These technologies have utterly transformed the world in the last few centuries, but they are proving incapable of solving the problems we face today, many of which, ironically, are caused by the very same kind of technology we hope to use to fix them. Accordingly, the standard dictionary definition of technology is “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.” They depend on a high degree of specialization they depend on a vast industrial infrastructure to produce they are derived from scientific research and they are based on the application of energy to manipulate and control matter. These we think of as “high tech.”Īll of these share certain characteristics in common. What kind of technology are we talking about here? The word usually brings to mind things like computers, robots, lasers, nano-scale fabrication, gene editing, chemical engineering, and electronics. To test, incubate, and develop technologies to prepare them for wider application.To pass knowledge to the next generation and mentor its development.To collaborate with other cutting edge workers in unorthodox fields.To develop knowledge in an environment where you aren’t thought to be crazy.To bond with a cohort who share a common vision of what the world can be.To deprogram from conventional education and have a sanctuary in which to develop a calling.To acquire skills to help that transformation happen.To acquire skills that will be useful and valued in a transformed world.To obtain knowledge unavailable at conventional universities.For learners, especially young people who would otherwise go to college or graduate school, they are places: They have two main functions: research and learning. For reasons I will describe soon, let us call these places Institutes for Technologies of Reunion. We need, to use Ken Carey’s phrase, to establish islands of the future in an ocean of the past. We need a parallel system of technology development that can guide society as conventional systems unravel and conventional technologies fail to adequately address our problems. So much of the most exciting work whether in medicine, agriculture, or social change is happening outside academia, invisible to many of the young people who might otherwise follow them into a career, and lacking the financial support and community of research that could propel them to the next level. Imagine a worldwide archipelago of land-based institutions of learning for people like my sons, sanctuaries of alternative technologies of earth, mind, matter, and body that are marginal or absent within conventional universities. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this kind of education – education in what the planet needs most right now – were more easily accessible? Young people must luck into them or know enough to seek them out. Programs like these exist all over the world, yet still they are scattered and lack a unifying narrative that might present them as a solid alternative to traditional higher education. and Costa Rica that prepare people to participate in a future that is not just an extension of the present, but a different world with different values and different ways of seeing. Jimi has spent some time in ecological, spiritual, and permaculture programs in the U.S. The nebulous intuition that led my unconscious rebellion has become, for them, an outright refusal to follow “the program.” Moreover, they have alternatives that were not on my radar screen in the 1980s. Now two of my own sons have reached college age, one 18 and one 20, and neither has yet gone to college. And besides, at that time I couldn’t identify the cause of my lassitude, my passive rebellion, my lack of motivation. I didn’t know of any alternative to university however, or perhaps I wasn’t brave enough to find one. Even the public service paths that elite education could prepare me for seemed themselves to be still part of the same system. As I learned more about the workings of the world, I didn’t want to be part of it. I sensed a wrongness at the base of things. The problem was that deep down, I didn’t want to fully participate in society. Old soldiers reunion 2017 newton nc full#College, and probably further degrees thereafter, was the path to full participation in society. Old soldiers reunion 2017 newton nc how to#I entered an elite school not out of any particular ambition, but because the story that surrounded me said that this is how to do life. When I graduated from high school in 1985, college was the unquestionable next step for an intelligent, middle-class or upper-middle class young person. You can find a translation of this essay in Czech here.
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