Marcus T. Anthony- Crisis, Deep Meaning and the Need for Change

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Crisis, Deep Meaning and the Need for Change

Marcus T. Anthony

I have failed in my foremost task – to open people’s eyes to the fact that man has

a soul, there is a buried treasure in the field, and that our religion and philosoph

are in a lamentable state.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, towards the end of his life (quoted in Ross, 1993,p. 126).

One day, when I was about eight years old, my school principal Mr Suley got up onthe morning assembly and spoke from the heart. Now, more than 30 years later, I

cannot remember all the details. What I do remember though, was his tone ofdeep concern. He spoke about war, the environment, cooperation, and simply whatit means to be a decent human being. And I will never forget what he said at theend of it all.

“You are the future of this world. My generation has already had a go and wemessed it up. You must do better, or we will not be here much longer.”

Of all the things anybody ever said in my schooling days, this was probably themost impactful. Here he was, an older man approaching retirement, and he decidedto speak about something more than keeping the playground clean, punishingmisbehaviour, or the principal’s old favourite: “Get ready because the exams arecoming up.” Mr Suley spoke of life itself, and what it means to be a human being onthis planet. They were words of deep meaning, words that moved me. They weremoving because they were not just spoken, but felt . I went through another ten

years in the public education system after that, and I honestly cannot recall any

teacher or administrator speaking with such impact, or about something someaningful. This silence always puzzled me.

Mr Suley has probably passed on by now. I heard some years ago that he wasinvolved in a car accident, and that his wife had been killed. I was deeply saddened.It would also have been a tragedy if he had passed up the option of speaking



meaningfully on the assembly all those years ago. He may not be here anymore, andmaybe he suffered greatly though personal tragedy. But the seed he planted onthat day lives on in the man writing this article in 2008.

Many of us can probably remember a defining moment from our school days when ateacher spoke from the heart and moved us, made us think deeply. But what aboutteachers today? How many of us have ever engaged in a discussion or a lessonwhere we shared something from deep within us? The answer for many educatorstoday is that we rarely touch upon the deeply meaningful. Why is that?

At first glance the answer might seem obvious. There is the issue of personalvulnerability. Maybe the students will ridicule or ignore us. Maybe we will offend

someone’s religious or philosophical beliefs. And who wants to upset parents inthese times of legal accountability? Besides, it is not in the curriculum or syllabus,so why go there?

Yet, rather appropriately, the absence of meaning goes deeper. To understand whyeducation discourses have become an effective litany of surfaces we have to lookat the situation in depth. And that takes us into the awkward territory of humanspirituality.

Yes, the dreaded “s” word.

This understanding includes examining the way that our society has developed, whocontrols the dominant discourses, and the ways of knowing which undergird them.And finally it incorporates the very way in which we view the human mind and itsintelligence.

In the analysis which follows I am going to outline the historical and paradigmatic

factors which have created this restriction of cognitive wholeness and theresultant lack of depth in modern public education. In this time of shifting globalpower and economic uncertainty, the restoration of cognitive depth along withassociated “right-brained” cognitive processes, is something we can no longerignore. It is a necessity not only for economic and social stability, but for the long-



term survival of the human race. In this paper I am going to argue that thecurrent economic woes are the perfect time to begin to initiate change incurriculum, and expand the ways of knowing that we employ in the classroom.

The extrication of meaning

The effective extrication of deep meaning from modern discourses on science andeducation can be traced back to the scientific revolution of the seventeenthcentury. It was at this time that what I call the critical/rational worldview becameentrenched. (Anthony 2006). At the dawn of modern science, ideas related tomeaning were removed from the dominant discourses. The focus of science andphilosophy became the measurable and empirical. Philosophy became mistrusted,

and the spiritual and mystical became increasingly associated with superstition andthe ignorance of the dark ages (Tarnas 2000). By 1850 the experimental age inscience had dawned, and by the late nineteenth century in psychology introspectionbecame seen as an unreliable way to understand the human mind (Huff 2003;Pickstone 2000). Reductionism became dominant in mainstream science, anespecially biology. Human beings came to be seen as biological automata. Thesearch for the soul had ended. As Francis Crick (1994), the man who firstassembled a replica of the DNA molecule put it, we are “nothing but a bunch of

neurons.”

Western public education followed in kind, and with the establishment of themodern secular state, removed from curricula ideas related the meaning andpurpose. The industrial revolution brought the mass of humanity into the cities,and people became instruments of industry, effectively commoditised fordeployment in the consumer society (Anthony 2005, 2008). This state of affairshas resulted in the present situation where education is heavily focused upon the

3Rs and vocational training (Moffet 1994). Another factor is the increasinginfluence of computer technology, which improves IT literacy and increases theamount of data available to students, but permits little room for introspection orreflection upon the meaning of the data brought forward (Oppenheimer 2004).Finally, the problem is compounded by an excessive focus upon assessment –





teach values, attitudes - and implicitly, meaning. For even the silence on meaningfuldiscussion and the refusal to look within is an implicit meaning in itself. It impliesthat inner worlds and the spiritual are out of bounds, and therefore illegitimatedomains of educational and social discourse.

Admittedly, in order to begin to address the deeper questions I refer to, we needeither explicit or implicit institutional and societal approval to do so. And this iswhere it must be appreciated that schools play a normative function in society, andhave been created, at least in part, as instruments of social control. Franklin(1999), after an examination of the journal The Review of Educational Research ,found that the idea of social control has been central in the development ofeducational curricula. At around the time of World War One in the United States,educational administrators attempted to create a scientific method of curriculumdevelopment, in the name of social efficiency. Those curriculum designersattempted to use the curriculum as a medium to manage society. Franklin arguesthat public schools and their curricula have been used to establish control amidstthe social problems of industrialisation, urbanisation, and immigration. In Franklin’sunderstanding, this agenda was transposed via the scientific language ofpsychology and learning (Franklin 1999).

