Conscious Universities for the New Generation

When I graduated from high school in 1985, college was the unquestionable next step for an intelligent, middle-class or upper-middle-class young person. I entered an elite school not out of any particular ambition, but because the story that surrounded me said that this is how to do life. College, and probably further degrees thereafter, was the path to full participation in society.

The problem was that, deep down, I didn’t want to fully participate in society. I sensed a wrongness at the base of things. As I learned more about the workings of the world, I didn’t want to be part of it. Even the public service paths, that elite education could prepare me for, seemed themselves to be still part of the same system.

But I didn’t know of any alternative to university, or perhaps I wasn’t brave enough to find one. And besides, at that time I couldn’t identify the cause of my lassitude, my passive rebellion, my lack of motivation.

Now two of my own sons have reached college age, one 18 and one 20, and neither has yet gone to college. The nebulous intuition that led my unconscious rebellion has become, for them, an outright refusal to follow ‘the program.’ Moreover, they have alternatives that were not on my radar screen in the 1980s. Jimi has spent some time in ecological, spiritual, and permaculture programs in the U.S. and Costa Rica, that prepare people to participate in a future that is not just an extension of the present, but a different world with different values and different ways of seeing.

Programs like these exist all over the world, yet still, they are scattered and lack a unifying narrative that might present them as a solid alternative to traditional higher education. Young people must luck into them or know enough to seek them out. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this kind of education – education in what the planet needs most right now – were more easily accessible?

A Transition in Our Narrative

Technology is not just a haphazard collection of techniques. As a “logos of crafts” implies, these techniques are interrelated; they grow from a common logic, a unifying narrative or worldview. This narrative determines what we consider to be real, possible, and important. It answers the questions “What can we do?” “What should we do?” and “How can we do it?”

The technologies of separation that dominate the world today draw from the story of separation, which includes:

• Humans are separate from nature
• The self as a separate individual
• Full selfhood (consciousness, sentience) existing in humans alone
• Competition as the defining characteristic of life
• Domination and control over the other as the key to wellbeing
• That all things are composed of generic, identical building blocks
• That to be real is to be measurable and quantifiable
• That the forces of nature are basically random, so human progress depends on insulating ourselves from their dangers and harnessing them for our purposes
• Linear and reductionistic thinking as the basis of technology
• Force-based causality
• Human destiny to conquer or transcend nature.
• These are the threads of the mythology that has overtaken civilization over the last few thousand years, and especially the last few centuries. It is rapidly becoming obsolete though, giving way to a new and ancient story, the Story of Interbeing. It holds that:
  • The self is relational at its core
  • Humans are not separate from nature
  • What we do to the world, we do to ourselves
  • The basic qualities of a self (e.g. consciousness, intelligence) are ubiquitous and universal; everything is alive
  • Each being is a holographic mirror of all
  • Cooperation, sharing, and symbiosis are defining characteristics of life and evolution
  • Morphic resonance is the primary causal principle
  • Each being has unique and necessary gifts to give toward the wellbeing and evolution of the whole
  • Human destiny is to use its unique gifts to serve the health and development of Gaia

  Technologies of Reunion draw from the Story of Interbeing and contributes to its emergence in world civilization.

  
• Each includes the other, the part includes the whole, the inner mirrors the outer.
• Technologies of Reunion contribute to the reunion of human and nature, mind and body, thought and emotion, matter and spirit, modern and ancient, masculine and feminine. They reunite all that which has been made artificially separate or even placed into opposition in the civilization of separation. It is not the erasure of binary opposites, nor is it the dissolution of all boundaries; rather it is the understanding that each includes the other, that the part includes the whole, that the inner mirrors the outer.

  Examples of Technologies of Reunion

  Almost any practice, whether in medicine, agriculture, energy, or education that is called ‘alternative’ or ‘holistic’ exemplifies a technology of reunion. Here are a few examples to illustrate how these practices draw from the Story of Interbeing.

  Regenerative agriculture, for example, no-till organic horticulture. This practice is motivated, in part, by the understanding that the health of crops and of people is inseparable from the health of the soil. It seeks, therefore, to serve the wellbeing of the soil, confident that the health of one is the health of all. Secondly, regenerative agriculture sees the soil not as a mere repository of chemical nutrients, but as a living being possessed of its own kind of intelligence, and as part of a larger living being that is the entire farm ecosystem. Therefore, instead of merely imposing a methodological template on a piece of land, the farmer carefully observes the land until she intimately knows it as a being unto itself, so she can ask, “What does the land want?” The relationship is intimate, personal, and unique, irreducible to any set of quantitative data on soil composition and rainfall distribution.

  Homeopathy, based on the realization that every condition of a human being is mirrored by some material substance. Self and world are not separate. Homeopaths believe that introducing the informational signature of that substance into the body will unlock that disease pattern and bring healing. Furthermore, the medium for conveying the information signature of a substance is water, which in homeopathy is understood not as a generic substance defined merely by its chemical formula, but as capable of holding information and structure (a view supported by recent scientific thinking as well).

