Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University: What do Magnetic Island, a sixteenth-century monk ...
Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University: What do Magnetic Island, a sixteenth-century monk ...: About three years ago, I visited Australia to attend the graduation ceremony of my son, a PHD student of physics and mathematics in the Uni...
What do Magnetic Island, a sixteenth-century monk and Online Education have in Common with the “purpose in life”?
About three years ago, I visited Australia to attend the graduation ceremony of my son, a PHD student of physics and mathematics in the University of Brisbane. It happens that after the ceremony, he kindly invited me to tour the farthest point I have ever been on earth, to visit an exotic and ghostly place named “Magnetic Island”.
That Island is inhabited by nothing but rare birds, snakes, koalas, and it is famous for its nearby magnificent Great Barrier Reef with its multicolored ocean species.
Upon my arrival, I perceived in the horizon something that moved all along the beaches, which at first sight I believed were penguins from the Antarctica.
The fact is that I discovered that those little creatures were not penguins, but rather backpackers that stationed in the beaches, that like penguins, you could number by the thousands.
At first, while staring out the windows of my hotel, I remember I was amazed to realize that those young people of all ages (from sixteen to seventy) were doing nothing but contemplating nature and the universe.
Three days later, I was still intrigued about, what these boys and girls were doing in that island besides their contemplative ontological existence and, firmly decided -as the orange sunset began its grandiose disappearance- to take a walk through the beach, and personally ask them about their purpose in life and the reason for their presence in that deserted spot of our earth, so far away from our wonderful, vibrant, technological, humanistic, and scientific civilization.
When I finally arrived, the boys and girls were gathered around a nice fireplace, playing guitars and singing anachronic songs from my generation: Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, U2, and even Santana and the Beatles.
Then I was direct, and looking into the eyes of the one I considered the “leader”, with a Platonic air I asked about their presence in that forgotten land.
The entire Group looked at me as if I were a politically incorrect alien, an emergent creature coming from the depths of the earth to dare ask questions in a land where -unlike our philosophical tradition- answers seemed no longer relevant in this new alienated era of nothingness and despair.
Out of compassion, one of them took the lead and with a cosmic dignity said:
“Look Mister, we are here because we do not like the world that is “out there”, which we involuntarily inherited from our parents: Nation-states, multinational corporations, symbolic flags, fantastic religious narratives, anthems, wars, solemn constitutions, taxes, mortgages, and of course all-mighty money, present everywhere within human landscape, are for us, the perfect formula for human misery and unhappiness”.
–“Here in Magnetic Island we just have the world as it was given by nature and nothing else”.–
–“If you suggest that we have to get back to that crazy world: No, thank you very much Sir, it was very nice to meet you, goodbye”.–
I was completely frozen, ashamed, and paralyzed, not to mention sad for these children that were escaping from what many of us proudly consider the civilized “World of our making”.
While I returned under a breathless starry night, I thought about the urgent need of our generation to put to trial our entire symbolic (religious, political and predatory oriented economic) civilization, which for the Magnetic Island backpackers seemed as no longer viable or attractive.
Out of introspection, I thought that, in reality everything has sprung from the evolved archeological contents of our consciousness.
There is nothing -I said to myself- we have created in the last five thousand years that was not first, at some moment, an incipient content of our consciousness.
From the magical, mysterious and religious thought, to the most recent scientific and technological human awareness, everything prior to existing was an incipient content of our consciousness.
The problem is that we now know that the cultural contents of our consciousness matter. In this line of thought, they are, and have been throughout centuries, the seeds of whatever good or bad civilization we human beings have created, and will create from now into the future.
But consciousness, whatever cognitive evolutionary miracle it represents (to be able to create war, destroy the rain forest or discovering relativity or quantum physics, conceiving a monetary union or composing Bach´s Passion according to St Mathew) produced in our species -in parallel to our impressive positive creativity- the capacity to discover time (to realize past and present), and with it, becoming the only animal on Earth to know with absolute certainty of our own fatality.
From that moment in our history, the fear and insecurity, lay at the inner core of our essence.
This particular episode of “conscious awareness and historical turning point”, created the supernatural religious narratives, and with them, a new political power and social arrangement, born out of all sorts of emergent metaphysical authorities, granting to the newly formed aristocracies, beyond the pure anthropological way subordination of the individual.