To top it off, the industrialisation of society has brought with it a ‘corporatedomination’ associated with the powerful controlling influence of mainstreamestablishment culture (Franklin 1999; Hart 2000; Loye 2004; Milojevi? 2005), asTable 1 (below) indicates. Former Princeton academic David Loye (2004 p 26)equates this “Establishment” with the paradigm of the “Pseudo-Darwinian Mind”.The control of society and science has been assisted by a largely passive andcompliant academia, and the influence of television, publishing industries, and themass media by “an economic and power elite”. A Darwinian “survival of the fittest”ethos and selfishness are the ruling motifs which legitimise and fund dominantscience (Loye 2004 p 26).

The key point is that all this social evolution, and the resultant control structures,has placed minimal value upon the spiritual growth of the individual, nor upon



personal empowerment, the latter of which is a threat to the power of institutionsand the state (Moffett 1994). It may be assumed that as a result, individualaccess to spiritual knowledge and the development of wisdom has suffered. This isbecause such cognitive experiences require inner and often “non-ordinary” statesof consciousness (Braud 2003; Grof 2000), and these have been almost totallyabsent from the educational processes of state control and the critical/rationalways of knowing which have dominated Western society for several centuries.(Table 1, below)

The teacher is a subject within these power structures. This context has to beacknowledged by any teacher wishing to initiate a deeper and more meaningfuldiscourse within the classroom

Other ways of Knowing

The mediation of ways of knowing within both a societal and educational contexthas much bearing on this problem. In order to begin to explore the issue ofmeaning at a deep level, and to facilitate the cognitive processes involved, we needto expand upon our ways of knowing. I have argued elsewhere that thedevelopment of Western society since the time of the ancient Greeks has

featured a power interplay between three primary worldviews (Anthony 2006). Icall these the critical/rational (scientific), the religious/spiritual (religious) andthe mystical/spiritual (mystical) worldviews respectively. There is some degree ofoverlap amongst them, but they are fairly distinct. The key point is that over time,and in different locations and cultures, each of these worldviews has held morepower and sway than at other times. Presently Western society and education havebecome dominated by the critical/rational worldview. Each worldview haspreference for specific ways of knowing, with a valorisation of particular cognitive

processes and certain approaches to knowledge acquisition. Table 1, belowsummarises these worldviews and their differing ways of knowing.



Table 1: Three worldviews and their ways of knowing

Critical rationality Religiousspirituality

Mystical spirituality

Ways of

knowing Externalised.

Experiment, analysis,classification,mathematical/logical,rational/linguistic

intelligences.Affective & intuitiverejected.

External/internal.

Faith.

Rational/linguistic. Some

analysis &classification.Text-basedspirituality.

Internal/transpersonal.Subjective, internal.Affective. Intuition &integrated intelligence.Rational may be seen as

‘lower’.

States of

consciousness Fragmented,conscious mind & egoin control. Ordinarystates ofconsciousness.

Fragmented,conscious mind incontrol, ego maydominate.Ordinary statesof consciousness.

Extended mind;transcendence of egoas ideal; non-linear,immediate. Non-ordinary states ofconsciousness.

Subject/

object

relations

Subject/object split. Subject/objectsplit.

Collapse of subject &object.

Divinity/

numinous

Seen as illusion, self-

deception, pathology.

Transcendent.

Text/faith-baseddivinity.Numinousdistrusted.

Imminent. Divinity may

be embraced; ornuminous & deities maybe downplayed.

Power Individualism. State, Divine, mediated Ego surrenders to



structures corporate, scientific& educationalinstitutions.

via church,religiousinstitutions,

clergy or humanauthority.

divine/transpersonal.The guru or master.

Examples Modernity (incl.education).Scientificmaterialism.Atomistic ancientGreeks. Skeptics.

Nominalism.

Christianity(Augustine,scholasticism,Protestantism,fundamentalism).

Christian mysticism,gnosticism, paganism,Romanticism, NewAge/counter-culture.

To appreciate the dominance of critical/rational ways of knowing in the modernWest, we need to appreciate the dynamic historical interplay between these threeworldviews. Mystical/Spiritual and religious ways of knowing have always featuredstrongly in western societies.

Mystical/spiritual ways of knowing have tended to be non-dominant, existingbeyond religious and scientific/secular power structures. Yet they have played acrucial role in many societies. Their role in Ancient Greece has often beenunderstated by modern historians of science. During the thirteenth centurymysticism flourished in Europe, until it was violently put down by the Church. Inthe seventeenth century in North America witchcraft, a form of paganism wasbrutally persecuted. In the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century the

Romantic Movement existed as a strong social, cultural and creative force acrossthe West. Much of the essence of the Romantic movement rose again in thecounter-culture movement of the 1960s, and continues as a secondary discourse tothis day, in such spaces as non-Western culture, alternative medicine and the newage movement.



Religious movements and institutions have dominated throughout large periods ofhistory, most notably from the early first millennia right through to around theseventeenth century. It remains a strong force in many cultures and communities.

After the scientific revolution, critical/rational ways of knowing became muchmore dominant. Classification as a way of knowing emerged around 1500 (Pickstone200), as the scholastic movement took hold in Europe, and played a strong role inthe emergence of modern science (Huff 2003). Around 1800 analysis came to thefore, and experimentation as a way of knowing began to dominate around 1850(Pickstone 2000).