  
• Homeopathy adheres to the priciple that the self and the world are not separate.

  Truth and reconciliation processes. The Story of Separation says, “If I were in the totality of your circumstances – biographical, economic, cultural, etc. – I would not do as you did. I am better than that.” Punitive justice comes from that belief: people do bad things because they are bad people and therefore must be deterred by threat of punishment. The Story of Interbeing says the opposite. It says:

  If I were in the totality of your circumstances, my brother, I would have done as you did.

  Truth and reconciliation processes change those circumstances. They come from the belief that if he could only be connected with the full impact of his actions, he would no longer want to do that. They rely on the healing power of the truth made visible. Brutalization depends on a cutoff of empathy, on the dehumanization of the victim. By sharing their stories to the witnessing of the perpetrators and the surrounding community, the victims reclaim their full humanity in the eyes of all.

  Universal basic income (UBI) and community-based forms of resource sharing. In the Story of Separation, which says human nature is to maximize rational self-interest, this is an insane idea. If everyone’s basic needs were met, what would compel people to work and contribute to society? But if we believe that human nature is to want to contribute to something meaningful, greater than oneself, UBI and resource sharing becomes a way to support that impulse. It also validates and supports the kinds of contributions that are hard to quantify, such as giving loving care to children or old people, making art and music, bringing healing to land and water in ways that don’t increase economic output, and so forth.

  So, Technologies of Reunion include material technologies, social technologies, and also non-material technologies based on a different understanding of what is real.

  A partial list might include: mycoremediation of toxic waste, composting toilets and graywater/blackwater recycling systems, herbal medicine, therapies using psychotropic plants, earth building techniques, sacred architecture, sound healing, hypnosis and mind/matter techniques, nonviolent communication, compassionate listening; sociocracy, holocracy and other group decision-making methods; council processes; restorative circles; family constellation work; tantric sexual practices, communication with other-than-human beings, nonviolent methods of political direct action, implosion motors, over-unity energy devices, worker-owned cooperatives and other forms of economic cooperation, biodynamic agriculture, silvopasture, perennial-based horticulture, wetlands restoration, Montessori education, Waldorf education, technologies of voice, dance, and mask, the use of trance and dream states…

  
• Mycoremediation–the process of using fungi to degrade contaminants in the environment.

  In various ways, all of these draw on the new and ancient Story of Interbeing. What does crystal therapy have to do with composting toilets or attachment parenting? On a deeper level, they are related because their “what” and “how” draws from the same overarching story.

  There is tremendous support for the technologies that have brought us to our present situation, but little support for the kinds of technologies that are most necessary for our society to transition into an ecological age. The technologies of reunion need communities of practice, and they need patronage from visionary holders of financial wealth and other resources.

  Some examples of incubators for technologies of reunion include The Land Institute, devoted to perennial agriculture, The Farm in Tennessee, which pioneered the renewal of midwifery in America, Tamera Ecovillage, dedicated to healing human sexuality (as well as water retention landscapes and peace work), and the Damanhur intentional community in Italy, with its astonishing experiments in sacred architecture and plant communication. There are also growing linkages among institutions that are part of this movement, for example, Numundo and the global network of Ecoversities. These institutions are each edgy in their own way, and perhaps conventional in other ways. Each chooses its areas of exploration in the vast territory of Reunion. In a sane future on a livable planet, places like these must no longer be radical outliers; they must be the new normal.

  The Starseed Generation

  The blatantly new-agey term ‘starseeds’ just popped into my head to describe the current generation of young people coming of age today, who do not fit into dominant models of higher education. The rewards and threats that bring most people into conformity with the old story do not sway them. They cannot be bribed into a normal career. Therefore, most of what conventional universities offer is unattractive to them: both the curriculum content and the form in which it is offered.

  
• ‘Starseeds’ seek something more than our dominant models of higher education offer.

  Some of these young people muddle through university anyway, engaging themselves in political activism as an outlet for their passions. Others, the lucky ones, find new story content in the margins and crannies of their institutions, provided by professors who are adept at sneaking things under the radar. Many more drop out of college or refuse to go entirely. It is not that they are uninterested in learning; it is that what they want to learn is not easily available. They are here on earth with a purpose and cannot tolerate spending years of their lives on something that isn’t aligned with that purpose.

  When these youth get their first glimpse of permaculture, or gift economics, or herbalism, or some other technology of reunion, they come alive. Their eyes light up in recognition: here is what I was looking for. Or at least, here is a signpost that tells me that what I am looking for is out there somewhere.

  Equally powerful for these young people is to come across others of their tribe; allies in the purpose of serving the healing of Gaia, and especially elders who model an alternative life path. They realize then that they are not crazy and they are not alone.

  For a young person to follow this path does take courage, because it is preparation for a world that does not yet exist, a world that values Technologies of Reunion. Yet, paradoxically, it will never exist if we don’t prepare for it. The technologies that serve an ecological future also serve the transition to that future. And, to risk following this path is to make an offering of one’s life, and that is a powerful prayer.