We're going to have to be patient...

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

Edward O. Wilson (1999) "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" New York: Vintage p. 280

E.O. Wilson on Postmodernism vs. the Enlightenment

All movements tend to extremes, which is approximately where we are today. The exuberant self-realization that ran from romanticism to modernism has given rise now to philosophical postmodernism (often called poststructuralism, especially in its more political and sociological expressions). Postmodernism is the ultimate polar antithesis of the Enlightenment. The difference between the two extremes can be expressed roughly as follows: Enlightenment thinkers believe we can know everything, and radical postmodernists believe we can know nothing.

Edward O. Wilson (1999) "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" New York: Vintage pp. 43, 44.

Stop the Madness!

"Sanity - consciousness - can only come into this world through you. You do not need to wait for the world to become sane, or for somebody else to become conscious, before you can be enlightened. You may wait forever. Do not accuse each other of being unconscious. The moment you start to argue, you have identified with a mental position and are now defending not only that position but also your sense of self. The ego is in charge. You have become unconscious."

Eckhart Tolle (1999) The Power of Now. Vancouver: Namaste. p. 159.

Thoreau on high discipline & infinite leisure

"It is worth the while to apply what wisdom one has to the conduct of his life surely. I find my self oftenest wise in little things & foolish in great ones. That I may accomplish some particular petty affair well i live my whole life coarsely. A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste no less in life than in housekeeping. keep the time -- observe the hours of the universe - not of the cars. What are 3 score years & ten hurriedly & coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure, in which your life in coincident with the life of the Universe. We live too fast & coarsely just as we eat too fast & do not know the true savor of our food. We consult our will & understanding and the expectations of men - not our genius. I can impose upon myself tasks which will crush me for life and prevent all expansion - & this I am but too inclined to do. One moment of life costs many hours, - hours not of business but of preparation and invitation. yet the man who does not betake himself at once & desperately to sawing wood is called a loafer - though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven - all the while which shall surely be opened to him - That aim in life is highest which requires the highest & finest discipline. How much - What infinite leisure it requires - as of a lifetime, to appreciate a single phenomenon! You must camp down beside it as for life - having reaching your land of promise & give yourself wholly to it.

Thoreau, Henry David. [28 December 1852, Journal 5: 412] (1999) "Uncommon Learning: Henry David Thoreau on Education" ed. Martin Bickman. New York: Mariner.

The Flavor of Life

"Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him. Let not your life be wholly without object, thought it be only the quality of an insignificant berry that you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such sauce as no wealth can buy."

Thoreau, Henry David. [Extract from Journal IX: 36-38. 30 August 1856].
1999, New York: Mariner.

When an ism isn't an ism

Some rather old words from John Dewey could be applied to current arguments for current educational movements such as constructivism:

"Those who are looking ahead to a new movement in education, adapted to the existing need for a new social order, should think in terms of Education itself rather than in terms of some 'ism about education, even such an 'ism as "progressivism." For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an 'ism becomes so involved in reaction against other 'isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them."

John Dewey (1938) "Experience and Education" New York: Kappa Delta Pi

Exponential Change

The future is widely misunderstood. Our forebears expected it to be pretty much like their present, which had been pretty much like their past. Exponential trends did not exist one thousand years ago, but they were at that very early stage in which they were so flat and so slow that they looked like no trend at all. As a result, observers' expectation of an unchanged future was fulfilled. Today, we anticipate continuous technological progress and the social repercussions that follow. But the future will be far more surprising than most people realize, because few observers have truly internalized the implications of the fact that the rate of change itself is accelerating.

Kurzweil, Ray. (2005) "The Singularity is Near." London: Penguin. p. 11