As science replaced religious authority as the prime arbiter of the real, the

benefits became obvious. Progress in human technology accelerated at a rate neverseen before. China and the Islamic world, which had once been powerful andadvanced civilizations, allowed political and/or religious power to hold sway overfreedom of information and the independence of individual and institutionalautonomy. They fell far behind in terms of their technological sophistication.Europe, and then the USA, came to dominate the world.

The rejection of the affective

A crucial part of this historical process has been the rejection of affective waysof knowing (feelings), and with them familiarity with the subtle feelings of theintuitive mind. While these play a crucial role in mystical spiritual andreligious/spiritual worldviews, feelings were deliberately expunged from theprocess of scientific enquiry.

The problem is that the realm of feeling is crucial to understanding the deeper

resonance of life, and much of what it means to be human. A great chasm has nowopened up between the intuitive experience of being human, and the shallowness ofrationality-dominated science and education, which denies the essence of life andhumanity. In short, the critical/rational worldview denies the spiritual fabric oflife itself, and this is an artificial imposition which has alienated much of thecommon public. The scientific community and educators have something in common:



they are increasingly concerned that their fields are losing touch with the commonperson. The common denominator is the critical/rational worldview and itsextrication of deeper and affective ways of knowing: the loss of meaning.

Presently in academia right across the developed world, there is a pronouncedemphasis upon the empirical and quantitative. This means that philosophical andspiritual ways of knowing are greatly downplayed.i[i] Researchers who havequalitative approaches are finding it more difficult to gain employment. Whenuniversities search for new staff, they typically seek individuals who can gainfunding for research. And funding tends to go to researchers and proposals whichare empirical and quantitative in nature. This is a continuation of the generaldomination of the critical/rational worldview since the seventeenth century. Butlooking at it in a more short-term perspective, it is also a reflection of thematerialism engendered by booming economies. At such times money and industrytend to gain more power and control. Technoscienceii[ii] dominates over purescience and philosophical enquiry. Now, with the recent economic turmoil, I predictthis trend will shift. Societies, universities, educators and governments will beginto ask deeper questions, and with them philosophical approaches to learning willbegin to resurface. They might even start talking about spirituality.

The definition of intelligence, and its context as social control

The conceptualisation of human intelligence is another factor which plays a strongrole in the dominance of critical/spiritual ways of knowing in modern education andsociety. For when we try to make meaning of the world, we are implicitly employinghuman intelligence, and the way we employ human intelligence is culturally mediated(Richardson 2000). The way we think of intelligence cannot be fully appreciatedwithout understanding the social and historical context of the concept of

intelligence itself.

Francis Galton’s work in the mid-to-late nineteenth century was important in thedevelopment of intelligence and aptitude tests. He applied statistics to the studyof intelligence. (Gardner, Kornhaber, & Wake, 1996). Galton gathered data aboutpeople’s weight, height, hand strength, power of breath, head size, and



psychophysical characteristics such as reaction times and ability to distinguishfine sensory discriminations (Gardner et al. 1996 p 46). These tests focused onsensory perception, which reflected the philosophy of the British empiricists suchas Locke and Hume, who believed that all data entered the mind through thesenses (Gardner et al. 1996). The assumption was that those with a greatercapacity for sensory perception had a greater amount of data to work with, andgreater ability to make discriminations (Gardner et al. 1996 p 47). Thisforeshadowed the mind-as-computer metaphor which currently dominatescognitive psychology (Maddox 1999).

Although Galton’s tests were later shown to be of limited predictive value(Gardner et al. 1996 p 47), his use of statistical methods helped establish thenormative approach to understanding mind and behavior which dominates modernpsychology to this day. This includes the development of factor analysis, which iswidely used in determining IQ test results (Gardner et al. 1996 p. 51). Recentmainstream IQ theorists such as Arthur Jensen (1998) and Hernstein and Murry(1994) follow comparable normative approaches. The key here is that cognitiveabilities that are not easily measured tend to be left off the map. These haveinevitably diminished the subtle, the intuitive and the spiritual, all important inner

ways of knowing that are required for contemplating meaning and appreciating hesubtle nuances which underpin wisdom and self-awareness.

At approximately the same time as Galton, an alternative approach to testingintelligence and psychophysical processes was being developed by Alfred Binet inFrance (Gardner et al. 1996 p 47). Binet was assigned the task of developing a wayto identify those students who were at risk of failing the system. This was at theheight of the rapid urbanisation occurring in the industrial revolution, when massesof people were pouring in from the countryside to the cities.

Binet was more interested in comprehension, judgment, and the capacity forreason and inventiveness. His tests became widely adopted, and focused uponsimple everyday things, such as comparing two objects from memory, countingfrom twenty to zero, and comprehending abstract words and disarranged



sentences (Gardner et al. 1996 p 49). Binet’s tasks therefore focused upon verbaland linguistic, arithmetic, mnemonic and artistic abilities.

We may note that both Binet’s and Galton’s approaches made no attempt to

examine any deeper reflective processes that might require introspection or evenmildly non-ordinary states of consciousness. Binet’s focus in particular helpedentrench the dominance of externalised and phenomenological approaches tohuman intelligence, by avoiding inner worlds and self-reflective ways of knowing.

The tendency of some of those who later employed Binet’s methods was tointerpret intelligence as a single universal measure. Gradually, the idea of the IQscore as something discrete and measurable became reinforced - a “distinct,

quantifiable “thing’” within an individual’s head (Gardner et al. 1996 p 50).

