Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD
Bainbridge Island, WA
The increasing global mental health crisis reveals various acute and nuanced forms and degrees of ontological disorientation. Human fragmentation and polarized awareness results from one-sidedness, specialization, subject/object splits, kleptocratic leadership, and Othering of people and cultures different than us, all resting upon a dualistic logic of either/or thinking. Education leaders and allies across all sectors of life must cooperate within a renewed human completion project, if we are to re-establish a salutogenic democracy and relational social engagements. Might we collaborate in the conceptualization of what it means to be human and carefully fashion a model of a preferred humanity that may serve as prologue to the future? The story of developing an ideal person through education and cultural values can be read long through history and wide across cultures. Some discussion of several examples is in order here.
In ancient Greece, for example, Hippocrates and Aristotle emphasized the indivisible relation of body and mind. The ideal person was envisioned as someone possessing a harmonious physical, mental, and emotional whole. The principle of the ‘Golden Mean’ or mesotes is the foundation of Greek moderation and balance. Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics) defined ‘virtue’ as the intermediate expression of emotion and actions between the extreme of too much (excess) and the extreme of too little (deficiency). In addition, Plato’s mentions gnostikoi (gnosis) and gnostike episteme in his work Politikos (258e-267), where it stands for a noetic form of a higher intelligence. The most capable political leaders were expected to possess unique, perspicacious knowledge demonstrative of the ability to rule effectively. In addition, gnostikoi was also a tell-tale trait of the ideal learner at the Platonic Academy that required a high cognitive prowess to successfully make one’s way through its challenging curriculum.
L’uomo universale refers to the all-sided or whole person of Renaissance humanism who possessed innate potential to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the world through diverse knowledge and skills, including literary training of the imagination and practical morality. Renaissance humanists maintained that the Beautiful, the Good, and the True constitute real dimensions within each individual (Aristotle) at each stage of development and were considered premier virtues toward which a life should be directed (Plato). To the extent that a person enhances their creative self-expression, conducts themselves with virtuous rectification in ethical relation to others in society, and honestly and accurately knows the physical world, they were said to have elevated their humanity by realizing beauty, goodness, and truth within them. L’uomo universale provided the heightened image of an individual flourishing, as a result of a synthesis of self (Beauty), culture (Goodness), and nature (Truth). The intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical versatility sought by Renaissance thinkers and artists enculturated the body-mind-spirit and disciplined the imagination.
The notion of a person ‘completed’ through cultural training and educational learning can readily be found in the Eastern world. In Sufism, for example, the completed person is the Pir who provides baraka or ‘grace’ to the community (Kabir Helminski, The Knowing Heart, 136-7). The Ch’un Tzu of Confucianism (The Great Learning) is the morally superior person in possession of ren, ‘humanity’ or ‘benevolence’ that is an inherent trait that must be developed socially among others. Buddhism (Dhammapada) values the Awakened person balanced between suffering and liberation, awareness and ignorance, joy and pain. Hinduism (Bhagavad Gita) prizes the achievement of moksha or spiritual emancipation that results from following the appropriate life path: jnana yoga (knowledge), bhakti yoga (loving devotion), karma yoga (action), and raja yoga (meditation). In Christianity, the integration of body-mind-spirit defines the ideal individual. The purpose of a complete Christian is to live in a state of shalom – a state of peace and justice reflecting God’s reign. Shalom is Hebrew for ‘peace’, but it also conveys the values of wholeness, completeness, well-being, and safety. The complete individual of Judaism (cf. Talmud) is a holistic union of divine soul and material body created in the image of God (b’tzelemb Elohim).
It is difficult today to find school curricula given to training learners in the intellectual, social, and ethical virtues of human wholeness. This is as understandable as it is sad, given that current education reflects the larger consumer culture that values continuous self-indulgence of immediate excitement, stimulation, and sensation. One can sight an early Western case of the Cistercian, founded by St. Benedict (480-543 CE) for whom the monastery served as a ‘school’ for the service of the divine. Zaleski (“Search of Paideia,” Parabola, Spr. 2003, p.46) asserts that the “…aim of such a school is to ‘apprehend reality as it fully and really is,’ in order to transform and liberate the truth in each person.” Cistercian monks willingly underwent the education of the new human, seeking transformation of consciousness of wholeness. Along similar lines, the Jesuits employ a holistic approach to life and learning involving Cura Personalis, understood as the sacred care for the whole person. According to Philip Zaleski, “The classical Greek idea of Paideia, of cultivating perfection through disciplined training of intellect, body, and heart, in order to produce a new human governed by divine wisdom, has virtually disappeared.” Sacredness is the practice of the awareness of wholeness, a respectful approach to the world (Palmer, Heart of Learning, 11). A more recent educational attempt to realize the Paideia concept was Mortimer Adler’s Paideia Program K-12 (1984) which in Zaleski’s view was undeniably valuable as a comprehensive orientation in the arts, sciences, and humanities, but in Zaleski’s view, “failed completely to include moral instruction and, most tellingly, the training in the inner life” (Zaleski, Paideia,” Parabola, Spr. 2003:46).
Today’s schools featuring dominant STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curricula are even further separated from even Adler’s imperfect efforts, in large part due to the distinct traits of scientific methodological reductionism. Its manner of reasoning rests firmly upon dispassionate observation and a common-sense basis of knowledge. Scientific method is atomistic, breaking things down to its constituent parts. It is rational, pragmatic, and empirical. With the value of objectivity as its methodological cornerstone, science assumes a world that is “fixed and absolute, and so it is possible to separate observer from the observed and the measured” (Feyerabend, Farewell, 5, 8). Its dualistic logic can be found in Aristotle, “A thing cannot be and not be at the same time.” And so, oppositions like ‘animate/inanimate’ became solidified in ‘definition’ and accepted as true reality. STEM’s technological savvy and quantitative focus seriously undervalue the cognitive imagination as found in the arts and humanities, whose holistic logic is an antimonial both/and, the basis for noetic literacy and all-sided cognition.
Education at all levels must purposively heal itself of the ‘illnesses of one-sidedness of operations, values, disciplines, structures and processes, reflected in accelerated, ‘advanced’ programs in elementary and high schools and career-focused STEM specializations in colleges and universities. STEM arises from a ‘theology’ of materialism; it enshrines logic and calculation, ‘idolizes’ objectivity, privileges exterior life over interior life, and projects a flatland view of reality devoid of interiority and spirit. The goal of my healing education project is creation of a learning environment that recognizes and nurtures the natural and human sciences that together can serve human completion. It seeks learning experiences that link the wisdom of noesis to the wisdom of logos, overcoming their current split and deoptimization of human potential.