Battle for control of our world mind

The world has seemed to have gone insane. The violence and division of mind seems to be growing.  Putin and his autocracy are trying to destroy truth and all opposition in any way possible, including the unimaginable horror and violence in Ukraine.  Putin represents the world mind of evil, greed, and indifference to anyone else.  This type of mind is the ultimate self-centered mind.  One level of self-centered mind is one in which you love yourself and no one else except a very few family but it is one that might not really care what happens to other people, however, it is one that avoids hurting someone else.  The worst type is the person that actually enjoys hurting and controlling other people.  They feel nothing when they hurt or kill another person because they are so lost in their own ego and making their ego stronger.  To increase their ego, they need power over others so their own ego feels better.  This type of ego-driven individual has chosen, because of their free will, to center thoughts on their own power ego.  The more people they can control, the more power they feel.

Look around the world today and you will see microcosms of the Putin mind.  In China, their leaders have been controlling the news outlets and information their people can access.  They use misinformation to project a lie that they want everyone to accept.  The Trump mind is very much the same.  They lie and completely distort reality to literally brainwash people.  The whole right wing groups throughout the world are doing the same kind of thing.  They want power and they want to have complete control over others.  Democracy and freedom are a threat to them so they want to destroy freedom and make everyone their slaves, literally.  China and Russia have known for many decades that freedom for their people meant people would learn what they are doing and they will not choose to be their slaves.  

What we see going on in the world is a struggle for the mind of the world.  Minds, consciousnesses, are energy.  Ego-driven minds generate dark energy, that is, energy that is cold, callous, uncaring, angry, and hurtful.  Love-driven minds generate light energy, that is, energy that is positive, caring, happy, and helpful.  The world is in a battle of dark and light energy.  Which one will dominate the most people in the world and thus dominate our world mind's growth and development?  

Our freedom and our minds are at stake in this battle.  

Thank you

 Sandy and I just got our second dose of the Moderna vaccine and the thought that keeps coming to me is thank you.  I don't know who or what I am thanking but I need to say thank you more often.  When the nurse was giving me the shot, I thanked her and told her how good the shot felt.  I said it feels like freedom.  We are all in a bizarro world with how this pandemic has effected our minds.  We have been conditioned to stay shut away from others and limit what we do, where we go, and how we interact with others.  We have a lot of healing to do, not just physically, but mentally.  We can soon be more free to do what we want to do and not feel so much tension and fear from hugging our own family and friends and even strangers.  I just want to take a minute to give thanks for our world and life.  Namaste 

Our National Consciousness

 I have not been writing anything for quite some time and a lot has happened in this country.  As I write, the House of Representatives is impeaching Trump for inciting violence in disrupting the verification of an American election.  I have been pretty speechless as I watch events unfold.  Trump clearly and in front of the world is inciting people to help him overthrow the election results and make him ruler of the world, or whatever delusion the man is under.  But as I witnessed what has been happening, and there has been a heck of a lot of stuff hitting the fan, I have been monitoring what is happening with our national consciousness.  In my book on the Probe Method: A Transformation of Human Consciousness, I outlined the evolution of our human consciousness.  Basically, we all have our own consciousness and we also have and share group consciousnesses as we grow and develop throughout our existence in the universe.  We have all heard about mob violence and that is what we saw on January 6 at the Capital Building.  Once a mob takes over, the group creates a group mind or consciousness, and the mob mind is representative of the members of the group.  This kind of mind is unfolding in front of the world and it was a very egoistic and controlling mind.  It was a mind full of hate for others.  There were symbols of the Confederate flag and Nazism at the Capital.  This is a mind of the ego, which is an ego mind we have been trying to transform into a more other-centered mind.  Our national consciousness is now being shaped and we should pay attention to this issue.  It is as important as all the other issues we face and maybe it is the most important because it is the very evolution and future of our personal and shared consciousness experience.  