Stepping back for a moment and looking at the big picture, it can be appreciatedthat these developments in the definition of human intelligence occurred in thecontext of the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentiethcentury. The measurability fixation of experimentalism and mechanistic sciencewas dominating (Ross 1993). Eventually in the classroom, teachers brought withthem the implicit belief that intelligence was about the ability to master

rational/linguistic and mathematical/logical processes. The inner and reflectiveprocesses of mind became forgotten – they became invisible domains which playedlittle or no part in the classroom or curriculum. For the way that we think ofstudents as being “smart” inevitably affects both assessment procedures, and theway that we teach.

How I sought meaningful education

Yet even the acknowledgement and awareness of this context is not enough ifeducators are to begin to expand cognitive depth in education. In order for ateacher to begin to open spaces for deeper meaning in classrooms, and to openinner worlds, she must have explored those realms herself. She must have at leastattempted to come to terms with the deeper issues in her own life. These are notthings that can be communicated through a syllabus document, or simply written



into the curriculum. They have to be deeply explored, deeply felt and deeply meant

by the educator. In my own case, I have made it a point in my life to do just that.This has been a process which has occurred over about twenty years, but to relatea relevant anecdote, I will merely backtrack to the year 2000.

At that time I was teaching English in a smallish city in south-eastern Taiwan. Onemorning I woke up alone in my apartment, and knew something was very wrong. Ilooked around. The room seemed strangely desolate and empty. I had everything Ineeded at that time: a nice place to live, an attractive Taiwanese girlfriend, anddebt-free financial stability, if not quite security. The room was the same as it hadbeen the day before and the week before. What had changed was something withinme. I felt empty. In fact it was more than that. It was a sense of depression, afeeling which I was not accustomed to. Fortunately, I had spent some yearsworking deeply with the inner worlds of my psyche, including practicing mediationand doing emotional work on myself. So I knew that there was a message for me inthe feeling.

The following morning I awoke and the feeling was there again. But this time therewas a song playing in my head. It was a song by the Beatles: Nowhere man .

Doesn't have a point of view,Knows not where he's going to,

Isn't he a bit like you and me?

To paraphrase Lennon and McCartney, I had become “a real nowhere man”, sittingin my nowhere land, making nowhere plans for nobody. In the random universe ofthe Western critical/rational worldview, synchronicities like this are dismissed asmere coincidences, haphazard events which you can make of what you will. But I

saw it as something deeply meaningful. I reflected upon things for a week or so,and decided to take some action. Life had become easy, but meaningless. I realisedI had become stuck within my own comfort zone

Five years before that week in 2000 I had deferred my enrolment in a doctoralprogramme in my home country, Australia. Now, after some reflection, I decided



to resume. But what would I study?

I could have gone with the demands of the economy, and enrolled in the mostprestigious school that would take me, and study whatever the education market

was demanding. Instead I made a decision to go for what really moved me. Idecided I wanted to study the frontiers of human intelligence, including theinterface of rational and intuitive ways of knowing. In short, I chose to focus upona spiritual domain of education.

Shortly afterwards, through another serendipitous event, I happened to find outabout a university educator and futurist named Sohail Inayatullah, who lived inAustralia, but worked one week a month at Tamkang University in Taipei. As it

turned out, Sohail also worked through the University of the Sunshine Coast inAustralia. I arranged a meeting with Sohail, and was instantly drawn to the kindsof ideas he espoused. I soon applied to enter the Policy Studies doctoralprogramme in Australia, under Sohail’s supervision. Although I encounteredresistance from some administrators who did not care much for my esotericinterests, I was permitted to enroll.

As I embarked upon my doctoral studies, which I did part-time, I discovered

something wonderful. Because I was studying knowledge which I had deep passionfor, the entire process became almost effortless. As I read and wrote mydissertation I found I had more words and thoughts than I could ever possibly use.I began to publish some of these in journals, mainly in the area of Futures Studies.That began a period of prolific output. I completed a 110 000 word dissertation,wrote a book based on it (which gained publication), wrote more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles, three book chapters, delivered three conference papers andwrote several critical academic reviews all in less than six years - and all while

working fulltime in education.

What is more, I deliberately activated my intuition and employed other ways ofknowing during the research process. Before any research session or reading, I satquietly and went through the questions I wished to answer. I then trusted what Icall “the feeling sense” to help guide me to the correct books, papers, chapters,



paragraphs and sentences which I needed to answer my questions. If I startedreading something which just didn’t feel right, I ditched it, and read somethingthat did move me. I kept a journal in which I wrote down intuitive insights as theycame to me. In the initial stages I wrote and wrote and wrote, allowing thesubconscious mind to formulate and synthesise information, sometimesindependently of any conscious understanding of how it was all happening.iii[iii]

I discovered at a personal level that life becomes much less effortful when youlisten to the heart, when you tap into intuitive intelligence. It takes a lot of theguesswork out of things. It connects the individual with something greater thanthe individual self. The entire experience is quintessentially spiritual.

This process which I used to initiate and conduct my academic research is literallyunheard of in academic circles. Notice I did not write “non-existent”. It is wellknown that many academics and scientists work with their intuitive feelings, andthe history of science is dotted with anecdotes of synchronicities which assistedthe evolution of human knowledge (Grof 2000). It is just that they do not talkabout it much in public.

The problem and the way forward

All this can be traced back to devaluation of the intuitive mind in recent westernhistory. The empirical and quantitative are wonderful assets to human knowledge.The emphasis upon these in recent centuries has led to tremendous advances inknowledge. This has accelerated since the beginning the twentieth century withthe dominance of technoscience, which has facilitated the integration of sciencewith consumer/technological society. Yet this has come at a price. Human beingsare losing touch with inner worlds and the subtle awareness of the essential

spiritual dimensions of life. This is not only the case in Western cultures. In China,the political environment has led to the systematic extinguishing of spiritualdiscourse in education, at all levels.