With this new political environment and epistemology, we suddenly realize (as the people on Magnetic Island did), that we live in an inexorable civilization, shaped by the peculiar outcomes of our consciousness -ingrained and programmed in an ancient metaphysical software- pervaded within the unconscious virus of insecurity; and that we, without knowing the hidden roots of our cultural behavior, still believe that this civilizatory arrangement can be upgraded, without first correcting its ill conceived origin.
The story that follows –is that of the linear progress of humanity- or even worse, that of the terrifying modern notion of a “manifest destiny” based on irrational growth, consumption, and development.
“Power” then appears as an important component of this civilizatory evolution.
There is no power without subordination and no subordination without power.
It is an incontrovertible social and political equation.
Leadership then becomes understood as a precious and scarce commodity to justify a universal puppet-oriented doctrine to prepare entire generations of people to lead people, with no personal will, no personality, no individual thinking, just for the sake of the art of leading.
Follow the leader! -They claim- or get out of the way.
But how then, in this millenarian cultural context, can we change our inherited and robotic kind of DNA behavior?
The answer as far as I can envision, is none other than that of an emergent “conscious critical revision of our mind” through education.
We do have now to take the pain to go, from the subordinated model of the domestication of the unconscious, based on our millenarian cultural paradigms, and understand education as an epistemic exercise of our consciousness to be able to revisit, with a critical attitude, the eternal truths we have taken for granted (or that have held us hostages).
For this reason, we believe that “To know that we know” is the imperative foundation of a new and exciting education. This educational threshold (as in the Renaissance) will open the door to a new understanding of ourselves and the emergent homo sapiens sapiens, first announced four thousand years ago in the gate of Delfos, with the self fulfilling prophecy of a new human being that, by exercising its self-reflective capacity, will dare to know himself and put on trial its eternal propensity to justify irrational authority, subordination, injustice, unbalanced administration of privileges, social stratification and the eternal conflict and human tragedy that logically follows.
At Giordano Bruno University we are certain that only through this epistemological exercise, human beings will be capable of creating a new and better individual, by deconstructing those sacred contents of our ill conceived civilization, that at the end created the chaos we are today immersed, (and of course), treasure and maintain the common ethical, aesthetic and scientific goods that have enriched the human spirit.
This thinking, born out of my Magnetic Island experience is just a small example amongst many others that have triggered the adherence of visionary people around the planet to this educational initiative: The Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University.
At the magnificent entrance of the Siena Cathedral in La Toscana, (built in times of Giordano Bruno) there is a curious mosaic in the multicolor floor that for some historical researchers represent two antagonistic versions of the origin of our world and of our culture.
On one side, appears the figure of Moses with the Bible (attributing the authorship of the Genesis to him). The other side bears Hermes Trimegistos, carrying what appears to be the famous Corpus Hermeticum and the Poimandres.
The Bible narrates a story about the mandate from God forbidding man to eat from the tree of knowledge, the original sin and its catastrophic consequences for human disobedience.
The second tells the story of a different sort of God that offers its human creature its divinity and enlightment with the totality of knowledge and the universe.
Giordano Bruno -contemporary of the florentine philosopher and physician Marcilio Ficino, who brought and discover in Egypt the Poimandres- wrote based on this mythical, philosophical and symbolical opposition that: “ God was present in every human being so humanity needed to be saved less from primal sin than from primal stupidity”. And that is precisely what, we today strongly believe to be the central task of education and the foundational idea of the creation of the Giordano Bruno University.
For this very reason, the Giordano Bruno University, declared since its inception, the purposeful statement of become a “state of the art” global Institution with the clear objective of fostering a new human consciousness to defeat ignorance. We will provide world class and affordable education to allow the less privileged people of the World to foresee the possibility of building a renovated positive view of our world.
With these ideas in mind, we enthusiastically entered into a cooperative agreement with the “Club of Budapest” as our philosophical partner, with the mission of achieving this aim, by positioning GBGU as a innovator in the emergent global arena of online higher education.
Among many other things, we created our introductory courses World 1, World 2, and World 3 to help our students understand the past, the present, and the future possibilities of humanity. We want, above all, to help our present generations to recover that lost inner sense of self confidence and security based on the given mission every individual has as the cosmic “raison d’etre” of his existence.
