Please explain then our complete lack of emotive education in our
schools. I believe Greg Burch explained quite lucidly why emotive
education has failed in the past, but I believe he also made it clear
that such may very well be feasible today.
> Gregory thinks that subjective reality can be studied objectively and
> that this has not been tried before.
Yes on the former, and on the latter, it has not been tried before in
the sense that I am seeking. It has not been attempted in the rigorous,
scientific, somewhat standardized fashion, necessary for it to be found
beneficial in our current educational settings. No one that I am aware
of has developed an evolving curriculum of emotive education that would
be suitable and beneficial in our current educational settings. This
will first require the development of basic skills and exercises for
observing and measuring emotive events. Just as in purely objective
science we require standardized methods of observation and measurement,
we will require the same in order to apply the scientific method to
emotive science. We will require the same to help objectify what is
intrinsically subjective. These rudimentry skills and exercises should
be simple enough that a kindergarten student could begin developing them
so that in each consecutive grade those skills could be built upon. And
from the get go, there should be an emphasis on how these new skills can
be applied to effectively augment the students cognitive skills.
> Most of his examples are yogic
> feats of self-control or idiot-savant abberations.
Yes, very few people currently have either the discipline or the
biological anomoly to manifest these skills. Very few people. Perhaps it
is not all laziness. What I am proposing IS something new, something
that as Greg Burch clarified so well, may only now be feasible. And that
is to introduce emotive education in a non-esoteric, non-religious,
non-mystical fashion. It is to assimilate emotive education into our
current cognitive educations. This may take some time, but it is my
intention to develop an emotive curriculum for primary and secondary
educational institutions. In the same fashion we can begin preparing for
calculus at a very early age by learning arithmatic, we can prepare for
advanced levels of emotive intelligence at a young age by learning the
fundamentals of emotive education.
I will not tout emotive education as an absolute requirement. Emotive
education will be offered specifically for the careful consideration of
private educational institutions. However, I imagine that its
overwhelming competitive benefits, may economically neccesitate its
future adoption in most if not all schools, and thus we may find it
becomes as ubiquitous to our schooling as mathmatics is today.
> The point of the above discussion, of some fascinating techniques that
> I'm nevertheless very skeptical of, is that even these advanced
> shamanic disciplines do not try to create some false dichotomy between
> the 'inner world' and the 'outer world'. You can lose yourself in
> solipsism like Poul Anderson's Teramind, or you can engage the
> objective reality in a biotechnical way.
I have only stressed the dichotomy because as I see it now, that is how
it is most often percieved. Our society has a very strong bias towards
the 'outer world'. Our primary and secondary education is almost
entirely directed towards the study of the 'outer world'. But in the end
I am pushing for a bridging of the gap between the 'inner' and 'outer
worlds' so that we can realize and effectively employ an
emotive-cognitive continuum, a continuum of consciousness. In the end it
is not so much about separation, for that is what we have now, but it is
about reconciliation, a reconciliation between the subjective and
objective, between the emotive and cognitive. I will often push for the
extreme, in which case I take a binary stance, but this is only in the
hopes that we can reach the true goal, which is a balance that we are
very certainly lacking in education as a whole. I have often found it
easier to achieve something, if I shoot for something well beyond it.
With that said, I will be more careful in the future to speak of degrees
within continuums rather than abstracted dichotomous absolutes.
Crosby, do you see the potential benefit of assimilating emotive
education into our current cognitive educations? If so, I would be
particularly interested in what you believe should be avoided, and what
should be given special concern in creating a model or proposal for
such. It is my intention to develop and create such a proposal, and
before I release it, I want to have something rigorous, realistic, and
fairly easy to implement. I want to have something that will not be
immiediately discarded as flaky or new age ... which it is most
certainly not to be. As one of my greatest critics, I would appreciate
it if you might take a moment to temporarilly entertain the idea that
you are embracing the concept of assimilating emotive education into our
current cognitive educations. If you were the president of an
educational institution, what would it take to sell you on the idea of
implementing emotive education? What would immiediately compel you to
discard it? You have already mentioned a few things that are directly
critical of what I have been currently espousing, but can you offer
constructive criticism beyond that point? I believe this would expediate
our process while helping to avoid needless arguments.
Actually, I am most interested in what anyone on this list would have to
say on this matter.
I hope to offer a proposal which is congruous with Extropian,
Libertarian, and Transhumanistic thought. Thus the opionions, comments,
and suggestions of those on this list is greatly appreciated. Once a
tentative proposal is furnished, development can begin immiediately.
I believe that it is now evident that an emotive education could prove
beneficial and that such is now realistically possible. I would like to
move on to an intermittant discussion of what such should or should not,
and may or may not entail. What should be avoided and what should be
emphasized.
Is anyone interested in a think tank?
Cheers,
-- Gregory Houston vertigo@triberian.com 816.561.1524