Learning to live

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.”
Doris Lessing

I love this quotation because it suggests that learning is a process of moving beyond one’s own current understanding not about something new but about something you were already aware of. So often we see learning as the ability to accumulate knowledge and information and therein lies the problem. We spend too much of our formative years being educated and not enough being encouraged to learn about how to live a learning life. I believe it was Socrates who agreed that he was possibly the wisest man alive because he knew that he knew nothing, I wonder how much quarter that would get in our universities and hallowed halls of today.

It is time for us all to begin to learn how to live a meaningful and fulfilling life and how to put aside our intoxication by and addiction to, consumerism, economic growth and technological advancement. We need to understand that who we are is so much more than such things and to begin to use our incredible creativity to find solutions to the real problems of the day, all of which are consequences of our current misunderstanding. The troubles we face ahead are all absolutely of our own making, we are able to change, all that is required is the understanding that we have little of any true value to lose and everything to gain.

Learning is a life long process and it is incumbent upon everyone, in particular those in positions of power, to begin to re-evaluate their understanding of the world around us. This will not be easy and I anticipate much resistance even to the notion that it is necessary but the rewards will be great. The attachment of politicians and corporations to economic growth is an example of entrenched institutionalised learning; I haven’t yet heard anyone suggest a managed global recession as a potential solution to rising carbon dioxide emissions, surely since it is the source of the increase the logical thing would be to turn it down. We must learn to start addressing these issues at their root cause now, as well as finding less damaging solutions to meeting our interim needs.

It is interesting to note that since first writing about this in November 2007 we are now in the midst of a global recession, unfortunately my worst fears have been realised since all the G8 world leaders have opted for packages of economic stimulation measure including quantitative easing and capital infrastructure projects all designed to re-invigorate consumption rather that taking the opportunity to improve the global ecology. I am left wondering why we haven't deployed all the human potential released by redundancies, short time working and higher unemployment towards environmental projects, the development of more sustainable technologies and social improvement.