When the day is as long as the night, let’s make future history
Dusk is setting and I am tired. It’s a good thing I kept my rocking chair from all those years ago, for “future needs”. Funny how we always catch up with the future. Anyways, you gotta love this timeless, soothing, rocking motion — it sure calms you down.
Today is special because my granddaughter is coming over. Beyond my joy in spending time with her, she has the most uncanny knack for asking questions that are to the point. The real point.
“Grampa, what was it all those years ago when you were young that made things turn for the better? The world must have seemed headed for full-scale chaos. But instead you all got together and leveled up to proper planetary stewards which, frankly, must have seemed unlikely at the time. How did you do it?”
“Well, it started with us coming together to talk about it. To figure out how to move beyond the brick wall summed up by Einstein as:
‘No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.’
We leveled up. We created a larger understanding of how things work. But that was only the beginning. Then, we developed hearts to match what we saw; we realized that a lot of the solutions we had created up to that point were actually problems when seen from a larger perspective. But — and here is the crucial point — we did not give up just because things were looking bad if we kept going the way we were. We decided to not keep going like that anymore. We decided to level up. Then we figured out, bit by bit, what this new level would be. These days it goes partly under the name of ‘proper planetary stewardship’, but it involves so much more, starting with the way from yourself to your loved ones; then onto neighbors, communities, to country, and even to continent. They all fit in our hearts and minds. And that’s how we leveled up.”
Yes, what I wrote above hasn’t happened. Yet. But it could. And I believe it should. This is what bildung is about.
Join the conversation
On September 21, the Global Bildung Network will host Global Bildung Day (GBD). Here is the full program and sign-up:
https://www.globalbildung.net/gbd2023-september-21/
The program this fall is Education and AI: Bildung to the Rescue? How will the recent and imminent future development of generative AI affect our possibilities of growing into proper planetary stewards?
The sessions span the world — four regions and eight cultural zones. Sign up and join the ones that fit your time zone, interests, or as many as you like!
I am both worried and energized at the same time
I see so many things seemingly moving in the wrong direction in this world. I see confusion, fear, narrow-mindedness, people and peoples looking out for their own. I see forests burning and life dying. And sometimes I feel lonely in seeing this.
I also see that we can see. And that is the start, not the end! We can see not only how things are on the surface but what it is that fundamentally makes them so. And when we can see, we can better understand how things work and then do better. And then we can actually do it.
To me, bildung is about that. And in a very concrete way, it is about making future history. Seeing the world as well as one can, thinking about what that means for one’s heart, and then acting from there.
This time the theme is quite concrete: if and in what ways AI fits into that future history. I hope to see you there!
