Intro Dictionary
Posted by Sunwalk Ed on June 30, 2007
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DICTIONARY of HOLISTIC (education) and ´Personal Development´ CONCEPTS - Introduction
The dictionary is 8 static pages on this site Part 4: -
ABC - DEF - GHI - JKL - MNO - PQR - STU - VWXYZ
‘Foreword’
Part 4 presents a ‘dictionary’ of Holistic Education concepts. The Dictionary is likely to be useful after or during working through the TASKS in the rest of the site.
NB The Dictionary is in continuous development - this first draft contains a lot of useful material but formatting is rough. I will turn to a major development of this work, and to polishing its presentation when all of the other basic work is completed. The Dictionary will take years to ‘complete’.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the dictionary is a list of educational concepts that are looked at and ‘placed’ holistically - since many of the concepts are used by educators who may not consider themselves holistically-driven. By ‘placing’ I mean the weight and importance and meaning that each concept has for an individual is likely to differ in the case of holistic practice, as compared say to a utilitarian view of learning and development.
Inevitably in learning about nurturing the learning and development of those we lead we are ‘dealers in concepts’. However we should keep in mind that it is meaning that makes us human and meaning comes from what we experience of the Whole as much as from parts.
Heschel puts this dramatically as;
“Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement”
(A. J. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone p.7)
My attempt to bring together, in balance, head and heart, thought and feelings, mythos and logos, religion and science;
SunWALK = education as walking the life journey in dialogue with
friends - acting wisely through loving and knowing - in the light of
the ‘Sun’ of higher-order values.
Dictionary Intro b) - Inspirations
Dictionary Intro b) - Inspirations
As I searched literature and ideas in developing my model certain ‘peaks’ began to show above the mist-laden valleys! As you go along your path you will find your own main features that will enable you to navigate your way. Below are some of the ‘peak’ ideas that have inspired me. You are invited to make your own list.
TASK: i.e. suggested action for student
Start collecting information about those ideas and/or the people who created those ideas - their lives, actions and sayings - that are particularly inspiring for you. There follows a collection of some of the quotations that inspired the work presented on this site. I have given a name to this set of inspirations; Being human through dynamic encounters between The Whole and the parts.
Being human through dynamic encounters with The Whole and the parts
This sub-title indicates one of the key ideas presented here - that we need both ‘encounters with the Whole’ as well as experience of engagement with ‘parts’. Encounters with the Whole in which as Wilber says we lose, through identification our sense of an individuated self - no boundaries or ego identity - I call mythos.
Karen Armstrong has written eloquently about the loss of this mythos way of knowing in her A Short History of Myth. However I distinguish between myth and mythos. Mythos is the state of being we are in in our identification with the whole - no boundaries or ego identity - whereas myth is the name we give to the stories we tell in trying to undertake the impossible task of giving an adequate account of those encounters. Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua have taught us a great deal about the encounters on the one hand and, on the other hand, our attempts at using concepts to explain such experiences.
Another key idea, as we shall see, came from Ken Wilber and points out that we essentially express ourselves in one of three modes, the I, WE and IT voices, which correspond the the Arts, Humanities and Sciences, to Creativity, Caring and Criticality etc.
These ‘inspirations’ then gave me key notions that have influenced and guided my own work. I hope you find at least some equally inspiring. The spiritual dimension is pan-religious i.e. not faith-specific. It is primarily about realizing an authentic and autonomous world-view. A dedicated site concerning the spiritual dimension is at Part 2.
Above all the work on this site centres on the belief that the most important question that we can ask is, “What is it to be (positively and fully) human - in the world with others? To this question, so I believe, all other questions should relate. For me the one book that answers this succinctly, poetically, and very deeply, is the great Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Who is Man? As such I see his book as essential for everyone who wishes to be a teacher, especially those who look for ’spiritualizing pedagogy’.
Central to Heschel’s belief and teachings was that we should stay in touch with that experience of the Whole that engenders awe and wonder (what he calls ‘radical
amazement’). He says that;
The secret of being human is care for meaning. Man is not his own
meaning, and if the essence of being human is concern for transcendent
meaning, then man’s secret lies in openness to transcendence. Existence
is interspersed with suggestions of transcendence, and openness to
transcendence is a constitutive element of being human…….
Indeed, the concern for meaning of human being is what constitutes
the truth of being human. A J Heschel P66 Who is Man 1965 Stanford Unity Press
This emphasis on at-one-ment however is not to the exclusion of our duality with
the ‘real’ world:
The search for reason ends at the shore of the known;
on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding.
Neither is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore,
and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.
Citizens of two realms, we must all sustain dual allegiance:
we sense the ineffable in one realm;
we name and exploit reality in another.
Between the two we set up a system of references,
but can never fill the gap They are as far and as close to each other…
as life and what lies beyond the last breath. Man is Not Alone p8.
Wilber also helps illuminate the ‘dance between the Whole and the parts;
“To understand the whole it is necessary to understand the parts.
To understand the parts, it is necessary to understand the whole. Such
is the circle of understanding.
We move from part to whole and back again, and in that dance of
comprehension, in that amazing circle of understanding we come alive to
meaning, to value, and to vision: the very circle of understanding guides
our way, weaving together the pieces, healing the fractures, mending the
torn and fractured fragments, lighting the way ahead - this extraordinary
movement from part to whole and back again, with healing the hallmark
of every step, and grace the tender reward.”
Eye of Spirit; an integral vision for a world gone slightly mad
by Ken Wilber (1997) pub. Shambhala p.1.
