Aforementioned: aphorisms and questions for 2015
Formal education facilitates ethics drift. It enables science, law, religion, mechanized warfare, bulldozers – all enemies of nature.
This tweet engages a complex argument and since no one, it seems, is prepared to see education, however the term is used, as anything other than the embodiment of good possibilities, I could not find an argument anywhere on the web to either support or debate what I am proposing in this tweet.
By formal education I mean any type of education that arises from human cultural evolution, and that, of course, includes the educational possibilities of the web. The means of education will change (evolve culturally) but its meaning will not.
I have no wish to deny its material benefits, to name a few: widespread longevity, wise philosophy, the understanding that natural science affords us. However, hold your breath, and reflect for a moment on the tweet. We need to read and write to have any access to science or law and we need those skills to perpetrate religion, mechanized warfare, or bulldozed forests.
This is a crux. Perhaps we need to rethink education. The fact that it’s a catch 22 doesn’t mean that we have any choice other than to solve it. I would say that the way forward probably lies with the acceptance of the premises of Cicero’s syllogism:
Whatever is just is also expedient; and, in like manner, whatever is morally right is also just. It follows, then, that whatever is morally right is also expedient.
This tweet engages a complex argument and since no one, it seems, is prepared to see education, however the term is used, as anything other than the embodiment of good possibilities, I could not find an argument anywhere on the web to either support or debate what I am proposing in this tweet.
By formal education I mean any type of education that arises from human cultural evolution, and that, of course, includes the educational possibilities of the web. The means of education will change (evolve culturally) but its meaning will not.
I have no wish to deny its material benefits, to name a few: widespread longevity, wise philosophy, the understanding that natural science affords us. However, hold your breath, and reflect for a moment on the tweet. We need to read and write to have any access to science or law and we need those skills to perpetrate religion, mechanized warfare, or bulldozed forests.
This is a crux. Perhaps we need to rethink education. The fact that it’s a catch 22 doesn’t mean that we have any choice other than to solve it. I would say that the way forward probably lies with the acceptance of the premises of Cicero’s syllogism:
Whatever is just is also expedient; and, in like manner, whatever is morally right is also just. It follows, then, that whatever is morally right is also expedient.
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