Posted 12/12/2012
by Yasha Husain

'Charting the Course'
is an education
proposal
that encourages
more whole brain
thinking,
the reliance
on
interhemispheric
thinking,
which brings
together
dominant
left-
and
right-brained
thinkers, in a
closed, holistic
learning network.

The author of this
website has written
in her book, Holistic
Living: Tips for
Youth, how
people along the
autism spectrum are
naturally more
right-brained,
while "neurotypical"
people, tend to, from a young age, become dominant
left-brained
thinkers, with the exception that both
character-types
access interhemispheric, and graduated, thought.

The 'Charting the Course' education proposal
shares a vision for a school system that will help all character-types, including people who are dominant left-brained thinkers, who think more linearly, and who are dominant right-brained thinkers, who think more by association, in part by bringing them together into one classroom.

The proposal is also for a single, closed, holistic system, which interweaves the modern education system with holistic, closed systems of the world.

The full education
proposal
can right now
be viewed
using the
following
link.

With questions
or comments,
please email:
yashahusain@gmail.com.

Books - The New Village

Enduring Ideas of the Recent Past,
20th Century Prophets
by Yasha Husain
Posted November 1, 2010

Humankind has seen war. In the 20th century, it saw war on a level previously unimaginable. The haunting effects of the nightmare, tragedy, genocide, whatever you want to call it, of world war, can for sure still be felt. Yet there's also been healing.

It wasn't only World Wars I and II, however, that caused the great rifts of the last century.

Three events carried humankind further away from an utterly essential holistic worldview which we are still gradually finding the way back to today:

1) Hyper post-industrial growth in technology, science and communications.

Tremendous advancements in all three areas, technology, science and communications, changed the face of the globe last century, the way humans interact, as well as, on a less well-understood and involuntary level, the biology of a growing number of species, including our own. To clarify that last note, for example, we've witnessed the recent feminization of fish and amphibians, humans too, as a result of endocrine disruptors that show up in waters, the produce we eat, and meat and dairy products, and mimic estrogen in the body potentially causing higher rates of thyroid disease and cancer. As well, we've seen a rising number of people be diagnosed along the autism spectrum and with attention deficit or mood disorders. For many, this is alarming change, change a growing number of scientists are actively engaged in trying to better understand and address.

Along with the advent of inter-connectivity through modern communications, and technological and scientific advances that helped propel movement and innovative growth in new and exciting directions, minds and bodies in recent decades also seemed engineered to be, in a world of essentially united nations under the umbrella of an international body meant to sustain peace but not be overbearing, more peace-loving and environmentally-conscious.

Yet, as it turns out, as the last century with its manifold new directions has drawn to a close, individuals move forward with progress still on the forefront of their minds, but not without having paid at least some heavy costs, and not with total accuracy about the best course toward world peace, either, as the topic has become a bit of a non-sequitur none to be discussed too urgently so not to stir up the bitter memories of a still too recent past, the great wars era.

But peace is as an important a subject as technology, and the two go hand-in-hand. While war has been largely shunned by mainstream and counter culture, and museums and monuments were erected in the last century in stoic displays of respect for loved ones and heroes lost in battle, direct talks about the importance of post-war peace terms and their failings have been inadvertently replaced with talks heavily focused on commerce, numbers and statistics. People continue today to try to look away from the direction of war, generally, or to avoid it, more directly. They miss the larger point of defining peace.

For changes to have occurred as they did, and for us to reach the plane we're currently on, linear and abstract thinking also became paramount vehicles for progress last century.

By 2010, we have begun to think more creatively and associatively, partly out of a growing need to address emerging world crises and avoid new or extended wars, which one would hope binds enlightened people together, and partly because of the benefits and prosperity born from scientific advances (i.e. the Internet, greater food security, disease control), which can free people up who have access to computers or cell phones to use new creative tools to produce original products and communications and to share constructive ideas across borders. But to think increasingly by association in an ever-changing world that's been deeply affected by an overwhelming amount of non-associative, scientific and statistical developments, requires willingness to see the disparity between the two ways of thinking and being and how they do coalesce into one.

In any case, with these multiple developments in mind, at the end of the twentieth century, the future remained extremely hopeful, but also dangerously ambiguous. It's as if a merging of associative and abstract thinking needed to concur with forward-moving progress.

2) Patriarchal leadership shifting into a realm of abstract constructionism.

Additionally, in the middle of the last century, a patriarchal leadership shifted into a realm of abstract constructionism built upon the horrors absorbed in the souls of men post World Wars I and II, which is evident in the growing trend dating from the 1940s of science fiction writers focusing on themes of good versus evil where against all odds and in a far away galaxy good continually overcomes the dark forces of the world. Writers of the genre depicted battles in the wake of the great wars that while distancing men, women and children, physically, from war, also kept the imprint from the costs as well as the glories of war very real to their minds. The dualism inherent in having two sides to every story, good against evil, seemed evermore to be set in stone. In part, this was a coping mechanism large segments of society adopted, led to do it, in part, by male authors of the genre, in order to remember the past and maintain the status quo, and in the face of any potential new threat posed, like another Adolf Hitler.