Worldwide students are crying out for something, anything, which will help themaddress the deep questions within. Teachers and administrators often seem



unable, or unwilling, to address this issue. Devoid of meaning, schooling can becomea drudgery of cynicism and confusion. At times educators look like a flock ofsheep, following themselves around in ever-diminishing circles. Have we become aland of the nowhere men and women?

I believe a genuine education has to honour the full range of human cognitivepotentials. This includes the utilisation of a more complete range of ways ofknowing.

The decline of the West? What we can do about it

There is yet another factor to consider here. Things are shifting, and fast. There

is a real danger that the Western world, including the United States, is in decline.In relative economic terms, this is indisputable. After World War Two, the USeconomy represented about 50 per cent of the total world economy. Now it isapproximately 25 per cent. The Chinese economy has been growing at around tenper cent for some thirty years, and will likely become the biggest world economysometime in the middle of this century.

As Thomas Friedman (2007) pointed out in The World is Flat , the new world is one

where Western economies must compete with new, emerging and developingsocieties. In China, for example, my brother-in-law, who works as a security guard,earns US$100 a month, and has to feed a non-working wife and a young child. Hiswage is not untypical of lower-skilled workers in the smaller cities of China. Howcan an American, British or Australian firm compete against that? The answer inshort is that it cannot.

The way forward for the West is, in part, the way backward. But it is not reall

backward. It is simply bringing to the fore the lost parts of ourselves, the partsthat were eliminated in the industrial revolution. In Futures Studies we call this“the disowned future” (Inayatullah 2008). As an educator who has worked inTaiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong, and has taught in Australia, New Zealand,and visited American schools, I can report that there are strengths andweaknesses to each civilisation’s approach to knowledge. The truth is that most



East Asian systems have also ditched deep meaning. But to speak generally, theyhave not embraced individual freedom of thought, intellectual autonomy,creativity, nor allowed the inner worlds of the psyche to flourish. The advantagethey have is that they value education in a way that we have forgotten. Althoughteachers have also lost some respect in modern East Asian society, the typicalschool still contains a large number of competitive, hungry students eager to learn,and who fear being excluded from the group, or failing the system. In everyWestern country I have visited, it has become cool to be a rebel. Since the time ofJames Dean, kids have loved thumbing their noses at the system. And now we canadd being disrespectful, rude and arrogant, as well as having the attitude that “thesystem owes me”.

This is a dangerous situation for the Western world. Our education systems aresowing the seeds of a rapid civilisational decline. The kinds of attitudes that aredominating are those that will breed mediocrity and failure. The world does notbow to the Western God anymore. It is a popular saying in sports that nothingbreeds failure like success. Sometimes successful people become complacent andeven lazy, and do not respect the laws of competition. Developed and successfulWestern societies are becoming complacent.

We need to get smart. And by “smart”, I mean intelligent in the full sense of theword. Yet we should not try to beat Asia at its own game. This, I’m afraid is abattle we have already lost. We are outnumbered and “outsmarted”. However, thegood news is that if we expand the notion of intelligence in the way I am alludingto in this paper, the picture changes.

It is not necessary to turn our societies into effective bee-hives of production and“busy-ness.” This is not our strength. Instead we have to capitalise upon the strong

points of Western civilisation and education. It is somewhat ironic that at the timewhen some are arguing that the Western world is in decline, there is now, morethan ever, a need for the kinds of things we excel at. For there is a place in thefuture for all of us. There needs to be a synthesis of East, West, and the rest.And what are these needs?



The sad reality is that some countries in the East may be making exactly the samemistakes that we have made in the West. The rapid urbanisation, industrialisationand expanded consumerism of East Asia have left the planet reeling from severeenvironmental pressures that may take centuries to relieve. Even as the worldfaces a crisis in its banking systems, it pays to remember that China itself hasrecently faced a similar crisis in its banking systems, although it has been far lesstransparent in its bailing out its non-performing banks. China has cleaned up itsbanking and credit systems, but is still heading in the same general direction, tyingto drag masses of humanity towards a materialistic, energy-hungry lifestyle whichthe world simply cannot support. It is a systems problem. Whether it is the US,China, India or Australia, the values of this system are bankrupt. We in the West

can stand as an example to those in the East. This is as good a time as any, if it isnot already too late. James Lovelock (2008) of Gaia hypothesis fame, haspredicted that eighty per cent of the human race will be eliminated from the faceof the earth by the year 2100. May I suggest that we do our best to prove himwrong.

What the West has to offer

Despite the problems that the West is experiencing at present, and the great

criticisms that are coming from within and beyond it, we must not throw out thebaby with the bathwater. Western civilisation has much to offer the world. As WillHutton states in China and the West: The Writing on the Wall , China needs theWestern ideals of freedom of expression, justice, and even democracy (althoughnot necessarily in Western form) in order for it to move from a manufacturingeconomy to something akin to a service or knowledge economy. Even Singaporeanacademic Kishore Mahbubani (2002), a sometimes harsh critic of the West,believes that democracy and features of Western political systems are necessaryfor developing nations and economies.

Part of this is the open thinking that western culture typically features. DanielPink (2005) has stated the case well in his book “A Whole New Mind.” Pink haspointed out that “left-brained” cognitive processes have generally dominated over



“right-brained” ways of knowing in modern Western culture.

