I’ve always thought of them as those little (or big) situations in time when useful lessons about ‘being in the world’ suddenly reveal themselves ‘in the world’. Life imitating art imitating life imitating on and on – our mental models, if sufficiently malleable, working themselves out in constant flow – always wrong, of course, but sometimes useful – as we attempt to interpret the phenomena before our eyes (all imaginative senses, really), including what makes its way into our conscious experience. Teachable moments.
Believe it or not, that kind of talk is more or less how we normally begin our graduate course in Regenerative Economics and is emblematic of an aspect of our inquiry here at Schumacher College. We describe our course as pluralistic and transdisciplinary. We begin with a deep dive into holistic science, deep observation and phenomenology, then move on to systems, complexity, ecology and deep ecology. We practice interrogating our presuppositions, reflections and observations. A foundational element of our epistemology concerns making sense of our reality as human beings as it plays out in time and space, and in our case, paying special attention to the social, political, economic, cultural, ecological systems near and far, and from multiple perspectives. ‘There are many ways of knowing’, one would hear us say; ‘many paths to many mountaintops’, a favourite metaphor.
Continue reading “Teachable Moments: Crisis and what might be next at Schumacher College “
Enterprising Ecosystems 