Environment, Culture, and Improvement
It’s hard to start writing when there’s a lot going on in your head. Too many subjects to talk about, too many conversations to document, too many experiences to describe. Right now, I can only think of decreasing marginal utility. It’s fascinating how much we are used to think, about everything; ideas, concepts, terms, everything. Who invented them? Are they real or just creations of our mind? Are they somewhere in nature and we are just discovering them? Do we create or discover the patterns in nature?
The power of our mind is extremely difficult or impossible to measure, since it has proved through time to have a nearly infinite capacity to create. During our dialogue with Roberto Blum at Finca El Zapote, we discussed the anthropic principle. Without us, does the Universe would still exist? Is our mind creating It? I think it’s easy to fall into the premise that without us the universe wouldn’t exist, and that leads us to the origins of everything as we discussed in The Fire in the Equations. As Ferguson writes, we still can’t prove what was the origin of everything, whether it was God, Mathematical and Logical Consistency, the Universe itself, or a combination of all of these. Because we can’t prove whether was one or the other, we must, if we believe in one of them, have faith in what we believe. It’s very interesting how all of these theories have the same validity of non-falseability, therefore there is nothing but faith in believing one of them.
Going on a lower level, as Hofstadter would say, it’s important to talk about us, humans. During our dialogue with Armando de la Torre, we talked about the rapid acceleration of the capacity of man and how, as Armando believes, we are the most important thing that has happened in the universe. I found very hard to believe that, since we are still incapable of knowing many things, but returning to the evolution of our mind and capacity to think, it’s amazing to think of how we have become so powerful in our world in such a short period of time. Why and how we were able to do that? What makes us different from the rest of the creatures that surround us? During the dialogue, Armando said, “You are what you “eat” mentally, then you create and do.” We are interlinked creatures, beings that live in society and learn the good and bad things of the peers around us. Some say we are a part of each of the five people most close to us. Environment, in a very large sense, defines who we are and what we believe. Living in society allows us to create bonds and meaning together, as Bohm would define it, but this won’t happen in every society or culture. For instance, the level of openness of the mind and the stereotypes people have in a society are of great influence of the advances in science and religion, as we have seen in The Copernican Revolution and Agora. We can also see it clearly now a day, with our current society and educational system.
Socrates, in Meno, said, “…we will be better man, braver and less idle if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.” In Meno, he was talking about virtue and whether it can be something teachable. It’s interesting how Socrates’ approach of learning the unknown relates to the human capacity and curiosity to discover and learn, but that this is not something explicitly teachable, rather one must learn it on his own. On his own but not alone, since environment plays a crucial role in the development of virtue and progress. In this sense, virtue is the willingness to learn, and therefore, we learn it as a tacit knowledge.
So, how can we build a society in which we can have the environment to develop qualities that improve our life? As my fellow learners and I were talking, there is something unexplainable, or at least very hard to explain, in what we are learning. We not only learn explicit knowledge (i.e. terms, theories, tools), but something more deep. It involves our relationships with others, the way we behave, think, question, the awareness of nature, of oneself, of life. It also involves an increase in the capacity of being metacognitive of who we are and the things that surround us. It’s about being part of a culture that allows us to think of who we are and to be proprioceptive of the things we do and think. The last couple of weeks, especially the last one, we have realized the importance of organization and responsibility. We’ve made a big step toward our standards by improving our personal responsibilities, doing the pending things we left behind, and organizing for delivering on time the work we have not done. We have also improved the confidence in the group as we saw in the drama epicycle. And these are only some examples of the way an environment affects who you are. Even if you are not the person you want to be, an adequate environment would help you realize what you want, how are you going to achieve it and with what resources. At the end, is not about how many times you slip and hit some rocks during your river walk, but how you are able to stand up and keep on going, all the way to the precious waterfall! This is how life is and the way you are able to maximize your capacity to learn. It’s about having a lifetime attitude of learner. Virtue is not teachable, but is definitely easier in an environment where you have a culture of “shared meaning” and where you can be proprioceptive, metacognitive, and have collaborative work.