Left-hemisphere cognition is often linguistic and textual in nature (Pink 2005: 17-20). The left hemisphere handles logic, sequence, literalness, analysis. The right

takes care of synthesis, emotional expression, context, and the big picture (Pink,2005: 25)iv[iv]

Pink argues that the world is changing. What he calls “L-directed Thinking” (left-brained) and the jobs requiring such cognitive skills are increasingly being taken upby emerging economies like India and China. Fortunately, argues Pink, the West’sstrength in the future will be in “R-directed thinking”. These right-brainedprocesses involve six “high-concept, high touch” senses namely design, story

(ability to synthesise information into a narrative), symphony (finding integration,the big picture), empathy, play, and meaning (Pink 2005: 65). What will be requiredin future are skills which more fully balance both sides of the brain.

Now, R-Directed Thinking is suddenly… determining where we’re going and how we’llget there. L-directed aptitudes… are still necessary. But they’re no longersufficient. Instead, the R-Directed Aptitudes… artistry, empathy, taking the longview, pursuing the transcendent – will increasingly determine who soars and

stumbles (Pink, 2005: 27).

In short, Pink argues that there has been a shift from the information age to the“conceptual age”. The driving forces are affluence, technology and globalisation.Those in most demand and most able to prosper in this age will be creators,empathisers, pattern recognisers and meaning makers (Pink 2005: 50).

In Australia, there is strong evidence that Pink is correct, with almost thirty-

seven per cent of millionaires under the age of forty being involved in creativeindustries such as architecture, advertising, art, fashion, film, publishing,software, entertainment, TV and video games (Horin 2006).

Another key issue is that prosperity in the modern age has freed vast numbers ofpeople from more mundane pursuits and immediate imperatives such as the need



for food or shelter. Millions are seeking transcendence of the mundane, even self-realisation. Pink (2005) argues that self-realisation is now a quest for the vastmajority of the population. For example in the United States the number ofmeditators has doubled in the last decade, with about ten million adults nowpracticing it. Fifteen million were practicing yoga in 2005, a doubling from 1999(Pink 2005: 60). This has lead Pink to suggest that “meaning is the new money”(Pink 2005: 61). Others agree that critical rationality is no longer enough in theshort or long term (Laszlo, Grof & Russell, 2003; Zohar & Marshal 2005).

I suggest that we stop dithering with terminology. What we are talking about hereis a spiritual shift. Not a return to a medieval theology or a retreat to theascetic’s cave, but an incorporation of those necessary and intrinsic aspects ofhuman thinking and experience which have slowly and certainly been leached fromour lives and education systems in recent centuries.

There is now a growing body of theorists calling for a greater degree ofspirituality in business, and in the workplace. One of the first was Peter Senge(1994), who sees personal mastery and the integration of the intuitive,transcendent and rational faculties as being intricately interrelated in the modernworkplace. These cognitive processes enhance perception of the connectedness of

the world, compassion, and commitment to the whole (Senge 1994: 167). Sengecalls for a movement away from selfishness and towards a commitment tosomething greater than ourselves, including a greater desire to be of service tothe world. This incorporates the experience of the awakening of “a spiritual power”(ibid.: 167-172). Senge argues that this shift is an important part of the learningorganisation.

There are parallels here with futurist Sohail Inayatullah’s (2004) call for

spirituality to be “the fourth bottom line” of business. Inayatullah believes thereis already a strong shift towards a more responsible society and corporate world:

We are moving from the command-control ego-driven organization to the learningorganization to a learning and healing organization. Each step involves seeing theorganization less in mechanical terms and more in gaian living terms. The key



organizational asset becomes its human assets, its collective memory and itsshared vision (Inayatullah 2004www.metafuture.org/Articles/spirituality_bottom_line.htm ).

For Inayatullah, the “spiritual” requires three factors. Firstly, there is the needfor a “relationship with the transcendent… both immanent and transcendental”(ibid.). Secondly, there is the necessity of meditation and/or prayer. Finally,Inayatullah posits the need to honour the social, which he defines as “arelationship with the community, global, or local, a caring for others” (ibid.).

Likewise, Pink (2005), citing a report from the University of Southern California’sMarshall School of Business called A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America , argues

that employees are hungering for spiritual values in the workplace. Pink arguesthat as more companies come to appreciate this desire, there will be “a rise inspirit in business” (Pink 2005: 215).

Elsewhere (Anthony 2008) I have argued for the necessity for an expandeddefinition and appreciation of human intelligence in life, business and education, adefinition which incorporates the most essential aspects of human spiritualtraditions. I have referred to this as “integrated intelligence”. There is a growing

body of evidence that human consciousness is not confined to the head of theindividual, and that human beings are connected via a collective consciousness(Braud 2003; Grof 2000; Laszlo et al. 2003). Integrated intelligence is a humanbeing’s awareness of this, and the ability to use that intelligence to create a moremeaningful life. It is about being successful in a way that transcends mereconsumerism and materialism. Integrated Intelligence stands as a possiblemediation factor here. If, as Inayatullah implies, spirituality does become thefourth bottom line of modern economics, integrated intelligence could play a

crucial role.

The focus of Pink, Senge and Inayatullah is primarily short-term, centering onbenefits of “R-Directed Thinking” for workers in Western knowledge economies.Yet, I would like to assert the greatest benefit of integrated intelligence. Let mehere quote Peter Russell:



We are all part of the same groundswell. The most important question we need toask is, how can I put my own life in greater alignment with that groundswell?(Laszlo et al., 2003: ix)

There is a tendency for lay people and politicians both East and West to see “theother” as a threat. It is time to begin to work with the inner dimensions of mind,both in our own lives, and within education systems. We owe it to our children.Former Princeton psychologist David Loye (2004) has pointed out that we can nolonger afford to think in terms of a survival of the fittest, hyper-materialisticworld. Integrated intelligence is ultimately an affirmation of the extant realitythat we are all part of a united humanity. At the very least, humanity is potentiall

united. I have in my time seen some of the best and worst of both Western andEastern cultures. It is time for a re-alignment of thinking, both East and West,and a genuine deepening of our ways of knowing.