Are we going to regress in our human consciousness evolution or move forward?  Our human purpose is centered around this evolution.  As individuals, we are consciousnesses evolving from ego-centered to other-centered through freedom, love, and joy as our basics of life.  Individuals meet and interact with others and we all begin to develop group minds, first with our families and then with our peers.  This group mind could be a high school club, fraternity, sports team, religion, cause, race, political view, geographic region, etc., etc.  There are millions of ways in which we group ourselves and we tend to follow the group mind when our personal mind might not do so without this influence.  We need to be aware of the power the group mind has on our own mind so we can remain independent, but we all are still going to be influenced by group minds.  A great example of the group mind, is the Republican mind.  The Republican mind has been taken over by the Trump mind.  Anyone mixed in with the Trump mind will do things that they would not do alone.  It is unquestionably clear that Trump has abused his powers as President and that he incited the minds of the people who attempted a coup on our nation.  How could anyone not admit this?  But we continue to see Trump minds making excuses and lying about it all even when they know they are wrong.

All of these group minds within one country, such as the US, will form a national mind of some kind.  The national mind is not clearly formed in the US because there are so many individual and group minds in the US that are still very ego-centered and they are not only self-centered, they are controlling and power hungry minds.  They want to control other minds and make others think and do as they say.  This is a mind that wants power.  You get power when you control the minds of others.  

So we are at a crossroads in our evolutionary process in which we can go backwards or forwards.  I hope we can take this moment in history seriously in terms of our human awareness and consciousness.  

Follow Your Dreams: A constructivist goal

 I am a big believer in the old saying, "follow your dreams."  We tell our own children that they should have some ambition in life and they should pursue those ambitions throughout their lives.  We tell our children to be yourself, to find yourself, to be the best that you can be.  We encourage our children to think positive about their future, work hard to accomplish your goals, and never give up.  We tell them to keep on going, no matter what.

We tell our own children to follow their dreams and as parents we are there to help them succeed.  This is a great message for every child and adult and this is a message we hear over and over again in the media.  We see examples of people who have been successful and they tell us that we can also achieve our dreams if we keep trying.  We are told that we can obtain our goals and we believe it.  In reality, not everyone can win the gold medal and not everyone will get the money and personal benefits of being super successful.  But, it is good to have a positive attitude about your own future, so that you don't give up.  We might not always be the winner but the game can still be fun.  

In our school system, we should also set educational goals for the children who are required to participate.  A major goal for all children should be to follow their dreams.  We want all children to have ambition and to have personal goals for their own lives.  We want to help them to be successful in meeting their goals in life.  However, presently the educational system does not encourage children to follow their dreams.  Instead, our system mandates the goals for students and discourages their dreams.  We tell them to do as they are told and we don't listen to them when it comes to the curriculum, instruction, and assessment we use in schools.  On the one side, we say you can follow your dreams, but then we don't give them any time or opportunity to do so.  We actually put up roadblocks for students so that they give up on their own dreams.  

A constructivist approach to education is a way for us to establish an educational system that is much more aligned with individual goals and dreams.  Students should be able to express themselves and their personal thoughts, feelings, and dreams about their future.  They should be involved with setting their own educational curriculum and with how they will meet their goals.  In a constructivist system, children with their parents and teachers establish their individual goals and how they will be successful in meeting those goals.  

So, a constructivist approach is the only one in which we help children to follow their dreams.  Let's change education so that we can become a nation of people who are following their dreams.  

Black Lives Matter

 I am so ashamed of so many White Americans who are still racist after so many years of Americans who have worked to make our country better, and now the big, bad racist pops his head back up.  What is happening in this administration is shameful for Whites and harmful to all Americans.  Racism is alive and still sick in America.  A free and democratic America has no place for racism of any kind.  

White Americans should all be ashamed.  Seriously!  How dare you believe you are better than anyone else?  What arrogance!  If you're not a racist, then stand up and peacefully protest, but protest like your own life depends upon it, or your children's lives.  We all have to stand up to injustice, police brutality, and racial discrimination.  There is only one way for us to react and that is non-violently.  When we react with violence, then we give them an excuse to use force, and we don't want an armed confrontation.  That would just hurt everyone.  When millions of people protest non-violently, they take power and politicians will listen and change will happen.

