- Vera Nova
- Las Vegas, NV
- United States
Director -- Product Development, NOVA Town Futuristic Development
This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
Revolution in education
TED is a lively site, sometimes very annoying but once in a while is encouraging. You might feel that someone is awake out there struggling to understand why our society is so mad, and why is it so sure about its "knowledge". Well, I always felt in schools that I was TRAINED to follow conventions and my mind was somewhat TAMED. However, what makes my mind alive to this day is that I have always questioned what I have been told. There is nothing more exciting than having your own experience and chasing for your own answers...
(Since I was in my elementary school I was convinced that there was no way that the very same identical unit 1 could create a group of 2 or 3 etc it would remain the very same 1 no matter how many times we tried to calculate it. In order to make some group of units they MUST be somehow different. A 1000 solders would never be a 1000 until they would be all different and each of them would be unique. My teachers were mentally stoned when I was asking questions like that. There is no explanation in any scientific book for how sciences "think", not even B. Russel could understand the psychology of math, while not just myself but many small children do not need to become trained mathematicians or philosophers to feel that math is a very illogical, very corrupted tricky game. No way, I thought, that math could make up any foundation for "exact" sciences! There are no exact sciences ever possible.)
Closing Statement from Vera Nova
Our vast, contemporary systems force us to squeeze our feet into a pair of one-size-fits-all shoes, and our minds into conventional thinking. We do NOT TEACH young minds in schools to experience life, but we TRAIN them to serve our gigantic arftifocial systems that do not serve any real individual, but an imaginable collective prototype.
We fight for our own point of view forgetting that every creature has its own truths stemming from its unique existence, and perception of that existence. In this age of rapid communication, we can reach one another almost instantly, anywhere in the world. But for all that, we do not understand each other any better than millennia ago.
While encouraging our personal creative abilities, we still need to learn the basic principals of communicating with each other and nature. We shall learn how to be more innovative and intuitive facing the world which is new and different, in every instant. CAN OUR SCHOOLS/COLLEGES be more like sustainable peaceful communities, not factory-like institutions, but open forums engaging students in all kinds of creative thinking and mutual self support? Can a new school practice inspirational and sustainable community living, while students are inventing their own architecture, infrastructure, taking care of their own farm, sound small businesses, like bakeries, shops or theaters, right on premises?
Would this be great for a change to experience the full spectrum of better, more meaningful life in your school?
Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.
Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.
Lejan . 30+
as I have no OBE I am afraid I am not able to follow you yet I get a notion on what you are pointing at.
As I see it, you can not bring this 'transcendent' experience 'down to earth', as we are grounded in what we have.
It is kind of like 'health'. You usually realise what was granted the moment you lost it and this even in one and the same individual.
What you also don't know is, if this 'state' of OBE is stable in itself or if it is still linked to your 'physical vessel'.
But what I assume is, that I would understand you differently if I would share this experience with you.
So one day from now we may connect and know differently than we are able to do today... :o)
Vera Nova
If you do not trust me -- OK lets do not talk about it The main point however is that when we just dream while sleeping, our body is semi involved in dreams. People usually believe that our dreams when we sleep have physical influence, which is absolutely true.
It is a drastically different case When your body is dead - your sense-perceptions are shut completely. Some drugs can create similar effects. If you are still curious I will try to engage common logic and explain what I think it is.
It is different from 42.
Lejan . 30+
I don't think that our dreams are semi- or fully connected to our body at all times, mostly they are, but I also experienced the usual 'flying' dreams or dreams in which I was able to walk through walls. What was surprising to me when I woke, was the fact, that I was not surprised to have this abilities in my dream, which was my reality when I was dreaming it. This, to some degree, made me realize that our minds would be able to adjust even to the most bizarre 'realities' if we were put into them by bith.
Yet the question stays unanswered to me what could be changed in our education system to free up those hidden possibilities of our minds, if we don't even manage to keep alive the natural given curiosity we all have within us today?
If you could fill in those concepts I may be able to see if they could work or not.
Vera Nova
I think everything we've touched in our short posts is related, quite directly, to the possible revolution in our education and mentality. The more angles of observations we bring together for comparison the greater we might augment our vision. Language and grammar, sciences and math, arts and music as we explore these "subjects" in schools and in our social life are possible for us only because we have created conventional signs and special rules for them. It is about our collective "mentality" which does not really exist. Our knowledge as we articulate it is mainly about our crude approximations based on our collective experience. I hope that some day people would be able to understand that the nature's laws that govern our own perceptions are responsible for creating and conditioning what we call our physical reality with its gravitational, electromagnetic and other conditions. We do NOT discover universal laws but our internal laws within our unique realities and perceptions of these realities. A microbe would not even notice any table, its solidity or formation, or weight, it would not perceive its color or texture, or gravity that "puts" it on a floor, but a miicrobe would go through it
Lejan . 30+
I may not be able to 'follow' you or to understand you, but this self-explanatory because I did not have this experience. It is the same with me if someone has experienced 'God'. I didn't, I don't even know if God exists, I don't belief in one, but I would not consider this a 'story'. Some may be, but most will be a very strong sensation, which just happen not to have happened to me so far. I may not consider it a 'God' experience if I had one, yet I am sure I would be able to sense the intensity of such a feeling.
So if you are willing to share, I am willing to listen.
Vera Nova
The questions that children ask, come from the perspective of independent
observers. While they are still outsiders, newcomers, they have not yet become
seriously involved in pretensions of our society and its scenarios, in attempting
to fit into their limited categories. Very young children are our best teachers,
before they become victims of our social habits of thinking and acting.
As comical as those questions may seem to an adult, the essence of wonder itself
remains the most precious quality of our nature and very often this wonder can
take us to the most mysterious debts of our psychology.
Often narrowing its range and decreasing its points with age that natural wonder
leaves a mind in quite stiff condition when we get older. Sometimes we call this
stiffness a tradition, experience or even knowledge. As we grow up we hardly
distinguish those habits of thinking, from our real changing circumstances.
I'd like to repeat this again, by discovering physical laws, including Newton's and Einstein's we discover our own unique conditions within ourselves. Every living form must have a mind (while brains are not that important) because minds must perceive or in other words, Interact and protect its own unique domains through limitations. It is the most vital process of conditioning and eventually creating our internal worlds, whether they are similar or drastically different.