Let’s investigate why the human world is struggling and on its knees, and let’s discover the solution to humanity’s calamity.

When you have a school system which views education as only the transfer of knowledge, from possessor of knowledge to receiver, and which is then continuously tested to ensure the receiver 'got it' correctly, then human life in adulthood becomes a matter of being right or wrong, good or bad.

Always an external authority, which is 'the knowledge' or the bearer of 'the knowledge', determines general human life, and our own individual relationships.

The 'authority' and their 'knowledge' or say-so must be deferred to, complied with, accepted. Because, of course, it's correct and 'correct' means 'good'. If YOU are the authority, determined by your role in society, then you expect to be deferred to and complied with because 'you know', and you are correct. It's 'the knowledge, it's 'the way it's done', don't you know!!

And don't you dare do it differently! If you do, you are clearly wrong and/or bad.

Authority knows. Because it’s the authority.

Even if we see it in others, we are unlikely to see it in ourselves. Parents are the authority over children, teachers over children, doctors over patients, journalists over ourselves, police over citizens, bosses over workers, rich over poor, politicians over national policy and so it goes on. Always the role we have determines how we relate to other humans. Somebody plays the authority - you or me or that other person - but ultimately the authority is 'the knowledge' and 'the right way'. It determines both the bringer's and receiver's behaviour and actions.

In this way, you may see, nobody actually wins, ALL OF US are effectively trapped by this authority, because it - an external force - determines who does and says what. Humans have given away their responsibility to think, choose and act, to 'the authority', an external force. We have thrown freedom in the bin, and everything that comes with freedom.

Freedom only comes to us when we take responsibility for our own life, and towards all of life. But external authority takes the responsibility, and so we lose our freedom.

This is why happiness, joy, inner peace, love, health, and all those things our human essence makes us deeply yearn for, are so elusive.

Trouble is, this knowledge, this authority, is fixed. As is the perspective of what is good or bad, right or wrong; it's called culture.

However, the nature and reality of whole web of life is that it's fluid, changeable, moving, flowing, whereas death is fixed, rigid, inflexible. In the living and the flexible there is a flow of energy, in the dead and the rigid there is no flow.

Our very education system, therefore, has perverted our intelligence, ignored natural law, disconnected us from the natural world to which we belong, and it has suppressed and hidden from us our human essence. It - over 12 years - has removed our own personal 'inner authority'. You know, things like common sense, instinct, intuition, personal preferences and talents, innate intelligence, innate curiosity and creativity, confidence, our uniqueness, all that kind of thing.

Hidden from us, suppressed from us.

It has disconnected us, separated us, isolated us. We are unhappy, lonely, ignorant, pretending we know, and living in fear or anxiety about the future.

Who are we? Do we even know? Or are we each a society mould, just doing as we are told?

The Solution

If we had an education system which champions and cultivates the children's cognitive skills as well as sharing knowledge, and which encourages the pursuit of understanding through debate, thinking, curiosity, creativity, expression of oneself, discussion, and realises that disagreement leads to mutual exploration, greater understanding, evolution, camaraderie and connection, then society would be dramatically transformed.

I know it to be true. It's not some theory of mine. I've been teaching adults that way since 1992. When education encourages, enables and empowers students to cultivate and develop a range of skills, then the students become skilled in using their mind, and our mind is the centre of the universe for each of us.

(So it’s pretty important to know something about this entity of ours, and to know how to use it properly!)

By experiencing this empowering education we become connected to our essence, to each other, to our natural humanness and we will thrive in such an environment. All the latent skills in us flower and flourish because they are given space to express themselves, and have not been blocked by a rigid, authoritarian, autocratic approach to schooling.

I know it to be true. It's not some theory of mine. I've been creating such life-affirming environments in my classrooms for ages. And I've observed elsewhere that whenever a leader anywhere in life gets humans together to explore, do and achieve things together, with common aims, always the group members enjoy themselves and improve themselves. All of them.

