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Supernoetics Learning Webs. Part 2
Novelist Neil Gaiman once wrote:
“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”
I could add to that list: they don’t teach you how to get a mortgage or even how to open a bank account, how to create a balanced budget, how to repair quarrels, how to be a better parent, what’s expected of a lover, how to start a business with nothing, how to interact with the non-material world, or how to tell good data from bad (much less the skills of logical thinking).
These are what Neil Gaiman called “real world skills”. Thing is, we DO teach the good stuff in Supernoetics®. What’s more, we teach you the skills of self-learning, knowing and awareness too.
We teach you how to break free of the false—even destructive—knowledge that the educational system forces down your throat.
Bridges To Nowhere
As Ivan Illich once brilliantly said, education is just an advertizement for the status quo: “School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.” [De-Schooling Society, Calder and Boyers, 1971] They don’t really want you to learn anything new. They want you to learn the same old failed crap that they learned.
It’s a slave system. I call it child abuse: to lock up a youngster virtually like a prisoner for 10-12 years, no escape, and stuff them full of the nonsense that created our dysfunctional world. Look around you, watch the news, read the papers: do you seriously think the jerks in charge can teach us anything about love, beauty, humanitarianism, ethics, communication or spirituality?
Not really, you are saying.
The annoying thing is that the educational system now seems more concerned with controlling and evaluating teachers to the satisfaction of others—not the students—but instead meeting demands from trustees, examiners, legislators, financial bodies and corporate executives.
My teacher friends all complain they are drowned in paperwork and no longer have time to be leaders, friends and confidants of their students or able to inspire those in their care. Indeed, teachers have become increasingly depressed with their role, never mind finding freshness and inspiration. Their hands are tied.
The whole system works implacably against good teachers, those who care, who are patient and understanding, who have the real skills of bringing forth interest in youngsters and making any subject seem worthwhile. They are driven OUT of the system. The profoundly authoritarian, socially-inept and unengaged teachers are steadily taking over. The system welcomes them. They are a creeping cancer.
The whole educational edifice has come to be what Illich joked of as “bridges to nowhere…” and that was 1971! It’s far worse today. There are people around with two college degrees, who cannot get a job. The system has failed them and therefore fails all of us.
An Example From My Sphere
Just to show how bad this can be (as if you didn’t know), my wife Vivien has allowed me to share some of her educational story.
First, she was told on leaving school she was going to be a secretary (because she’s a girl, right?) Fortunately, howls of protest got her onto the right track—at a local art college, doing fashion design.
But very early on she showed her practical prowess and was better at some skills than her tutors (like pattern cutting). After graduating, Viv was fortunate enough to be accepted at the Royal College of Art in London, among twelve students chosen that year, from thousands of applicants from all over the world.
But see, there was a problem. Viv—who was brilliant and already made her mark—was offered a job at a major Paris fashion house. Suddenly, she had to choose between academia and the real world of fashion (not very real, I know!) Because of the prestige of the Royal College of Art, she chose to pursue a masters there. But she has always regretted it.
She admits she learned very little. She was already storming ahead in the commercial world. In fact she would have made a good tutor, never mind a top student!
I’m always glad Viv chose as she did, because otherwise she would have gone off to Paris, been wined and dined at the highest levels, met a rich prince, and I would probably never have met her! But it just shows the relatively trivial weight of academic qualifications.
Learning Web
Ivan Illich suggested that a good educational system should have three purposes:
- It should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives
- Empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them
- And, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with an opportunity to make their challenge known.
Illich is cynical and states that it will need the application of constitutional guarantees. I believe he is probably right.
But today, when I look at the evil machinations of Google, trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the planet, and deliberately withholding valuable and important information because it is politically incorrect (like, for example, censoring cancer cures or problems with vaccinations), I doubt that political guarantees of educational freedom will mean much.
