard a response of, "to make people comply" or "to help people do really well on standardized tests".  

 

Still, we all know that what we communicate verbally regarding the purpose of schools and what actually happens in practice can be drastically different.  

 

In full disclosure, I am an assistant professor of special education at The University of North Georgia.  I suppose in some circles that would make me "The Man", and not in a "he's great" kind of way, either.  Our program, like almost all teacher preparatory programs in the United States, is traditional and we are deeply rooted in the public K-12 system.  However, my background is in public alternative education and I am quite passionate about the transformative power of educational alternatives.  I'm a firm believer that we have to do a better job of exposing traditional teacher education students to the potentials of educational alternatives.

 

So, at UNG we're trying…

 

To start this conversation with undergraduate students I took about a dozen of my juniors and seniors on a field trip to the Freedom to Grow Unschool located right outside Athens, GA in beautiful Madison County.  Lora Smothers, the school's owner was more than kind and welcoming, and so were her jovial, jubilant crew of excited young people.  I wondered what my students would take away from this visit.  Certainly absent were some of the things they are most accustomed to seeing.  There were no rows, no pleas to be quiet, and in at least one case, no shoes!  What was present, though, was a sense of community as children and adults alike gathered around in a circle for introductions and to outline the direction of the day.  Student choice, self-directed learning, and genuine excitement were all present as well.  

 

I could tell that after my students recovered from their initial shock they began to imagine what aspects of this environment they could carry into their much more traditional school placements.  All of a sudden it was much more realistic to have a conversation about how to let students be creative, guide their own learning, and participate in a true democratic classroom.  This conversation was all possible because they had just witnessed all of those things.  I mean, when you watch a group of ten year olds develop a multi-tiered plan for how to engage in play in a safe way that is dependent upon the self-expressed comfort level of the participants, it is hard to argue that your lecture-delivered classroom rule of "respect others" is adequate.  

 

I could continue on about the benefits of our visit to FTGU and I hope that the visit impacts the practice of my students so that they can in turn create a more just, inclusive, welcoming public K-12 schooling experience for the students that will enter their classrooms.  I will end, though, with just a quick plea.  It isn't a plea to those that are already bought in to the idea of educational alternatives.  It is a plea to those who may have an impact on the development of future educators who may be hesitant.  If you have a local educational alternative in your area, give them a call.  They will probably open their arms and welcome you.  Just go hang out.  You can even do so in a shirt and tie with your arms folded, iPad charged, and skepticism high.  Once the students take you outside to show you the really awesome, well-engineered, structurally sound tipi they developed, you'll relax and at the very least, you'll enjoy yourself.  I mean, hey, enjoying yourself can be a purpose of school too!

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Cuixmala School Needs a High School Teacher

We are looking for a high school teacher who is very talented at teaching math and can handle other academic subjects. We are a small homeschool that functions in a very free manner. We are located in the Costa Careyes on the Pacific coast of Mexico. We believe in a humanistic approach and believe in teaching critical thinking.  Teachers acts as mentors and teach individual curriculum to a small group of children .


 Teachers must be native English speakers and have previous experience with American or Canadian Curriculum. The position offers a very generous Mexican salary with vacation pay. Knowledge of photoshop, movie editing and theatre would be a huge benefit. Costa Careyes is a beautiful coastal area.  Suitable candidates should like living in small communities and enjoy nature.  Please send resume and references to dklompas@hotmail.com. We are looking to fill the position immediately and will be offering employement until June 2015