Wittingly, or unwittingly, however, a doom gloom picture became our tool for foreshadowing, and a lack of belief in our ability to overcome the inevitable nuisance, the ignorance of man, became a cause of moral stagnation. Humankind lived in fear. Forgetting its innocence, it grew weary of its ability to shake off the evil potential in man. Basically, it succumbed to the shadow without knowing, even if it did so subtly. Perhaps not for the first time, but in both popular culture, and in real world politics, the somewhat singular theme that could be seen running through remarkably affective books and films, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are very well-known examples, quickly became enveloped in the offspring of so many other societal developments. Even if science fiction texts borrowed from earlier times, such as using wizardry that dated back centuries, or were inspired by the Bible and Bhagavad Gita, there was an overwhelming presence in the genre that played on the idea of man, and the average thinking man as well as the intellectual, being pitted against an overwhelming and perhaps grandiose evil.

In politics, evil began to be broadcast as such, and in global affairs situations were magnified right after the turn of the century, when during the Bush Administration, by the Administration's arguably unscrupulous address, it introduced formally the concept of 'you're either with us or against us.' It was hard to imagine a unified world under such a confluence of fear, apprehension, competition, secrecy and most of all, grief.

Throughout most of recorded human history there's been reason to be observant of the very real good and evil forces in the world, but that said, there have been schools of thought and religions that identify firstly with the oneness of all that exists, and so at the foundation of the major religions can still be found this concept. Layered on top of it is story after story about good against evil, as we saw, these stories logically triumphed in the wake of the world wars. It's not only notable, in that case, that there have been times and spaces (look at the roots of Zoroastrianism and the Vedas) where all that is good and evil is understood as oneness, and through this very understanding of everything, goodness also prevails, and perhaps in an atmosphere of heightened peace and security than is obtainable from an inherently dualistic environment – but it's worth aiming for an inherently non-dualistic world now, particularly at the crossroads of a rapidly globalizing twenty-first century where we already find so many cultures and religions with slightly different ideas about what connotes good and evil.

3) Lack of embrace of a more holistic and feminist worldview.

The material world, combined with the hyper-inflated intellectualism of an expanding West, also denied humankind of its more holistic and feminist worldviews. While Keynesian economics of the pre-World War II era and up through the middle of the last century sought a degree of regulation or control levers to keep some sort of balancing weight on markets and incomes, Milton Friedman would help erase the early work of both politicians and economists alike who with Keynes in toe or in mind aimed to achieve a sort of equilibrium equality, ultimately, in the world's leading democracies.

An insurgence of Eastern philosophy and Western holistic viewpoints and experiments began separately, then, to re-infiltrate advanced societies during Friedman's heydey, and on into the midst of what were by nature very materialistic, but also the most prosperous years, the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton held office in the United States. This new sweep of healthy, even back-to-basics, all-natural living, spanning three or more decades, seemed in any case to stem from the prosperity people enjoyed, and it gradually became more popular. It also occurred in the wake of the rise and early fall of mass consumerism that knew no bounds, and the Vietnam War, a lesser war than either of the great wars, but one of the conflicts of the century that no doubt again left a bitter mark in the minds of people on both sides or fronts. But the movement toward organic living, continually spreading most efficiently among wealthier populations, was intentionally about seeking greater depth of character, and instinctively, relief from suffering. By depth of character, I mean simply people sought time and means for reflection, whether through singing folk songs, making home-cooked meals from foods in the garden, yoga practice or meditation, or what have you. They were seeking to get in touch with their deeper selves and simultaneously were directed toward progressive change that not only improved their quality of life but the state of the environment, even if in some areas typically competitive Westerners still might have vied with their neighbors to be the most deep, reflective, or progressively chic, as they lived forward. By relief from suffering, I mean people began to pick up again on the very old notion of holism that ascribes not to a dualistic reality, but non-duality, or oneness. Eastern philosophy and old and ancient ideas embodied in myths, rituals, and histories spanning the globe and related to 'Mother Earth' became somewhat popular mainstays on bookstore shelves, in classrooms, in the environmental and feminist movements, and in popular culture.

It's not that dualism ceased to exist. By no means is this true. But the early adoption of the thinking about oneness begins to reemerge and proliferate over these years. However, arguably, a bit too slowly. Economists increasingly steeped in dollars and cents accounting and not more sociological pursuits combined with straightforward economics of the day, and future, would continue to overwrite spiritual/environmental awareness in the everyday functioning of things right up to the end of the century.

As mentioned above, by the turn of the century, a vacuum also existed into which the 9/11 attacks occurred, as did the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. There had simultaneously been a waning of religious or spiritual associations that drew ever more people away from both long-held religious traditions and not having religious faith toward new horizons such as Buddhism, the Baha'i Faith, Gnosticism, Christian fundamentalism, and Muslim extremism. So people took divergent paths and between those paths the parallels between cultures and subcultures became less enunciated while forces of commerce also took center stage. Though global commerce undeniably did much and continues to help unite the world, it also doesn't depend strictly on knowledge about embedded cultural values that is arguably necessary to create commerce suited specifically to nations, their peoples and environments. Conversely, it may be that cultures need to seek to develop their environmental and social awareness along with their business interests, and if all three aren't developed side by side, global commerce will be less likely to meet some understated needs of nations and peoples.

