Wellness, The Path to Heaven 13

Education in the Post-human Era: The Competitiveness of Future Civilization Lies in Creativity and Ability to Utilize AI

Throughout our journey, we have been diagnosing the crisis of modern civilization and seeking solutions within the values of ‘wellness’ and ‘spirituality’. A wellness life that pursues overall harmony and balance of life beyond material abundance, a spiritual civilization that approaches the essence of existence through self-reflection and expansion of worldview. That was the new coordinate of the future we should move toward.

However, our challenges do not end here. The dazzling advancement of science and technology, especially the quantum leap of artificial intelligence, is approaching us as a huge wave that will fundamentally shake human life and civilization as a whole. The advent of the post-human era is no longer a distant future.

So what should we prepare for? The answer must be sought within the new direction of education. It is an education that boldly breaks away from the existing paradigm that was buried in knowledge transfer and skill acquisition, and focuses on fostering creativity, thinking skills, and imagination.

The competency that deserves special attention will be the ability to utilize artificial intelligence. It is the insight to creatively utilize AI beyond simply handling it technically and apply it to create new values. It will become more important than anything else to have the responsibility and vision of leading this tool with infinite potential in the right direction.

However, to do so, we must first fundamentally re-examine our view of education itself. It is about facing the blind spots and limitations of the way we have tried to mass-produce uniform human types through the compulsion of ethics and norms. This is why education that focuses on awakening inner motives and values beyond controlling outwardly revealed behaviors is more desperate than ever.

Furthermore, what we need is an awakening to spirituality that asks the fundamental question of life. Realizing that an infinite source of creativity and compassion dwells within oneself, and that one exists within an unbreakable network of relationships with others and the world. It should be an education that leads to the awakening of the entire being beyond the level of mere knowledge.

Here, AI can function as a responsible helper and a partner for creative collaboration. As it itself exists as a kind of ‘personality’ by our side, we can take the relationship with it as an opportunity for a kind of spiritual practice. The perspective of reflecting on oneself and newly recognizing the world while harmonizing with matter and machines without being absorbed in them. That should be the core task of education in the post-human era.

Of course, the shock and side effects that coexistence with AI will bring will also be considerable. However, as long as we take on the wisdom to harmonize technological civilization and the inherent values of human beings, we should not neglect the effort to sublimate the wave into an opportunity.

Freedom and creativity, diversity and inclusiveness, individual subjectivity and a sense of community solidarity. As the fundamental basis encompassing all of these, the awakening to ‘spirituality’ is more important to us than anything else. An education that discovers the sacred essence inherent within oneself and makes it bloom fully in the world. There lies the direction our future education should take.

In that sense, Unicity’s practical philosophy, which takes wellness and spirituality as the foundation of life, has great implications. A life that exerts one’s infinite potential in the harmonious mingling of body and mind, self and others, individual and community. It will be sufficient to serve as the coordinate of a new human type that will lead the post-human era.

In the era of great transformation of civilization accelerated by technological advancement, I believe in the power of education that awakens creativity and spirituality. On that path, I am convinced that we can live a truly happy and beautiful life, and thus eventually take one step closer to heaven. I hold the hope that the journey of enlightenment we have encountered through the previous articles will never be in vain.

In the next article, I would like to think together about how this educational transformation can be specifically implemented and what we can practice right away. How to reestablish the role of schools, companies, and society as a place to nurture future talents, and what each of us should do to root the values of wellness and spirituality in education. I hope that an open dialogue of gathering wisdom together will continue, and I will end it here for today.