On vacation in beautiful northern Minnesota my usual appreciation of nature is heightened. The Washington Post had one kind of news: the oceans are decaying and we face ecological disaster. The local paper trumpets their notion of good news that the school will require more math and science.
Our problems, intellectual and global, are not caused by lack of science and math. The Wall Street theives were actually quite good at math (their math servants are called “quants” because they can mathematically quantify everything of interest to Wall Street. The ecological diaster we face has been created and furthered with technological help. A lack of technology is not our problem. Our global and national problems are enneagram-related in the sense that we are in habitual trances. We cannot/will not change our behavior and we refuse to let information into our lives that will prevent these diasters. The Republicans have made it an offical position to reject responsibility for climate disruption. I wrote Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas and asked him to take local steps to decrease our pollution and he replied (in a form letter) that he couldn’t do that because the Chinese weren’t doing it. I’ve taught grade school and I thought that argument lost its charm around the sixth grade.
The trances we are in are problematic much of the time, and when they are collective, they can be fatal.
We don’t need more math and science, we need to understand and free ourselves from our trances.