One of the greatest problems which developed from the Enlightenment and thescientific revolution was the philosophical withdrawal of humankind from natureand the cosmos (Tarnas 2000; Wilber 2000). With scientific detachment andreductionism came a loss of connection, and a loss of meaning and purpose. Now wefind ourselves in a time where more and more human beings are seeking a greater

sense of meaning and purpose. I appreciate the role of professional skeptics likeRichard Dawkins (2006). They serve the purpose of highlighting the sometimesmadness that passes as “spirituality” and religion on this planet. But they havethrown out the baby with the bathwater. Not only is an intuitive understanding ofmeaning and human spirituality economically and socially useful, it is imperative.The reality is that despite the hard work of skeptics, human beings are turningtowards transcendence and religious and spiritual matters in ever greaternumbers. It is not our responsibility to eliminate that spirituality, as was tried inChina under Mao Ze Dong, creating the single most destructive reign of anyleadership in human history (Fairbank 2006). It is now time to guide the youngtowards a healthy expression of the spiritual, and a healthy relationship with theirinner worlds.



Critical rationality has created an era of alienation. It is time to begin to restorethat connection, and that meaning and purpose - or at least facilitate the activepursuit of it.

Intelligence theorist Ken Richardson (2000) notes that human intelligence hasaccelerated with the development of society and culture, leading to advancementin technology and science that would have been hard to imagine in previouscenturies. Would we see a similar acceleration of human intelligence and civilisationif we expanded our concepts of intelligence and ways of knowing and incorporatedthem into our education systems and ways of life? Would it be the next great leapforward? We can only speculate.

The advantages may be great, as I have written previously (Anthony 2005). Thesemay include enhanced capacity to find meaning and purpose in life, as well ascounteract information overload and complexity; a move beyond possessiveindividualism and greed; and a circumvention of the information power and controlof institutions and the state. I maintain that personal and collective humantransformation is one of the most likely long-term benefits. Integratedintelligence may play a valuable role in the development of society. However, forsuch benefits to accrue, there needs to be a shift from the knowledge economy’s

focus upon materialism, money and hard power – for these are not readilycompatible with the kinds of spiritual processes I am writing about.

The Futures Perspective

I have been heavily involved in Futures Studies for the past six years. I like to callmyself an educational futurist, one who still walks to the chalkboard (or computer)each morning and has the privilege of addressing a class of expectant young faces.

Futurists do not simply predict the future. In fact prediction – trends analysis andextrapolation - is not really the central focus for most futurists. Several recentlydeveloped schools of Futures Studies, and most notably Critical Futures Studies,have been influenced by postcritical theory, and attempt to examine the powerstructures which drive discourses, societies, systems, fields, texts, discussionswhich affect the future (Slaughter 2006).



A recent development has been the emergence of Post-conventional FuturesStudies, a field which has influenced me. These futurists incorporate other waysof knowing, and move beyond empirical and critical analysis to explore the deeperintimacies of discourses, including the intuitive and spiritual. These are futures ofdissent, explored by men and women who ask big questions, who stand andchallenge the way things are. They include educators (Inayatullah, Bussey, &Milojevic 2006), and are as much inspired by the Eastern sages such as theBuddha, Lao Zi, and the transcendental philosophers Thorough and Emerson, asmuch as by Newton, Darwin and Heisenberg.

I believe that the scientific, the philosophical and spiritual are part of onecontinuum. They are not mutually exclusive realms which cannot be discussed in thesame room. The empirical, the critical and the intuitive are vital aspects of humanfutures. They are crucial also to education, and therefore the societies that weplan for the future generations of humanity.

Practically speaking

What does all this mean at a practical level for educators? We all know that if wewalk into a classroom and start talking about God or the afterlife we are probably

going to create a real mess, and just as likely have half the parents knocking onthe principal’s door after school. So, no, this is not what I mean by returning thedeeply meaningful and the spiritual to the classroom. I am not advocating bringinga personal agenda for inculcating a particular religious or philosophical perspectivethrough the classroom door. The process needs to be more considered, moresubtle and more respectful than that.

The key, I believe is bringing in inner worlds and other ways of knowing into

curriculum, and into the classroom. Introducing other ways of knowing into theclassroom requires no religious or spiritual jargon. Nor does it necessarily requirethat students share everything that they experience while exploring the intuitiveor being reflective.

I use visualisation and quiet time for my students. Notice I did not write



“meditation”, which unfortunately is a sensitive word for some people and religiousgroups. Journal writing can also be a great way to get students to honour theintuitive, without necessarily having the need to bear their soul with the class.Using journals immediately after quiet time is a great way to develop the linkbetween the left and right brains, the conscious and subconscious minds. Much ofmy early days exploring the psyche in my own time involved using a diary, andrecording the feelings, images and “knowings” I got from meditations, as well asdreams and subtle intuitions.

Visualisation can be used in a meaningful way. You can ask students to relax, andthen describe various scenes before their mind’s eye. One possibility is to invitestudents to seek knowledge from their inner mind. During visualisation is a goodtime to use affirmation – positive words and phrases repeated to oneself duringquiet time. Visualisation can be a good precursor to engaging in more in depth quiettime.

