UNLEARNING

We don't know what we know. We don't know what we don't know. We live in bubbles within a large bubble. The large bubble is comprised of our culture and traditions. The smaller bubbles are our religions, political parties, our clans, our families, professions, etc. We are defined by the matrix of beliefs that make up our perception of reality.

From the minute we are born we are shaped to see reality in the way; first our parents, then our teachers [includes religious teachers], then other authority figures, see the world. Stepping out of the bubble and seeing freely is always punished, in one way or another. We are tribal beings. We want to belong. We want to be accepted. We want to be loved. Ostracism is painful.

It is fearful to be out on a limb, by ourselves, seeing outside the bubble. We want companionship. We want to share and have support for what we see. How can we awaken if we are afraid to think for ourselves? How can we awaken if we are conditioned to be slavish to authority figures?

I have been a proponent of learning centers to help people live on the Earth in a sane manner. I imagined the centers, as a collection of healers, teachers, artist, craft people etc. who would provide the impetus for a new way of living on the planet.

Perhaps they would be better labeled unlearning centers, as their main function, would need to be divesting ourselves of all the nonsense we now think of as knowledge.

How can we learn, not to do to the next generation, what was done to us? We don't want our children to accept the beliefs of authority figures like we did. No real progress can be made if we walk in lock step with each other.

Can we create schools that encourage children to think for themselves? Can we resist indoctrinating the next generation the way we were taught?

This certainly is not an original idea. For centuries philosophers and educators have been concerned about this dilemma. Schools have arisen and then died out, or became corrupted, by the larger culture. Perhaps our consciousness has improved enough to make real education main stream. We still need pilot projects. We need people, appreciative of the problem, to come together with ideas. There are folks all over the world doing that right now. I have read of some especially interesting experiments in Russia.

Somewhere deep in our hearts we recognize truth. It is time to find our way out of the matrix. Freedom beckons. Love nourishes our search.

Some readers may not realize how deeply entrenched we have become in our blindness. I may expand on that later.

I would appreciate any information folks might have on how to help parents raise children without unnecessary indoctrination and how schools could be shaped.

Love and Peace,   Gregg