Unexpected Teachers — from Florence to Frankl
On finding wisdom in unlikely places and learning how to think, love, and act in constant ambiguity
Everything is Changing
It is obvious we live at a time of deep and constant change. Half a century ago and almost at the end of his life, theologian and thinker Paul Tillich described our times as:
“The revolutionary transformation of one historical era into another,” adding that this “world revolution” affects “every section of human existence”.
- Morality and Beyond, Chapter V
In other words: everything is changing and, therefore, we are also changing.
But it is difficult for us to accept the external change and adapt to it because usually we don’t accept our own internal change. We need to learn how to face our own transformation. We need teachers. And those teachers may arrive unannounced and unexpectedly.
Let me share an example of one of those unexpected teachers who came to me with a good lesson to learn and remember.
Florence, the Student-Teacher
I am a university professor working in Colorado, USA. A couple of months ago, at the end of a Humanities 101 class I was teaching at a university in Denver, one of the students, Florence, a young lady from East Africa, came to my desk and asked a few questions about an upcoming assignment.
After getting the answers, she suddenly took my backpack, with all my heavy books inside, and began walking to the door.
I calmly asked her to stop and to explain what she was doing. She immediately said,
“Professor, you don’t understand…”
I must confess that at a different, earlier time of my life, when I was younger and less experienced in the strange ways of the world, I would have answered such a ‘challenge’ by proclaiming my wisdom and knowledge. I would have probably shown no tolerance for such an act of indiscipline as trying to ‘steal’ my backpack.
Yet, having learned that I am not the owner of the truth and that I don’t even have a short-term rental agreement with the truth, I smiled and told my student that she was right: I did not understand what she was doing.
She then told me she had arrived from her native country just a few weeks ago, and my class was the first one she was taking in the United States. In her country, she said, it was customary for students to carry the backpack of the professors after the class to show appreciation to the professor. She was doing what she always did, but now in a different cultural and social context it seemed wrong.
In her country it was customary for students to carry the professor’s backpack. She was amazed nobody else had offered.
She also told me she was so amazed nobody else had offered to carry my backpack. So, she decided to do it herself, assuming no other student had enjoyed my class or wanted to express their respect to the professor.
We both immediately recognized the ambiguity of the situation and we talked about that. Florence learned that there was no need for her, or anybody else to carry my heavy backpack, and I learned that I had to carry it because nobody else, admirer or not, will do it for me.
I also learned to pay close attention to any statement beginning with “You don’t understand”, because it’s likely that I don’t, and because most likely there will be a message or a lesson for me to learn.
The Limits of Knowledge
Learning to live acknowledging the limits of my own knowledge led me to accept my own ignorance and, therefore, to live, act, and love accepting the semantic and existential ambiguity of my own life, acts, and thoughts.
Yes, I constantly feel the existential and epistemic angst (thanks, Duncan Pritchard) of walking on a groundless ground, but, I must say, it is at the same time a liberating and exhilarating experience.
The dialectical foolishness of the amphiboly or ambivalence compensates for the existential angst, finding meaning in an otherwise meaningless situation (thanks, Victor Frankl).
In my daily interactions, I have met many people who, like Florence, kindly teach me (many times, unintentionally) that I should not assume anything about others and that I should not rush to judge anybody.
Critical thinking, yes. Prejudice, no.
I am also frequently reminded that in these post-modern times, when we are about to enter a trans-human and probably post-human era, the borders between belief and unbelief are not only fluctuating, but are in fact disappearing.
This, of course, it is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the historical context for such deep ambiguity, now globalized and technologized, is the whole history of Western Civilization, from Greece two and a half millennia ago, to our own times.
Western Civilization ❤️ Ambiguity
In reviewing the history of Western Civilization, we see that the borders between belief and unbelief, between knowing and not knowing, between the sacred and the profane, have never been as clearly marked or divided as we commonly assume.
It could be said that ambiguity (amphiboly, ambivalence) is, in fact, the ground upon which Western philosophy was born. Heraclitus, for example, knew that the way up and the way down are the same, suggested to expect the unexpected, and thought that everything was always in a constant state of ambiguity (change, flux!) He also insisted in moving beyond a dualistic mind.
Almost immediately after him, philosophers (Aristotle, for example) considered ambiguity unacceptable and tried to develop systems to stop contradictions from happening and ambiguities from being expressed. Such a noble task, however, is not possible because, after all, we live in our ambiguities, in our constant misunderstandings, in our self-contradictions. If not, ask King Croesus about his experience consulting the oracle at Delphi.
Is there a point for us today in all this historical review?
Yes, there is. Tillich (quoted above) said that a “minimum of historical understanding” is needed to understand the transition into a new era. And it is said that Goethe once said ,
“A person who does not know the history of the last 3,000 years wanders in the darkness of ignorance, unable to make sense of the reality around them.”
