I have been asked to "teach" an introductory class in liberal studies, a class using reading, discussion and expression to help students gain experience and skill in the art of writing.
In a world as challenging as ours, knowing "where we stand" and knowing what we know are often very difficult.
I believe that we are most effective in our expression when we speak from experience, from personal knowing and reflection within community. I intend this class to be a practice space for intelligent reflections and expressions that emerge out of discussion of readings and sharing of our views together.
The biologist Gregory Bateson, one of my heroes, wrote in his final book Towards an epistemology of the sacred (1986), regarding two rather sophisticated ideas that affected me and that I remember vividly, often drawing on them for personal guidance.
The first concept was that we, as humans, are arrogant and often full of hubris that leads us to create out of theory too quickly. That is, he felt that we, especially in the sciences, invent stuff before we really think and discuss the possible outcomes. Bateson foresaw and predicted the ecological crises that are now tantamount in our lives today. He felt, as does quantum physicist, F. David Peat, that we need more reflection, especially in the sciences, a gentler kind of inquiry, before we invent any thing.
When I feel I understand what Bateson was saying and intending, I feel called to recommit to a life lived sensitively, to especially the arts, to work that nourishes and inspires in ways that are least toxic, most sensitive if at all possible. And I think twice before I buy one more consumer product and wonder how I might touch another human with my words and my actions most effectively. I feel I move from just creating things to acting more effectively, with a little more personal integrity. People seem to understand me better when I look more deeply and understand my self, my "position" a bit better, perhaps as Ann Morrow Lindbergh discovered in her holidays to the sea and wrote of in her Gift of the Sea, one of the books for this class.
Secondly, Bateson wrote that we need to "know what we know." This is basic epistemology and so Bateson was saying more. He was also saying that that we need to know what we know, and that that includes knowing what we believe or know we are capable of knowing (it means we also have, as philosopher's say, an "ontology" or a theory of what reality is).
Viewed this way, learning becomes an act of HOW we know what we know. Thus knowing becomes an active endeavor, an interactive, even sacred endeavor. In noticing what we know and how we know, we look deeper, more deeply than most education asks us to look. We experience our learning; we know because we look deeply at HOW we know.
The course I will teach this fall is based on a successful syllabus by another faculty member and I am impressed with the simple but elegant reading list. This list teaches "different ways of knowing" creatively and I am pleased to offer those books here, now. (Bateson's Angel's Fear (1986) is my addition to the list.)
When you purchase books here, you join the Lived Learning community as it grows and you support these efforts at integrated living. Thank you for this.