We have all seen in our history how peaceful protest can be extremely effective in making change occur.  But we have to be persistent and we have to stay focused on our goal of justice and equality for all.  Black lives matter.  We should make that our national motto.  Every White American should say Black lives matter and apologize in the name of all Whites for the racists who make the rest of us look bad.  

I certainly do hope and pray that most Whites are not racist.  I hope it is only a minority of highly verbal and reactive White racists who are coming out of the woodwork when our administration urges them on.  We must use our collective outrage and get out there and protest and then get out and vote the racists out of office.  We can use our voices and our votes to end racism in America in this generation.  

Why freedom as a goal for education is so important

 The concept of freedom is quite simple in some ways.  We are free.  Period.  What else is there to say?   I do what I want.  You do what you want.  Simple.  But we all know it's not that simple of a concept.  Are we free to kill someone else?  That's not quite so simple either.  People do kill other people so they had the freedom to kill and they did.  It happens every day.  Someone will be killed by the freedom of someone else.  We are inherently free to do good or evil.  That certainly does not mean the rest of us can't do anything about someone who uses their freedom to hold us hostage, torture us, or kill us.  So the whole story goes that we are free but we need to live with others and allow others to be free or we could end up fighting to the death.  So we have to compromise with societal laws and norms that might discourage individual freedoms when it comes to infringing upon others' rights.  But where does it stop with laws?  When do they take away freedoms you should have just because others don't like what you're doing?  And so we try to compromise in our society and that's not so simple either.  

But I want to talk about the freedom of children and the concept of freedom in school.  I started talking about freedom for adults because children are going to be adults in our society in the next few years and the freedom of children should align with the freedom we give to adults.  Freedom for children becomes more complex than freedom for adults.  Adults can use their freedom and cheat, steal, and harm others.  Adults can do all kinds of evil and destructive things and the rest of us can try to control the harm they do.  These are adults who should know better.  These are adults who should have learned to control their selfish impulses and to live with others.  Children are also free and they need to learn how to use their freedom in life to survive and to be happy with others.  Freedom is a given but it is not easy to be free.  It is one of the hardest things in life - to be free.  Some people don't want to be free.  They would rather that someone makes decisions for them or for someone else to do things for them.  But then others can't stand for anyone to tell them what to do.  And this is all true with children.  Some children are so independent and stubborn that they want listen to a word you say.  They don't like it when the teacher makes them sit and listen.  They want to do it themselves and they can usually figure it out on their own.  Then there are children who won't do anything unless you tell them exactly what to do and give them complete orders throughout the day so they do not need to make any decisions.  They want the teacher to explain and go over and over content and they follow instructions about completing instructional tasks.

When I talk about freedom in school, I mean teaching children how to be free.  They are free.  But are they capable to handle their freedom?  To be a free adult, you need to take care of yourself completely.  You have to earn your own money.  You have to take care of all your personal life responsibilities.  You have to be self responsible in every aspect of your life.  You will also need to have personal skills to live with others and to respect their rights and freedoms.  Therefore, as a child you will need to learn a lot of life skills and other skills that will enable you to be an adult who is capable of living independently and peacefully in a society with others.

So I don't mean that you just turn children loose and let them be free to learn.  That's not freedom to learn.  For some children that would be a way for failure.  Every child, just like every adult, is different from every other child in many, many ways.  We should not create a curriculum for all children, but that is what we have done.  We also dictate the instruction children receive and we dictate when they learn, when they do each task throughout the day, and when they can even talk.  Schools presently are stripping freedom from our children.  Some adults would be OK with this, but not many.  Why should we treat our children in a way that we would not tolerate?  Why can't we recognize that we want adults to act responsibly but we have not taught them how to be free in school?  Children need to be in a constructivist school system that provides children a learning environment in which they are given as much freedom as possible with adult assistance and supervision.  Children need to learn skills in which they can take care of their personal well-being and they need to learn many other skills they will need to become self-directed and self-responsible.  But children need a lot of help in learning these skills.  They have a lot of needs they do not understand so they need direction from adults in developing their own, personalized educational goals.  

