Learning Together

I found myself thinking yesterday as I walked to my home in Udaipur after the storm, under a stunning yellow sky that faded to a deep irridescent blue, that even within the mainstream learning discourse, there is an excessive focus on the individual. From the educational system, through to the work place, there is a continuous emphasis on acquisition of information and 'knowledge' by the individual. As this information and knowledge increases, so one is considered to be learning. Not that this is entirely wrong. Only it strikes me as being a very misplaced emphasis. I found myself wondering (a) whether I could know much less but still live a happy and meaningful life - and (b) if so, what would it take? The answer that was hanging in my mind was (a) Yes; and (b) by learning together - that is, by learning how to be happy together, fulfilled togeter, meaningful together, even productive together; basically how to evolve together, I could probably attain a much greater state of happiness than would be possible through any amount of personal knowledge acquisition. But right now, everyone's brain is getting so jam-packed full of this 'knowledge' that we all come out feeling like we 'know' everything - or at least we know better than most of those around us... So we overvalue our own 'knowing' and undervalue others' when really all of us just hold slivers of the greater truth. But why would learning to evolve together allow me to be happier?

My proffered reasoning: Because so much of the misery and suffering that we create is caused by an inability to understand each other. As a result of finding ourselves unable to engage each other meaningfully, to tap into our respective humanities, we instead engage in mostly 'ego'-satisfying superficialities of personal conquest, vindication, accusation, self-justification, etc. Energy and time, rather than getting invested in trying to heal relationships goes into trying to justify why they are broken, which simply reinforces whatever isn't working. On a societal or 'community' scale this leads to an insularisation of people and their paradigms and results in a web of mistrust and negativity - which, as far as I can make out, is not a recipe for catalysing positive social change. It is, however, a recipe for our own (i.e. human's) demise, or at best for a great deal of unfulfilled potential.

As I walked home, yesterday evening, reflecting on the day, I found myself thinking that all my knowledge, all the information I have, all the theories I may have acquired or evolved about how the world works, are no good at making the world a better place unless they help me to co-create new lived realities with the people I engage with: genuinely, powerfully, deeply. For the mostpart - especially in the communities where I work - people are entangled in a rather complex set of unhelpful identities and dynamics - be they social, religious, political, economic, cultural or whatever - that tend to mean that they get started on the wrong foot when interacting with each other... which generally results in a viscious cycle. So, as I sat, yesterday morning, as a kind of observer-mediator in a group conflict process, I felt that the viscious cycle could be broken (though so far, only temporarily) through an intervention which includes the following:

• referencing a higher set of values;
• connecting each individual personally with these values;
• making a statement that humbles myself in relation to these values;
• emphasising the bigger picture and the collective struggle in the context of these values - this should ideally be crafted to create major cognitive dissonance;
• throwing out a question - even if it is rhetorical - that sticks in people's minds (rather than a statement about how things are) and causes the engagement with what has just been said to linger on in each individual's mind

All this, however, must be done in a way which doesn't indicate preference for a particular outcome, which is mighty tricky.

I don't remember any class - in my entire life - where we had a discussion about how to handle conflicts; how to engage with people who had different world-views, belief systems or simply opinions in a sensitive and competent manner. I may have learned some of this from my family... but mostly it has been part of my learning that has happened independently through trial and error, by reading all kinds of things on the internet and by conversing as much as possible with as many people as possible. Instead there is an orientation which, more than anything, tries to lead one away from resolving conflicts by otherising them, making them distinct from ourselves and, more generally, not our concern. It almost seems like the 'powers-that-be' (if you will excuse such a dubious terminology) don't want people to learn how to connect with each other but, instead, want them to learn how to be a collection of disconnected individuals who are only able to negotiate with each other on the level of business deals and personal interest. And I think that this issue carries forwards well into the 'social sector' or what is called 'the development sector' - broadly those who believe that they are involved in trying to make the world a better place. For the most part, there is little or no dialogue on the real, deep issues, about what brings a community together, what makes it rich and meaningful for the people who are a part of it, what holds it together, how it can evolve rather than be manipulated through a series of interventions - be it micro-finance, schools or health care.

At the heart of this big dilemma is the idea of learning together, at all levels: within families, amongst small groups who have come together because of common interests, at the level of communities as a whole, across religious, gender, age and identity divides, between 'development' organisations and communities, between 'donors' and 'recipients', between government and the people... between 'us' and 'them'. Facilitation - or hosting - of learning together is the heart of a positive change process. By giving space to the little dilemmas, it helps to resolve the big dilemma. As far as I can make out, evolutionary nexus is a portal that can help us learn together, sharing, sewing, gardening and harvesting our online collective wisdom, and then liberating it out into the various communities (and I take this term at its broadest) with whom we are all engaged.