We wish to invite you “backpackers” of all ages, to become the founding members of a new human era, the starting point towards the “theosphera” or “omega point” envisioned by Giordano Bruno, Teillhard de Chardin, Henry Bergson, Buckminster Fuller, or our present Chancellor, Ervin Laszlo, as a new and happy era of an emergent individual, without arrogance in his personal freedom and individuality, but socially responsible within the collective framework of our present global society, free of the cultural malaise of subordination.
That Island is inhabited by nothing but rare birds, snakes, koalas, and it is famous for its nearby magnificent Great Barrier Reef with its multicolored ocean species.
Upon my arrival, I perceived in the horizon something that moved all along the beaches, which at first sight I believed were penguins from the Antarctica.
The fact is that I discovered that those little creatures were not penguins, but rather backpackers that stationed in the beaches, that like penguins, you could number by the thousands.
At first, while staring out the windows of my hotel, I remember I was amazed to realize that those young people of all ages (from sixteen to seventy) were doing nothing but contemplating nature and the universe.
Three days later, I was still intrigued about, what these boys and girls were doing in that island besides their contemplative ontological existence and, firmly decided -as the orange sunset began its grandiose disappearance- to take a walk through the beach, and personally ask them about their purpose in life and the reason for their presence in that deserted spot of our earth, so far away from our wonderful, vibrant, technological, humanistic, and scientific civilization.
When I finally arrived, the boys and girls were gathered around a nice fireplace, playing guitars and singing anachronic songs from my generation: Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, U2, and even Santana and the Beatles.
Then I was direct, and looking into the eyes of the one I considered the “leader”, with a Platonic air I asked about their presence in that forgotten land.
The entire Group looked at me as if I were a politically incorrect alien, an emergent creature coming from the depths of the earth to dare ask questions in a land where -unlike our philosophical tradition- answers seemed no longer relevant in this new alienated era of nothingness and despair.
Out of compassion, one of them took the lead and with a cosmic dignity said:
“Look Mister, we are here because we do not like the world that is “out there”, which we involuntarily inherited from our parents: Nation-states, multinational corporations, symbolic flags, fantastic religious narratives, anthems, wars, solemn constitutions, taxes, mortgages, and of course all-mighty money, present everywhere within human landscape, are for us, the perfect formula for human misery and unhappiness”.
–“Here in Magnetic Island we just have the world as it was given by nature and nothing else”.–
–“If you suggest that we have to get back to that crazy world: No, thank you very much Sir, it was very nice to meet you, goodbye”.–
I was completely frozen, ashamed, and paralyzed, not to mention sad for these children that were escaping from what many of us proudly consider the civilized “World of our making”.
While I returned under a breathless starry night, I thought about the urgent need of our generation to put to trial our entire symbolic (religious, political and predatory oriented economic) civilization, which for the Magnetic Island backpackers seemed as no longer viable or attractive.
Out of introspection, I thought that, in reality everything has sprung from the evolved archeological contents of our consciousness.
There is nothing -I said to myself- we have created in the last five thousand years that was not first, at some moment, an incipient content of our consciousness.
From the magical, mysterious and religious thought, to the most recent scientific and technological human awareness, everything prior to existing was an incipient content of our consciousness.
The problem is that we now know that the cultural contents of our consciousness matter. In this line of thought, they are, and have been throughout centuries, the seeds of whatever good or bad civilization we human beings have created, and will create from now into the future.
But consciousness, whatever cognitive evolutionary miracle it represents (to be able to create war, destroy the rain forest or discovering relativity or quantum physics, conceiving a monetary union or composing Bach´s Passion according to St Mathew) produced in our species -in parallel to our impressive positive creativity- the capacity to discover time (to realize past and present), and with it, becoming the only animal on Earth to know with absolute certainty of our own fatality.
From that moment in our history, the fear and insecurity, lay at the inner core of our essence.
This particular episode of “conscious awareness and historical turning point”, created the supernatural religious narratives, and with them, a new political power and social arrangement, born out of all sorts of emergent metaphysical authorities, granting to the newly formed aristocracies, beyond the pure anthropological way subordination of the individual.
With this new political environment and epistemology, we suddenly realize (as the people on Magnetic Island did), that we live in an inexorable civilization, shaped by the peculiar outcomes of our consciousness -ingrained and programmed in an ancient metaphysical software- pervaded within the unconscious virus of insecurity; and that we, without knowing the hidden roots of our cultural behavior, still believe that this civilizatory arrangement can be upgraded, without first correcting its ill conceived origin.
