In the serene minds of men

I was up at 6:00 this morning and listened to Joseph Stiglitz outlining problems and possibilities regarding globalization, and to Noam Chomsky talking about the perniciousness of propaganda and the manufacture of consent.

I then had a non-egoic session of hoovering which created mental space for my default mode network (DMN) to churn and think about what the two big men had been saying relative to what I already had in memory. I am now sitting at the computer hoping to capture some of the thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) that arise.

I was a school teacher for many years. My up front role was to fill the empty buckets with facts about science and biology so that they could sit exams and be graded; this made it easy for employers to know who to recruit.

There was also the hidden curriculum. Schooling in the UK involved setting a social and moral atmosphere which undid what the family and community had done. Youngsters were arranged in uniformed, peer groups and became docile, rule bound, obedient, time conscious, conservatives.

On a more positive note, the motto for Juba Day Secondary School was “bright hope for the future”. This was in the S Sudan in the 1980s. Secondary education was limited and greatly valued as a gateway to modernity. The Science and Biology curricula included much that was useful and amazing and it lent itself to developing critical thinking skills. For 2.5 years I taught the subjects and the thinking skills and for the last 6 months I taught how to pass exams. It was a winning compromise.

As an educator my purpose was always to change minds - as a teacher, an education advisor, a civil society consultant and as a plain language editor. I served as a change agent promoting change for the better. But – better for whom, and who is competent to decide? Change is inevitable and in some cases we can influence its direction. If we are to be successful change agents we have to develop three things:

• the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
• the courage to change the things I can, and
• the wisdom to know the difference.

While in this metacognitive space I remember the Preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO which declares that "since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed".

So the DMN has generated a few snippets of TFM in response to auditory inputs from inspiring speakers. In this case there is nothing noticeably new. But it has been a long time since the topics have been dredged out of memory. They might linger for a while and help energise the serene, courageous and wise minds of men and women. They might go on to manufacture consent for a benign form of post capitalist globalisation. Wait and see. Holding your breath is contraindicated unless it is of the mindfulness variety.