Instead of trying to make the world out there, and all other humans in it, conform to the rigid mould that was indoctrinated into us all, and in which we are trapped, if each of us would just instead fit ourselves into the whole world and universe out there, and its natural rhythms, then the human world would lose most of its conflict, probably all of its wars, and we would not be approaching tyranny faster than a cheetah on the chase for its prey.

We would be thriving and building, instead of living in fear, floundering and destroying each other. We would be healthy and happy, living in harmony, instead of sick, emotionally pained, and spiritually empty.

I know it to be true, it’s not some theory of mine. I’ve created the environment for it many times.

My summary is as follows.

In proper, life-affirmative education we put the emphasis on understanding, not knowledge: understanding our world, understanding ourselves, and understanding the relationship between the two. The teacher can give us knowledge, but only we, each of us, can understand stuff. Emphasis on understanding necessitates an educational approach that enables and empowers the students by asking them to take responsibility.

In this way, dogma, ideology, propaganda, tyranny, control-freakery, political malfeasance, corruption, misery, violence, force, intolerance, hatred, envy, entitlement, fear, depression, helplessness ALL LOSE THEIR ENERGY FORCE! They literally become irrelevant by the liberation from the shackles clamped around our minds and hearts.

When teachers teach or preach, life and the human essence are snuffed out; authority and autocratic ways rule the waves.

When teachers facilitate, guide, enable, elicit, encourage, question, challenge, they reach their students, and the students have no fear to express themselves, ask questions; they have fun, and in general discover who they are, and how they might do best by themselves and the world at large. They will find their natural role in life, according to their unique talents and preferences and their individual nature, but always to beneficially contribute to the global pot of life too.

Education has brought humanity to its current calamity, which sees us at this moment in history in the grip of tyrannical overlords, because that is the role they are in and therefore the role they are playing!

Don't blame them, don't blame yourself, educate yourself. And then help others educate themselves. Pass it forward.

Only an education based on understanding can heal the human family, and deliver each of us siblings liberation from 'the authority' which is etched into our subconscious programmed mind. Real, true education builds humans up into beautiful beings; the version we have knocks us down.

The macro-problem is clear.
The solution is clear.

Both lie in education. I will finish with one of my favourite quotes of my own, which I always invited my teacher students to discuss at the start of a class:

"Today's society is yesterday's classroom, today's classroom is tomorrow's society."

We had better change the 'classroom' quickly! We need a new brand of educator, who facilitates understanding instead of autocratically preaching facts, knowledge, and 'the way it's done'.

And that educator is YOU.

We are all educators the moment we learn how to learn, ever seeking understanding, and quit being chained by the compulsion to make things right and good, or by the impulse to judge others when the conditioning inside of us determines that they are wrong or bad.

Can’t save the children until we save ourselves

If we want to save the children, if we want a better world for the children, there is ONLY ONE WAY: first save ourselves, and make it a better world for ourselves, and NOW. We are conditioned to be autocratic, and this is an abomination of our spirit, our essence, and ourselves. Who are we adults, in our current condition, to save any children?? We must free ourselves first. It means learning how to do, what to do, and how to be.

Education Education Education. We have to educate ourselves out of this mess, and only then are we in a position to educate our children in a life-promoting manner.

If you are interested in learning more, click on the Academy tab in the menu bar. I am about to begin my mission in earnest, and will soon be offering a complete learning course online, which will be available to 9 adults, asking them to commit their best efforts for two months and 30 hours of live class time. But a lifetime of benefits will present themselves to you! You will also be able to find my free ebook, which presents the above message in more detail in 30 beautifully designed pages by myself!! Or, just sign up on the form below to get the ebook and all my blogs and videos sent to your inbox as I publish them.

We can sit around hoping, or feeling hopeless, or we can get up and make it happen. It begins by deconditioning ourselves from our autocratic impulses. infinity Education is now set up to do its bit for our world. You are most welcome to be a part of it and become, yourself, an Infinity Educator!