The story that follows –is that of the linear progress of humanity- or even worse, that of the terrifying modern notion of a “manifest destiny” based on irrational growth, consumption, and development.
“Power” then appears as an important component of this civilizatory evolution.
There is no power without subordination and no subordination without power.
It is an incontrovertible social and political equation.
Leadership then becomes understood as a precious and scarce commodity to justify a universal puppet-oriented doctrine to prepare entire generations of people to lead people, with no personal will, no personality, no individual thinking, just for the sake of the art of leading.
Follow the leader! -They claim- or get out of the way.
But how then, in this millenarian cultural context, can we change our inherited and robotic kind of DNA behavior?
The answer as far as I can envision, is none other than that of an emergent “conscious critical revision of our mind” through education.
We do have now to take the pain to go, from the subordinated model of the domestication of the unconscious, based on our millenarian cultural paradigms, and understand education as an epistemic exercise of our consciousness to be able to revisit, with a critical attitude, the eternal truths we have taken for granted (or that have held us hostages).
For this reason, we believe that “To know that we know” is the imperative foundation of a new and exciting education. This educational threshold (as in the Renaissance) will open the door to a new understanding of ourselves and the emergent homo sapiens sapiens, first announced four thousand years ago in the gate of Delfos, with the self fulfilling prophecy of a new human being that, by exercising its self-reflective capacity, will dare to know himself and put on trial its eternal propensity to justify irrational authority, subordination, injustice, unbalanced administration of privileges, social stratification and the eternal conflict and human tragedy that logically follows.
At Giordano Bruno University we are certain that only through this epistemological exercise, human beings will be capable of creating a new and better individual, by deconstructing those sacred contents of our ill conceived civilization, that at the end created the chaos we are today immersed, (and of course), treasure and maintain the common ethical, aesthetic and scientific goods that have enriched the human spirit.
This thinking, born out of my Magnetic Island experience is just a small example amongst many others that have triggered the adherence of visionary people around the planet to this educational initiative: The Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University.
At the magnificent entrance of the Siena Cathedral in La Toscana, (built in times of Giordano Bruno) there is a curious mosaic in the multicolor floor that for some historical researchers represent two antagonistic versions of the origin of our world and of our culture.
On one side, appears the figure of Moses with the Bible (attributing the authorship of the Genesis to him). The other side bears Hermes Trimegistos, carrying what appears to be the famous Corpus Hermeticum and the Poimandres.
The Bible narrates a story about the mandate from God forbidding man to eat from the tree of knowledge, the original sin and its catastrophic consequences for human disobedience.
The second tells the story of a different sort of God that offers its human creature its divinity and enlightment with the totality of knowledge and the universe.
Giordano Bruno -contemporary of the florentine philosopher and physician Marcilio Ficino, who brought and discover in Egypt the Poimandres- wrote based on this mythical, philosophical and symbolical opposition that: “ God was present in every human being so humanity needed to be saved less from primal sin than from primal stupidity”. And that is precisely what, we today strongly believe to be the central task of education and the foundational idea of the creation of the Giordano Bruno University.
For this very reason, the Giordano Bruno University, declared since its inception, the purposeful statement of become a “state of the art” global Institution with the clear objective of fostering a new human consciousness to defeat ignorance. We will provide world class and affordable education to allow the less privileged people of the World to foresee the possibility of building a renovated positive view of our world.
With these ideas in mind, we enthusiastically entered into a cooperative agreement with the “Club of Budapest” as our philosophical partner, with the mission of achieving this aim, by positioning GBGU as a innovator in the emergent global arena of online higher education.
Among many other things, we created our introductory courses World 1, World 2, and World 3 to help our students understand the past, the present, and the future possibilities of humanity. We want, above all, to help our present generations to recover that lost inner sense of self confidence and security based on the given mission every individual has as the cosmic “raison d’etre” of his existence.
We wish to invite you “backpackers” of all ages, to become the founding members of a new human era, the starting point towards the “theosphera” or “omega point” envisioned by Giordano Bruno, Teillhard de Chardin, Henry Bergson, Buckminster Fuller, or our present Chancellor, Ervin Laszlo, as a new and happy era of an emergent individual, without arrogance in his personal freedom and individuality, but socially responsible within the collective framework of our present global society, free of the cultural malaise of subordination.
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