There is a planetary omnicide occurring in the world today, with catastrophic climate change, or climate-disaster rapidly coming up and manifesting with in us. We have to struggle to maintain a sense of humanity amid terrorist acts, child maltreatment, animal cruelty, caustic politics, pesticides and raging wildfires. The news on our screens, the poverty we see on our way to work, all declaring that crime is all around us. The deluge of abject suffering is in the millions of faces that cry out for a compassionate response that greatly exceeds human’s capacity one might think. So how do we empower ourselves to retain a sense of humanity without being overwhelmed by the suffering that abounds in the world? How do we maintain compassion and empathy when challenged by nihilism and despair? For me, seeking a higher education in Liberal Arts has been the answer.
“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”
-Carl Sagan
The liberal arts education focuses on a holistic approach: opening the mind to new ideas, pondering concepts all around us, considering perspectives through new lenses and understanding differences in thought. Liberal Arts is about cultivating the free human being.
The program is multidisciplinary, including fields in the humanities, mathematics, social science, natural sciences and formal science. The whole program can be seen as an advanced exercise in critical thinking and the education is set to empower students by helping us develop a sense of social responsibility as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills such as communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, and a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world settings. With these skills, we are to become more of open communicators, knowledgeable citizens and respectable individuals. Studies in the arts offer an obvious preparation not only for work, but for leisure and life beyond the world of work. Seeing things whole provides context for seemingly meaningless or isolated events, and that type of orientation for knowledge reduces the confusion and frustration that comes from being unable to put into context an event, decision or phenomenon that one encounters in one’s daily life. Perhaps this is why I have felt happier, less depressed, less lonely and been more excited about life since I started my education in the liberal arts.
Omnicide is human extinction as a result of human action and I believe it to be that our identities must move beyond, which justify themselves through the denial of others, through the creation of arbitrary borders, differences and boundaries. We must rise above pseudo-realities such as race, nation, ideology and property and actualize the holism of humanity and human civilization. It should however not be a determined condition, but rather an open-ended journeying into a transformed future. The manner in which people ‘think’ and how they form conclusions, whether they do it as individuals or as in a ‘collective intelligence’ is a key to solving issues. Collective intelligence is human information sharing, at the core of all collaboration. It is art. It is poetry and philosophy happening in a question-answer method, allowing people to explore together in critical, reflective and highly communicative thinking. In this way the human collective can change todays exciting societal failures, where human cognition, rational and logic are fractured and dysfunctional resort to self-serving and self-comforting delusions of all sorts. Because, let´s face it, today’s society facilitates this. Collective intelligence changes how individuals relate to one another at the most important level, cognitively. It is art and philosophy as one and I aspire to be part of this collective. I wish to do so by writing, by communicating, by sharing. In this week’s blogs I wish to share with you some of my thoughts, experiences and the knowledge that I have accumulated, when setting out to do practical work in Aotearoa/New Zealand, at ‘The Daily-goodness within’, thus Liberal Arts in Practice.
Warmest
Jess