So children need to learn skills to be a free, responsible, and peaceful member of society.  Our adult population reflects the educational system in which they grew up.  Our present educational system prohibits freedom and our society is a reflection of the lose of freedom.  We need to turn things around and re-create schools with a primary goal of education to be that all children learn how to be free in a responsible way.  So a goal for children is freedom or how to be free.  We need a lot of discussion about the meaning of freedom in our lives and the meaning of freedom in schools.  There is a compromise in which we can give children guidance and supervision but we can also give them experiences in making choices and in learning to be independent.  We not only need to give students some freedom to learn topics of their own choosing, but we need to provide them with experiences in which they learn to be self responsible and to cooperate with others.  Freedom is not just freedom to do what you want, but it means that you are capable to live in joy with others in a peaceful society and let others be free as well.  

Goals for humans and goals for education

I have been a teacher and instructional designer for nearly a half century.  I have seen so many innovations and changes throughout the decades, particularly in the last few decades with the integration of technology.  We are now experiencing a tremendous challenge with the Covid-19 and the need for online and blended learning.  Teachers are searching for ways to use technology that they have been discussing for years but might not have had the push to implement.  Now they are scrambling to put their curriculum online for students and to create a much different learning environment than we have ever known.

The big question is how do we make these changes and how many of these changes are needed for the long term and not just for this pandemic period.  We need to have a very serious conversation about how we can introduce blended learning into our educational system and how should we use technology to help us with our goals.  But I think that we now also need to take the time to start the conversation to replace our early 20th century educational goals with 21st century goals.  The old goals were framed around children as potential factory workers who needed to follow orders and to recite back information. During the last few decades, we have added more and more curriculum demands on the knowledge level for each grade.  We don't remove curriculum items as much as we just keep piling on more to require students to regurgitate. 

But the problem is that we have not taken a systematic approach to designing our own educational system.  We have taken the "just pile it on" approach and now we have a huge mess that we call a curriculum.  We need to take a step back and redesign the entire curriculum.  Sometimes, it is better to tear down and start over rather than keep on trying to patch things up.  In this case, we need to start all over with new goals that reflect mankind's 21st century goals.  Of course, we will need to agree upon what those new goals will be.

The Instructional Systems Design (ISD), or often just Instructional Design (ID), approach is an approach to design systems, which might mean organizations, businesses, schools, corporations, etc.  The educational system is a system.  The human system is also a system. Duh, you think, but we need to examine these two systems much more than we do.  ISD should be used to help us set new goals for our educational system.  We need to use a very methodical approach in designing our schools.  I have worked as an instructional designer for many years and I have used ISD to design and to develop hundreds of educational and training projects and instructional materials.  ISD provides a thorough analysis of a system and then recommends solutions to any system problems.  Problems within a system would be anything that might deter the system from meeting system goals. 

ISD will help a company identify areas in which the company needs to improve and determine if any of these areas for improvement are related to a need for education or training of some kind.  ISD process can also be used to help identify the goals for our educational system and then determine the instructional solution for obtaining those goals.  I maintain that the goals of the educational system must be in alignment with the goals of human beings.  It is our children who go through our created educational system and these children are humans.  I know that sounds dumb, but we often forget that we are creating a system that is not a corporation or business that needs training programs for specific needs for their employees.  We are talking about an education/training program for the needs of every child and therefore every human being in our nation.  There is not a specific need to fill any more.  We do not need to train children to work in factories or to get a job.  There are many, many training programs for specific work related skills and so getting training for a job is always possible for everyone and training will become even more easy for adults to get to prepare for good paying jobs that have immediate need in our society.

But we are now talking about creating the environment in which we will require all humans in our society to live. That is a much different set of goals to consider.  We must consider what are the goals of our children.  Are the goals of every child the same or different?  How much?  Children are like us.  Humans who are growing up into becoming adults who will become us.  What are the goals of children?  What are our goals as adults?  What are our goals as human beings?  How can we create an educational environment in which all children learn to obtain their individual goals?  The goals for this educational system should be the same goals for each individual human. 

We need to decide on the goals of the human system.  Determine the goals of humans first and then make them the goals of the educational system. 

What do you say are the goals of humans?