Since on this site, and in the Build a Better Model of Education course, we are about to become ‘traders in concepts’ we should keep in mind Heschel’s wonderful statement:
“Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement”
- A. J. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone p.7
This need to experience the Whole as well as focussing on parts, such as concepts,
is also contained in the following metaphor:
“The larger the island of knowledge,the longer the shoreline of mystery.” Anon
The above quotations teach us a lot about the theme of ‘parts and the Whole’. Another major theme is that of generacy, as opposed to degeneracy. This includes
the ability to see particulars as part of the Whole in such a way as to experience their full significance (and perhaps stop time and go beyond place). The alternative
to being taken out of yourself is to be eternally burdened with self!
‘To see a world in a grain of sand
and a heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour.’ William Blake
Experience needs to be transcendent as well as of the here and now if we are to create teaching that is holistic - but it doesn’t necessarily have to be within a particular religious context. Happiness and peace and development would be greatly helped if we recognized that there are many paths to the summit of the hill. Learning ultimately takes place within a love relationship:
“A person is only as good as what they love.” Saul Bellow.
“Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the
mysteries latent in the universe.” ‘Abdu’l-Baha.
“Love is the beauty of the soul.” St. Augustine.
“Knowledge is love.” `Abdu’l-Baha.
and, if we believe Schuon, knowing, at least the deeper kind of knowing, requires goodness:
“Virtue is necessary, for light does not go through an opaque stone
and barely illuminates a black wall….”
Frithjof Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts p. 178.
Vital to our understanding of being human is to know that we are ‘more than’; more than animals, more than we can say, more than the dominators and exploiters of this one planet we all inhabit.
A form of psychology called Transactional Analysis shows that we tend to speak in one of three voices; Parent, Adult or Child (PAC). Communications that suit communicator and communicatee e.g. both being in Child mode tend to be happy and successful. However there are potential problems when one party is in one mode and the other in a different mode. Wilber helps us understand that we speak in different voices. These he calls the ‘I’ voice, the ‘WE’ voice and the ‘IT’ voice.
Our global society could be so much happier if we understood, and respected, these three voices and the domains, and ways of knowing, to which they refer. The I voice is that of subjectivity - it is expression, as in the arts, of how each of us experiences something - it is true for that person (if they have at least a modicum of self-knowledge and sincerity) Expressions in the (arts) I voice ring true - more or less - for others, in terms of their own subjective experience and its expression. ‘Ilike/I don’t like’ includes ‘I recognize (and value)/I don’t recognize (or value)’ according to the experience I have had, and processed e.g. via thought, talk or some art.
The IT voice is that of objectivity. Some people want to say that there is no such thing as objectivity. For example the distinguished psychologist Robert J
Sternberg;
As Immanuel Kant pointed out in The Critique of Pure Reason, if there
is an objective reality, it is unknowable. All we can know is the reality
we construct. That reality takes the form of a story.
Love really is a story….
Sternberg Robert J., (199 
Love is a Story: a new theory of Relationships, Oxford: OUP
In one sense this is true. The Whole remains a mystery. We each remain a mystery - even to ourselves.
In another sense sense the Sternberg/Kant view is nonsense. If there is a Whole we, admittedly, cannot comprehend it - because the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. Heschel however in his three major works shows us that we sense the Whole in ineffable encounters. Such encounters come he says with radical amazement. The stateof radical amazement, or beyond that awe, is the state tfrom which we derive meaning. - the amazement that is not satisfied through the snacks of concepts.
But to suggest that because of this there is no objective reality is a false argument. However that which is objective truth and reality is, as Wittgenstein says, a matter of agreement - which justifiably gets adjusted from time to time, through scientific discovery or agreement via consultation or ‘revelation’. But to collapse the generally agreed objective reality that a metre length is a metre length (against a known standard) into the subjectivity of say a Van Gogh landscape is seriously perverse.
Of course subjective expressions often include recognition as well as sensation - trees in a Van Gogh landscape are entirely un-naturalistic but are nevertheless recognizable as trees. Similarly metaphor contains both subjective resonances and objective (by agreement!) elements.
The third voice, the WE moral voice, also exists by agreement. It relies, on the other two for its health and well-being - e.g. the moral voice needs to be supported by the (scientific) rationality of the IT voice, but it also needs imagination, as in literature and other arts, for such essential elements as empathy and compassion.
All three voices rely on the other two. All three are ways from and to the heart-mind, or consciousness. All three are ways of engaging with reality, and of going beyond into the transcendence of Mystery.
Balance in education needs to be between I, WE and IT - energy and excitement come from continuously juxtaposing I, WE and IT methods and I, WE and IT texts.
In societies that respect the three voices there is happiness - more or less. People there can enjoy the benefits of science, arts and morality without wilfully mis-attributing the different expressions of the human spirit and without mis-applying one set of truth criteria upon one of the other domains. When there is mis-attribution or mis-application we end up with nonsense or cruelty or such suppression that the nation does not flourish. For example the mis-application of scientific process to the mystical/arts domain (scientism) might give us some comparative numbers but provides no real mystical or aesthetical insight. We might just as well value paintings according to how many pounds they weigh.
In the West, at least, the three truth-gathering, truth-telling ways of engaging with reality I, WE and IT are;
subjective expression via arts/the mystical methods,
moral expression, via humanities methods,
and objective expression via scientific methods.
Each form of expression relies on the other two either before or after the event.
Education, and societies, need to respect, and use effectively, the three voices and their respective ways of engaging with reality, and of truth-creation and of coming to know our selves and our world.
SunWALK = education as walking the life journey in dialogue with
friends - acting wisely through loving and knowing - in the light
of the ‘Sun’ of higher-order values.
What model would you make in making of the concepts a whole?
Is it ironical that the only way to study Holistic Education is in bits? Enjoy gleaning & stitching some useful bits into a whole!
Enjoy & dive deep!
Roger
Dr Roger Prentice
If you have suggested additions or constructive critiques please email me at rogerprenticeATbigfoot.com (replace AT with @)
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