Throw in the rivers of drivel that are circulated as facts on the social media, spouted by fools and failure—elevated to Facebook “stardom” because they are sat around all day with nothing else to do but “post” and “like”—and you have a formula for disaster, rather than true educational freedom.
Can we swing this around to our advantage? Well, Illich came up with the alternative idea of “learning webs”. That was long before the power of the Internet and social media emerged. With the worldwide web, we can now link with individuals anywhere in the world. We can share knowledge, real knowledge.
I have reworked Illich’s concept into something global that really kicks a**! I plan to disrupt current education, to clean it up; to start again.
In line with Illich’s goal, we start with what’s valuable to the student, not what educators choose as important. The simple way to do that is let the student choose what he or she wants to learn! If you are teaching Medieval Latin and no students come and seek you out for help… well, what does that tell you?
We will need a directory of who-teaches-what and the mentors will need to be vetted. All potential mentors must pass some kind of skills training and demonstrate they are able to help others learn. That’s different from the existing system, where “most qualified” makes a person important. We want “gets the best results” to be the kings and queens of our learning web.
This is to be a self-propelled system, and would not be subject to authoritarian teachers (the usual kind). They would simply blow themselves off with dogma and rigidity. We need flexibility.
The system would also be voluntary, at least at first, while the pioneer and development stage was in progress. That’s easy. Since we are ditching the 10 years of five days a week, 9.00 to 4.00, we can take it in small increments or bites: a morning, an afternoon, an evening, a lunch break…
But think of the advantages of dumping the costly infrastructure of the existing educational establishments: all those expensive buildings and salaries. Even travel costs need to be factored in, yet we get rid those too.
Craft An Epic Life
We have so much to teach: paradigm shifting stuff, that really works. We can more or less sort out anyone’s life to a better place.
We have hacks, protocols and study courses to cover a huge range of needs, from planning for success, personal integrity, creating prosperity (not just “law of attraction” flim flam), better relationships, ending hostility between individuals, to [MORE…] superquick healing, long-range miracles and (sometimes) out-of-body.
These are not pretty pink fluffy thoughts. I’m talking what Samuel Firestone called “hard thinking”. It means to change your world, to get what you want, not “adapt” comfortably to your surroundings, as the sissy gurus teach.
Consider these words of wisdom from George Bernard Shaw, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Be unreasonable! It’s the only way to craft an epic life for yourself. We don’t do easy. Life never surrenders to wimps who just try half-heartedly (note that adverb: living with only half your heart. Pah!)
Obsessive toleration is another “reasonable” trait that we rail against. That doesn’t mean tolerance, which of course is admirable. It means DO NOT put up with anything that can be and should be, fixed.
Toleration of a demeaning relationship, a demeaning dead-end job, a demeaning health handicap, a future going nowhere, are all a sin against your Being. Fix it! You were endowed with the power, you just need the knowledge. We do the knowledge.
Deal?
College Of The Cosmos
When you finally do reformat the hard drive of your life and start getting some successful outputs, it’s time to enrol at “the college upstairs”—The College Of The Cosmos as I call it.
Sooner or later, a person has to open him or herself to the concept of being a non-material, powerful, immortal being and the terrible implications of that. No more shirking! No more dodging responsibility. No more hiding behind cliches or easy solutions.
It’s been my earnest saying these 2 decades or more: knowledge is Being. We are what we know! Knowledge is the sacred path.
Learning, for a spiritual being, is like drawing air for a living creature. It keeps you alive; keeps you going!
The greatest beings are those who know the most. Think about that… It works at ALL levels. God knows the most; ergo, the biggest state of being.
It’s also a very important principle of Supernoetics®, that much case gain is to be had from knowledge: certainty about how things work: the mechanics of existence, the structures and functions of the mind.
With know-how, the individual will not only avoid the same mistakes in the future but often will also be able to backwards re-engineer events from the past and restore the balance and missing life energy.
Neil Gaiman again: The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.