Needless to say, these tools are likely to fail if you try to introduce them in themiddle of a semester, after having taught in a completely different way all year. Itis best to introduce them very early on in the year, even in the first lesson with aclass. I know I am not the only one who uses such methods. One drama teacher I

know uses visualisation to help students with imagining themselves being confidentduring performances.

Sharing meaningful anecdotes from your personal life is another way of touching amore profound psycho-spiritual level within the students. Ideally, the themesshould be something related to the kinds of profound philosophical and spiritualissues I have mentioned in this paper. Whenever you touch upon the profound orsomething that connects us with the greater thread of human history, life itself

or our dreams and aspirations, opportunities to be meaningful open up. Suchthemes can include the environment, nature, justice, space exploration, the deathpenalty, free-market economics, personal success, failure, suicide, illness, triumph,defeat, disability, serious challenges, personal danger… Talking about how angry

you were at the referee for penalising your favourite team at the weekend



football game isn’t going to cut it, I’m afraid. And of course it has to be somethingrelevant to the lesson.

Many of these themes are already covered in various subjects across the

curriculum. The key in bringing forth deeper meaning and the spiritual isconnection . That’s why I call it integrated intelligence. It involves an affectiveappreciation of the thing being explored. In other words, we have to feel it, notmerely analyse or measure it for the purpose of meeting curriculum requirementsor regurgitating the data for the exams.

The world is not likely to be transformed into the serenity a giant Buddhistmonastery anytime too soon, and neither is your classroom. I am suggesting small,

balanced introductions to inner worlds. Primary schools are the best places tostart. However, all this can also be done with senior students. I recently asked anew Form 7 class (18-19 year olds) in Hong Kong if they had ever tried visualisationbefore. None of them had. Not ever in some 13 years of education! But I didn’t letthat stop me! We did a visualisation on something deeply meaningful to Hong Kongstudents – the public exam!

Slow and steady is the way to go with these things. And you will have to keep your

eyes and ears open for feedback. I suggest asking students to openly expresstheir feelings about using these techniques on a regular basis.

Finally, you can’t fake wisdom or deep understanding of life. So don’t even try. Youwill have to discern what things you feel you have mastery or understanding of, andwhich ones you do not. Again, in the end, it comes down to being comfortable with

yourself and who you are, and with what you really do know. In other words, youuse your intuition in the classroom - to know what, when and how “deep” to teach.

And that is something subtle. It is a different way of knowing – knowing how toteach.

The shifting sands of the twenty-first century

These are momentous times for the human race. The shape of the world is



shifting. The dominance of Anglo/white culture is over. The recent credit crisis ismore than just a function of greed or poorly regulated banking systems. Nor is itsimply a matter of which philosophy takes precedence at any given time. It is acrisis of meaning. What does it mean be human in the modern age?

I have friend who runs a small alternative spiritual/health centre in Hong Kong.She bemoans the fact that Hong Kong people are hyper-materialistic, taking theiridentities as much from their bank balances as from anything else. But she pointsto a time in Hong Kong when her business boomed. It was the SARS period in mid-2003. Suddenly people were asking questions about the meaning of it all. Peoplehuddled in fear in their tiny apartment buildings, shielded from the concrete andglass world they had built around them, terrified of a tiny, invisible virus.

These are understandings which cannot be found by crunching numbers inmachines, or by the machinations of technoscience. They are quintessentialquestions of being. Things that require us to slow down, or to simply stop and ask,“why?”. Perhaps more than any other question in these times, we might ask why ourlives are being dictated by the quest for more, more, more, and an incessant needto run towards a distant future. And why is it that it takes a crisis before manypeople ask hard questions about the meaning of it all?

Contemplation and meaning cannot simply be afterthoughts in the curriculum. Theyare an essential part of life. Schooling is meant to equip us to live life in a way thatis meaningful. We must bring time into the classroom to reflect upon what it is allabout. This entails a degree of vulnerability on behalf of the teacher. Is theteacher to admit her own fears and weaknesses, or her pain at loss and suffering?Is she to confess to the things in this world that she does not understand? Herlimitations? And what of those profound life experiences which have granted her

wisdom and understanding? Is she to remain silent about these things? Talkingabout these things requires courage. This is a state of emotional vulnerabilitywhich can only be negotiated by an individual with a high degree of psychologicaland spiritual maturity. In short, wisdom. And wisdom emerges from a deepintrospection upon life experience. It emerges from inner worlds.



Carl Jung died in 1958, lamenting his failure to help people see that the humanrace has a spiritual essence, and that “religion and philosophy” had becomeimpoverished. Fifty years later, are we any closer to uncovering that“ buriedtreasure” in the field? If not, how can our education systems be part of thediscovery process, and not part of the perpetuation of the problem?

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[i] Of course spiritual ways of knowing have never featured much in

modern academia, although an intellectual discussion of them is

common to many discourses.

ii[ii] Technoscience is science dominated by big business. In such

science, scientific knowledge which does not create profit tends to beexcluded.

ii[iii] Joan Bolker’s book Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes

Day was very helpful, and greatly influenced my understanding of this

free-form writing process. I highly recommend the book, even forthose in the sciences or using quantitative research methods. You will

find it in the references to this paper.

ii[iv] It has been pointed out that this kind of left/brained right

brained kind of model is simplistic. However there is not space in this

paper to elaborate upon this. The model does remain true in essence .

Moreover, it serves as a neat way to conceptualise the kinds of

cognitive processes I am referring to here.

Documents

Marcus T. Anthony- Crisis, Deep Meaning and the Need for Change