We live in perilous times. We have way too much daily input to process thoughtfully. Modern humans have lost a motivating purpose. We are pre-programmed to be goal oriented and to gain satisfaction from making progress toward that goal. We need to do something that makes us contribute to something more enduring than ourselves.
An animal living in the wild is driven to sustain itself with food and its species through reproduction. When an animal has avoided immediate threats and eaten its fill, it rests, sleeps or plays. We turn to our phones.
Most of us humans are over-fed and have an excess of un-purposed time. Compare our “free time” with that of a hunter-gatherer or a servant in a prior century. We now seem to feel a need to be “busy” when there is no purpose to fulfill. The amount of medication taken to alter our sense of wellbeing is proof that we don’t know how to relax and be comfortable with our own company even when we have the time. Relaxation that is physically restorative is essential. But mental time to process the life being lived is necessary, too. Fill that time with your phone-life and your intellectual “in-box” will be overwhelmed and shut down leaving you in an unprocessed emotional wilderness. Drugs dull the effect, but don’t fix the primary problem.
I hope we will collectively start experimenting with ways to awaken the potential of the human brain rather than dull it by having AI do the thinking for us down to and including our emotional relationships. AI can easily be your best enabler.
Completely agree with this. As tempting as it is to outsource the difficult mental work of processing our lives to AI, or drugs, or therapy, we are only enfeebling ourselves by becoming over-reliant on crutches. We urgently need to start living purposeful lives again.
I loved this essay and I loved your focus on Ferguson's Cloister and Starship approach.
I wonder if there might be room in his model to exit from the world of traditional, old-style intellectual learning and spend some time (10%? 15%) teaching a very traditional trade.
You hint as much when you refer to "other time" being used for "AI and other modern technology."
It's not as though traditiona tradesmen don't have creative minds: they do.
They certainly learn how to do basic things, then find their own ways to improve on the tried-and-true approaches based on both their training and their subsequent work experience.
I wonder if in learning their trade they develop thought processes that are different from those of traditional academics.
It seems to me (a guppy who's shooting from the hip right now) that the combination of practical problem solving as practiced by tradesmen might broaden one's way of thinking in more academic, abstract ways.
I also think the reverse might be true: that learning traditional subjects using Ferguson's cloister method might help tradesmen be better at what they do. Maybe even to the extent of using AI.
I get it that there are only so many hours a day one can "study" or "work" but separating that day into two roads (85% learning traditional subjects and 15% learning "other") might benefit both kinds of thinking in the same person, not to mention benefitting society in general.
Thank you! And I love this idea of teaching a traditional trade. There are also models like the American College of the Building Arts, which teaches students to restore architecture and work with materials like wood and stone. That directly feeds into the model of humanities education we need to preserve.
Again. a rich meal of ideas to ponder.
We live in perilous times. We have way too much daily input to process thoughtfully. Modern humans have lost a motivating purpose. We are pre-programmed to be goal oriented and to gain satisfaction from making progress toward that goal. We need to do something that makes us contribute to something more enduring than ourselves.
An animal living in the wild is driven to sustain itself with food and its species through reproduction. When an animal has avoided immediate threats and eaten its fill, it rests, sleeps or plays. We turn to our phones.
Most of us humans are over-fed and have an excess of un-purposed time. Compare our “free time” with that of a hunter-gatherer or a servant in a prior century. We now seem to feel a need to be “busy” when there is no purpose to fulfill. The amount of medication taken to alter our sense of wellbeing is proof that we don’t know how to relax and be comfortable with our own company even when we have the time. Relaxation that is physically restorative is essential. But mental time to process the life being lived is necessary, too. Fill that time with your phone-life and your intellectual “in-box” will be overwhelmed and shut down leaving you in an unprocessed emotional wilderness. Drugs dull the effect, but don’t fix the primary problem.
I hope we will collectively start experimenting with ways to awaken the potential of the human brain rather than dull it by having AI do the thinking for us down to and including our emotional relationships. AI can easily be your best enabler.
Completely agree with this. As tempting as it is to outsource the difficult mental work of processing our lives to AI, or drugs, or therapy, we are only enfeebling ourselves by becoming over-reliant on crutches. We urgently need to start living purposeful lives again.
Every word of this.
I loved this essay and I loved your focus on Ferguson's Cloister and Starship approach.
I wonder if there might be room in his model to exit from the world of traditional, old-style intellectual learning and spend some time (10%? 15%) teaching a very traditional trade.
You hint as much when you refer to "other time" being used for "AI and other modern technology."
It's not as though traditiona tradesmen don't have creative minds: they do.
They certainly learn how to do basic things, then find their own ways to improve on the tried-and-true approaches based on both their training and their subsequent work experience.
I wonder if in learning their trade they develop thought processes that are different from those of traditional academics.
It seems to me (a guppy who's shooting from the hip right now) that the combination of practical problem solving as practiced by tradesmen might broaden one's way of thinking in more academic, abstract ways.
I also think the reverse might be true: that learning traditional subjects using Ferguson's cloister method might help tradesmen be better at what they do. Maybe even to the extent of using AI.
I get it that there are only so many hours a day one can "study" or "work" but separating that day into two roads (85% learning traditional subjects and 15% learning "other") might benefit both kinds of thinking in the same person, not to mention benefitting society in general.
Just spit balling here, but . . .
Again, thanks for a very provocative post!
Thank you! And I love this idea of teaching a traditional trade. There are also models like the American College of the Building Arts, which teaches students to restore architecture and work with materials like wood and stone. That directly feeds into the model of humanities education we need to preserve.