This speaks little of the fact that while Keynes was developing and employing his economics theory the League of Nations and then United Nations were created, in the shadows of the two wars, and also, on the backs of industrial nations so beleaguered by the wars. So there has been a tilt, for many years, that the idealist Keynes no doubt considered, but perhaps was not able to handle completely in order to straighten it out in his time, toward Western, what were then called by some, “civilized” nations. While developing nations with their indigenous as well as migratory or newly planted populations were also brimming with intelligence in the form of exactly what we seek more of today, timeless, all-natural, sustainable solutions, those ideas had not yet been to a large extent figured into economics formulas. And so economic theories and the interchanges between developed and developing nations today become ever more interesting when considering the relative wealth of all nations not only in monetary terms but in sustainable ideas as wealth for a globalized world.

Now, in the spirit of progress, the last century was stupendously fruitful on many levels. In the wake of it, a new phenomenon, something really fantastic, was born. So-called twentieth-century prophets emerged who were among the first to see through the skepticism, past the status quo, and look straight into the concept of oneness, not to deny anything that was – on other words – not to deny there is good and bad in the world, and even evil at times; and not to deny the merit in conservative thinking when it upholds tried and true cultural values that serve individuals and communities alike; and also not to deny the miscalculation of forcing ideas onto others - but more simply, whether through books they wrote, lectures they gave, or innovations they dreamed up and developed, these prophets offered holistic solutions in a modern, post-industrial setting. Solutions that address the total idea of the person in the community and at the same time the needs determined by the environment and community inhabiting it. Typically, in order to do this, these so-called prophets needed to merge what was timeless wisdom stemming from early cultural values with modern understanding of technological and scientific advancements. Wisdom from thousands of years ago can be remarkably sophisticated. As well, applying modern know-how to ancient ways can make ancient standards more durable and sustainable, not to mention increasingly applicable, for modernity. Magic was born from merging or marrying the old with the new in romantic, unique ways, not with a depressing and oppressive formula.

Twentieth-century prophets also had in common the wherewithal to think globally about ideas that may be homegrown, but could nonetheless serve by having universal appeal.

So from the twentieth-century, which was this remarkable blend of tragedy at war time, technological progress and economic growth (used as an indicator of whether a country was developed or developing), and dualistic understanding helping to support a somewhat solid status quo, however only partially eclipsed by an underlying notion of non-duality, a number of “prophets,” and I just call them that for lack of a better word, they are all very human, were actually able to devise from modernity and their wisdom of the past, timeless solutions to address the past, present and future. They held up restorative, regenerative ideas.

Bearing foresight to see what environmental, political and economic problems lay ahead, they intuited what innovations would help an increasingly complex and advancing world, however lacking it was in unlimited natural resources, and however affected it was by myriad forms of pollution.

John Maynard Keynes, Buckminster Fuller, Ayn Rand (in her book Fountainhead), Rachel Carson, Martin Luther King Jr., Nader Khalili, Wangari Maathai, and others, such as numerous agriculturalists and pastoral farmers, communicators and journalists, artists and singers, sought to achieve holistic progress, and in order to do so, thought outside the box of twentieth-century paradigms.

In every age, there are people who are inspired to seek and find answers to problems that seem to chase or follow them, or appear at their doorstep. Fuller, who dropped out of Harvard twice, or was kicked out, wound up one of the most famous circuit lecturers of all time, giving talks around the world to captivated university students and professional audiences. It was as a result of his initial experiences in education, as a student, that he made it his goal to see his daughter from a young age had what can be considered a more associative learning experience in a special school she attended in the New York City area. Known more famously for his inventions in building and design, he also as a byproduct of that work wrote about such forward-thinking ideas as recycling metals mined and used in manufacture so that society could discontinue mining metals that would amount to a surplus in supply (if what was not recycled were figured in). Fuller also wrote about offshore wind power well before its time.

Carson, a marine biologist, wrote the book, Silent Spring, which focused on DDT but also served as a canary in the coal mine of a reading that awoke people to the need to become environmentally-conscious with regard chemicals, synthetic, being released into nature and used in manufacture.

One of the most controversial figures of the last century, Ayn Rand, was also, in my opinion, one of its prophets. Her first major success, Fountainhead, features the story of Howard Roark, Rand's ideal man. He was an architect in the vain of Frank Lloyd Wright who as an individualist stood out for both his originality and conviction, which made his buildings blending into the landscape recognizable for their simplicity and ingenuity. He maintained friendships with friends he knew he could trust and those he couldn't, which might be remarkable to the keen observer, and more importantly, inspiring.

Each of these individuals saw, maybe for the first time in history, different ways of complementing the many advancements of a post-industrial twentieth-century using knowledge that is timeless and steeped in holistic values, honoring community and environment.

These so-called prophets, when understood, and when what shines about them is also the bounty reaped, lead us into the twenty-first century, with its intense challenges and immense possibility, and that alone is cause for celebration.

Yasha Husain. Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.


Edits made 1/16/2011