Apple, Pears and Clones: how radical thinking can change the deep code

Recently, while walking through the fruit and vegetable section of a supermarket, I discovered a close link between the appearance and packaging of apples and pears and current education.

All identical apples and pears, without the slightest visible defect, in identical trays, protected by a transparent plastic veil, enabling buyers to verify the perfect similarity between the fruits and visually reassure them of the quality of the product.

The only differentiation: the species.

For apples, Granny Smiths in one row, Jona Golds in another, Boskoops in another... all the same in size, color, number and presentation!

Same treatment for pears: Conférences, Durondeau, Doyenné du Comice...,

This “domestication” of Nature for purely commercial ends reminded me of the results of education as it has become: the formatting of graduates from so-called “higher education” establishments:

·       Same formatting

·       Same mental maps and highways

·       Same paradigms (Growth, Profit, Competition)

·       Same cell phones (especially the latest model)

·       Same social networks

·       Same verbal expressions, such as “So and so”, “Cool”, “Actually”, “That I can't believe”.

·       Same clothing styles, which can vary depending on whether the person is “into” IT (Granny Smith), “into” Law (Jona Gold), “into” Medicine (Boskoop).

These highly educated people illustrate one of Mark Twain's famous and prescient phrases:

“Being schooled doesn't mean being educated”.

Are we really going to create a viable and desirable Future for our civilization with “normal” people who adhere to the same dogmas, consider “Business as usual” as “normal” and perform like hamsters in the system to pursue its “optimisation”?

We are trying to create the Future with obsolete Maps

What the world needs in the face of today's historical challenges is bold, even revolutionary thinking, capable of questioning in depth everything we've come to regard as “normal”: our intentions, our myths, our narratives.

Despite all the concrete “crisis” we are facing, it seems to me that the most important “crisis” our whole society is facing is a crisis of worldviews: an invisible crisis happening in our heads (and souls).

Our “mental maps” don’t help us navigate the world anymore; this is manifests in a series of crisis we are deeply involved with:

-       Sense making crisis (understanding the nature of the world). This perceptual crisis creates confusion

-       Meaning making crisis (finding purpose)

-       Imagination crisis (opening eyes that have new sorts of Visions)

-       Choice making crisis (making wise choices, individually and collectively)

-       Capability crisis (how to act intelligently, knowing that progress is more than solving the problems of the past)

-       Legitimacy and trust crisis (who has the authority)

Deep Code regeneration

We don't need more softs skills to learn how to fit an obsolete system. We need deep skills to recognize and regenerate our deep code.

We need everyone to allow themselves a living, regenerative and radical way of thinking - one that dares to go to the roots - in order to look at the world as it is AND as it COULD be, off the beaten track and out of preconceived notions.

And what if this is precisely the etymological meaning of the word EDUCATION - ex-ducere - to lead outside?

Outside of what? Everything that constitutes our “deep code”

·       preconceived ideas inherited from the past

·       Zombie orthodoxies

·       Preconceptions and prejudices, often rooted in ignorance

·       And above all, the right answers to the wrong questions. Solutions that are part of the problem

Rather than formatting, Education as such could be at the heart of societal renewal.

Thinking at the margin

It's a well-known fact that innovation always comes from the periphery of systems. Like the flocks of birds whose coherence we so admire. As biologist Olivier Hamant puts it, who decides which way to turn? It's always the birds on the periphery of the group, because the birds at the heart of the group follow their neighbors.

By daring to think on the margins, we can reactivate the freedom and power we humans have to

·       slow down and think, take the altitude attitude

·       appreciate a state of not knowing

·       radically challenge beliefs that no longer serve us

·       ask ourselves what we really want, in the light of imperatives greater than satisfying our short-term needs.

Let's dare to leave the highways, let's dare to think from the periphery, to shift the system from what is normal to a desirable future.

This is Shapership,  the Art of Shaping the Future: a way to look at reality “as it its” and “as it could be” with Creative Imagination, Unconventional Wisdom and Radical Thinking.