THE ENLIGHTENED MIND - SOCRATIC, INQUIRY-BASED EDUCATION
THE ENLIGHTENED MIND - SOCRATIC, INQUIRY-BASED EDUCATION
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF IMAGINEERING
MY SOLE CONSISTENCY - IS MY INCONSISTENCY
I must laugh at my own inconsistency - as I have stated many times my only consistency is my inconsistency.
After writing out my reasons yesterday for questioning our technology and our belief in artificial intelligence or AI - today I question my own judgment.
Is AI managed by idiots at the present time?
Yes - of course - our entire planet is given over to the ignorant, the demented and the insane currently.
AI is and always will be - artificial - yet another tool which we then - as the quintessential tool users - have a choice whether to use or abuse.
No amount of AI will change the fact we are human beings and that AI is under our jurisdiction.
All the same AI - being a tool - can be used for all the wrong reasons.
I am so far convinced that questioning everything - perpetually and all the time is the right path intellectually, spiritually and emotionally.
This being the case I have no choice other than to question it all.
In today’s essay I contradict my previous essay - after posing new questions - which lead to other questions - and which spiral out in geometric progressions of thoughts in an unbroken chain.
And it is not that any of the previous essay is wrong - but that it was right enough to inspire better questions with better answers.
Yesterday’s essay:
IF I am on the right track - and if Socratic education is the hope for a better future for humanity - then there is simply nothing to fear from the use of computer based learning systems as long as well meaning, grounded and committed humans are involved.1
The dead, dry, didactic, boring and static educations offered by the nation states do not please or enlighten - or lead to human excellence.
It is fearful societies - controlled in turn by fearful ignorant leaders - who manifest these indoctrination processes they call education.
Tightly controlled social structures - dependent on a hive mind mentality - are based on fear - fear of the imagined other - fear of free thinking - fear of our own impulses.
On the other hand a free approach to education - one where all choices are on the table - all of which are equally subjected to free inquiry - is materially different.
Free inquiry - if pursued in a respectful Socratic and free manner - leads to the discovery of the right courses of action.
And a free and Socratic process reveals the manners of thinking which - in turn - support these right courses of action.
The only thing then to fear - is fear itself - the fear of change.
As a famous politician once used the phrase - it was applied to the necessity of pursuing war in the context of the times.
FEAR, PAIN, DOUBT AND IGNORANCE - THE CROSS
As we have been taught by the greatest spiritual teachers and many poets and writers - fear, pain and doubt our real enemies - the cross we bear - all fueled by ignorance of our true potential.
Through properly administrated and pursued education the burden of the cross we carry will be considerably lightened.
The dominating forces who run our civilizations openly state such crude Machiavellian-inspired credos of control and manipulation as the following:
“If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
Change our minds - and we change our own lives - and the lives of others - and may change a whole world - if we put our minds to it.
Refuse to change and we stay rather stale and static - dangerous and unidimensional - boring - true believers.
Overcome our own fear, doubt and pain and we suddenly have super powers - previously unimaginable super powers.
These are super powers which come from being educated together in life long process of inquiry based educational pursuit.
Although once war was seen as the rational and sole method of defeating totalitarianism - we can see this is no longer the case.
Now we can see that war begets more war - and even greater totalitarianism - in an unending cycle of negativity and in the prevention of - not the pursuit of - freedom and agency.
War is no longer rationally possible on planet earth unless it is our expressed purpose to drive ourselves to extinction.
The same energy and passion which used to be put toward war now must be funneled toward the pursuit of that knowledge which will truly benefit both humans and the ecology of the planet.
We all know instinctively that good, humanistic, positive energy is what fuels positive change and if we are truly committed to this the results will be welcome and likely spectacular.
The hyper-controlled environment of autocracy, of totalitarianism, of the Nazi or Communist or Socialist or Capitalist mindset cannot survive the onslaught of Socratic, inquiry-based open education.
These philosophies - based on fear, pain, anxiety and doubt - simply cannot exist under the Socratic pursuit of free and open inquiry by all citizens.
Free and open Socratic education - and the insight which stems from them - preclude the frightened - and frightening - practice of apartheid and the governmental, corporate and institutional structures which underwrite them.