Connecting with history will allow us to see that our still active tribal mind, now globalized and expressed via social media, can’t tolerate or accept ambiguity. For the tribal mind (or dualistic mind), it is always ‘us vs. them’ or ‘true or false’.
Yet, in the context of a global civilization about to be seriously challenged (and perhaps displaced or replaced) by superhuman artificial intelligence of our own creation, the dualistic mind perpetuates problems without ever solving them. Think about any major social problem, poverty and homelessness included, if you need examples of problems not being solved.
Openness — the Solution to the Problem of Tribalism
So, what’s the alternative to the tribal mind? An open mind connected with an open heart connected with an open hand, as Dr. Otto Scharmer, of MIT, teaches in his U.Lab classes. In other words, we need to learn to think, love, and act in the context of our ambiguity, seeing ambiguity not as a problem to be solved, but as the fertile ground to co-create the future.
Ambiguity isn’t a problem to be solved. It’s the fertile ground from which we co-create the future.
Such idea, of course, is not new. Two millennia ago, Saul of Tarsus, better known as the Apostle Paul, arrived with his message to Athens, a trip briefly described (reconstructed?) in Acts 17:16–34. It was certainly a meeting of opposites, much deeper than a student from East Africa meeting a Hispanic professor in Colorado.
Paul, a Jewish convert to Christianity and a Roman citizen, met with Greek philosophers in Athens. There was a dialogue, a true dialogue based not on mutual understanding or agreement, but on the mutual acceptance of the unavoidable ambiguity created by the meeting of people of different backgrounds, cultures, languages, beliefs, and expectations.
In the story presented to us, Paul is called a “babbler”, but the same word also translates as “scholar”. He called them “very religious”, but that also translates as “highly superstitious”. Paul talks about an “unknown” deity that he happens to know. And even “resurrection”, mentioned by Paul in his speech, can be understood in more than one way.
Yet, instead of trying to clarify the ambiguous meaning of those words (and several more), Paul accepted the semantic ambiguity and, in my opinion, he also accepted the existential ambiguity we all experience, the ambiguity of knowing and not knowing, of being and not being, of understanding and not understanding, of remembering and forgetting, of secularizing the religious message and of spiritualizing the secular message.
But, you will argue, we are neither Heraclitus nor Paul. We live on this side of Copernicus, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, and two World Wars. In that context, is it still possible to keep an open mind, heart, and will? Can we still “fall upwards” and live on the “second half” of our lives as truly mature adults, as Richard Rohr suggested?
The real ‘answer’ is, of course, yes and no. The answer needs to be ambiguous because, after all, what other option do we have but to accept and even enjoy our own ambiguity?
Learning to Learn From Others
Yet, there is perhaps another option, still unrecognized.
This is not the first time we humans experience a transition from one era to another. It happened before, from the 12th (when civilization collapsed, as Eric Cline explained) to the 6th centuries BCE.
During those centuries, there was a group of scholars and learned people (scribes, teachers, leaders), called ummanu, who served as advisors for the Assyrian and Babylonian empires and literally rescued civilization from total collapse.
How they were able to do it? In great part because they didn’t see themselves as divine or inspired by divine beings and also because they were intentionally able of working with people from different cultures, languages, and generations.
Amazingly, we still follow some of their teachings (in the form of proverbs). Perhaps we should learn from them. They could well be included among our unexpected teachers. But sometimes those teachers are very close to us. In my case, it was my own son. Let me share that personal story with you.
I heard, a long time ago, an Argentinean comedian saying that the problems many children have is that when they begin educating their parents the parents are too old to learn. I can testify that’s not a joke. It did happen to me when my son was in his last year of high school.
One day, he came back home after school and went right to his room, crying. I asking him what was wrong and, after discarding low grades, missing assignments, and former or future girlfriends, he said:
“When I am a father, I will never understand my son.”
I immediately asked him if he had a secret to confess or an announcement to make. He assured me that was not the case and then he added, “You have several college degrees. You speak several languages. You have been teaching at college for many years. You lived in several countries. And, despite all that knowledge and experience, you have problems understanding me.”
“By the time I have children, things will be so different from what they are now that I’m sure that I will not be able to understand my own son.”
He was right. The only solution to this is to remain open, and curious, and to keep learning. At that very moment I learned to be open to unexpected teachers and I decided to devote my time to help people to connect with the best future version of themselves, so they can connect with others in the future. But that’s a different story.
Francisco is a bilingual writer, philosopher, and educator with 25+ years of experience, living in Colorado, USA. He’s a Partner in the Flux Cells network, a global network of changemakers working together to liberate people and organisations.
To learn more about Flux and how we help organisations and people to change and evolve, visit http://www.flux.am/ or email jon@flux.am
