Align: Subchapter III.
With the coming generation, education will become more closely aligned with cultivating intuitive decision- making. By incorporating a wide range of sources of knowledge and perspectives, a more holistic approach to education will synthesize old traditions with new capabilities to instill a greater sense of integrity and possibility into public and private institutions.
Let go of our determined fixation on mechanical time and other rigidly self-referential systems detached from nature’s cycles. Let go of IQ. Let go of bias and prejudiced expectations.
Our most common units of measurement—time, money, and intelligence —are all in need of revision. The way that time is arranged and manipulated is mostly in the interests of economic factors. Money is made up by humans and disconnected from any principle of nature. Global markets are based on feelings, predictions, and an ever-changing flux of information. Is confidence in a debt-based market really our best option for determining wealth? Many important parts of life cannot be calculated and scheduled. The most significant moments in life often happen serendipitously. And, as has been said many times, the best things in life are free. So why are we still measuring value in monetary terms?
Researchers at MIT have proposed a redesign of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) called GDP‑B (the B is for benefit) to include consideration of value made by free digital goods and services. As professor Erik Brynjolfsson explains, upgrading GDP provides a “realistic idea of what creates value in society and what doesn’t. A lot of digital goods we’ll find are creating a ton of value…” The professor goes on to say, “It’s not that production and spending aren’t important, but they aren’t everything. To measure the economy you need a dashboard with different metrics. What we’re measuring are the benefits you get even when you spend nothing on the good.”21
It’s said that time is money. This adage certainly holds true within our current economic system. But where do we look for a more secure sense of measurement in the absence of centralized economic authorities? How long will big banks continue to control the flow of money? Blockchain showed the possibility for crypto-currencies to transform monetary exchange. The promise of blockchain’s incorruptibility unfortunately cracked.22 In setting up society for a fairer future, it feels wise to prepare for the inevitability of an economic system aligned with principles of sharing, nurturing, and impermanence.
The way we measure our intelligence is another part of society worthy of revision. Over the last decades, IQ has been used to validate racist, sexist, and otherwise biased classifications. A recent study by scientists disproved IQ as a measure of intelligence.23 They showed that intellectual ability occurs along three distinctive nerve circuits in the brain guiding interactions between short-term memory, reasoning, and verbal agility. In other words, there’s no singular indicator like IQ that can really account for a person’s intellectual ability across various categories. Our self-identities do not need to be confined into singular assessments. Intelligence is really a matter of one’s ability to interact with others in the world with grace, care, and effectiveness.
In his book, The Mismeasure of Man, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould showed how intelligence is not based on genetic inheritance. In taking stock of fairer measurements by which to assess how environmental conditions impact individuals, Gould gave focus to the idea of relative frequency. This concept describes how meaning in people’s lives increases the more that a particular action or exchange takes place. For example, think about how the more that people smile at one another in passing, the more palpably uplifting the net effect of those fleeting interactions between strangers becomes. You can feel the different energy that exists in a room when people are being kind to one another and how, conversely, different that energy is when people are angry at each other. Gould wrote about the high relative frequency of human decency he noticed between people in NYC in the weeks after 9/11.24 With great humility, Gould remarked in his book, Wonderful Life, an inspiring thought about humanity:
“Homo sapiens, I fear, is a ‘thing so small’ in a vast universe, a wildly improbable evolutionary event well within the realm of contingency. Make of such a conclusion what you will. Some find it depressing; I have always regarded it as exhilarating, and a source of both freedom and consequent moral responsibility.” — Stephen Jay Gould
As Gould mentions, the chance at life that we all receive can be incredibly motivating. We are here for the purpose of living. While the interpretations of what it means to live are virtually endless, relationships that show respect for life will always contribute to an overall sense of meaningful participation.