Computerized technology can absolutely be used as a positive tool in the pursuit of dynamic and functionally literate education systems - which are mandated in any society seeking to be free and equitable.
And the more positively oriented intelligent humans who are involved in these pursuits - the greater degree to which intelligent positive change will be the result.
Actions in the physical world are looked at within limitations of time and space - with such physical laws extant as - “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Mental actions - thoughts and flights of imagination and creativity - are far more multi dimensional.
That our consciousness is a multidimensional force and is transmitted well beyond the limitations of time and space - has wide ranging repercussions and implications.
To the point where what we think and imagine is not limited by time and space - but is geometrically significant - known in math and science as a geometric progression.
Potentially such forces of mental and creative agility are infinite in scope - across both time and space.
When we pose a thought and use our imaginations the energy expands outward in all dimensions - as if we throw a pebble into a pond and watch as the energy ripples out in all dimensions into the universe.
This may well represent our innate creator-conferred ability to take wing and fly as human beings - and the reasons we are so transfixed by the concept of angels.
There are no limitations in these dimensions - literally everything we think and imagine - takes flight - and our minds and experiences with it.
Although we don’t have physical wings we do have powerful metaphorical wings and can take flight with real force, direction and energy.
We are bound only by the limitations we impose on ourselves and by the blinders we wear - through our own ignorance of what is possible.
When the path of lifelong Socratic inquiry-based education is accessible to everyone - as it will be if we use AI correctly as a tool - then we will have achieved that perpetual learning machine - as a tool of human power and free agency.
Man are held back by the fear of freedom - freedom scares them because of the doubt and pain they are unable to overcome.
It may be now under our own human direction and imagination to benefit the entire world as one single human - and the power of all humans together - that is a force to be reckoned with
With our technology - if it is well and positively handled - may well help us achieve the full potential of our creative abilities.
No, freedom is not free - never has been and never will be - and it is in fact up to each and every one of us to exemplify.
Blinded by fear - doubt and pain - and blinkered by anger and hostility - we cannot see our way - literally cannot see our way to a better world.
Shakespeare was heavily concerned with metaphorical blindness.
See better, Lear, and let me still remain
The true blank of thine eye.
– William Shakespeare; Great Quotes
As Shakespeare perceived and wrote about - on many occasions throughout his large body of work - we effectively blind ourselves and then try to see.
In our blinded and blinkered state we cling to our blind ambition and unreliable emotions - like drowning men - floundering about in a veritable sea of troubles.
Drowning men left clinging to the past and to old and shop worn traditions which lead us further and further astray as a society.
It is up to each of us to remove the blinders from our eyes and the blindness from our hearts and minds.
No one can be expected to arrive to change this - except each of us.
Blinders to be removed by ourselves through asking the right questions - to receive answers and then to go on repeating this cycle in perpetuity.
When we - quite mistakenly - believe we know it all and have answered all the potential questions - then we will have achieved only a spectacular and impressive state of ignorance
To understand we must question everything - in perpetuity.
Questions lead to answers and answers lead to further questions.
Humans - with the voices and consciousness of angels - but so heavily weighted with the cross of fear, doubt, ignorance and pain.
Are we human or are we dancers?
Dancers - each and every one.
Learning to rely on our strengths and to not be limited by our weaknesses.
As electromagnetic beings in an electromagnetic universe we seem to be fulfilling some ancient prophesy of which I am unaware and yet in some way understand is meant to be.
We are in so many ways the material universe made flesh.
And given these minds - “so express and admirable”2 - and which take flight so splendidly on wings of creative imagineering - I cannot think but that we were created by some creator with a truly magnificent plan.
These unalienable rights - conferred by our creator - to be used to achieve freedom and agency for all humans.
Thank you so much for restacking!
All is given by our Creator in service to humanity, but we are also gifted with free will, so we determine our fate, if we use the tools in accordance to the guidance given so humanity can prosper will reach realms unimagined, but if we allow our power to be usurped then our fall is inevitable. The techno-God, homo-deus narrative is the biggest myth ever fabricated. Already it is fraying at the edges, having barely existed for not even two proper decades. The laws of nature cannot be violated and the pendulum always swings back.
https://open.substack.com/pub/hsog/p/civilization-at-the-cross-roads?r=2dt5hy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web