Introduction To Trans-Disciplinary Education

By Lionel Yang, Updated 21st July 2022 (Edited 5th Oct 2022)

Prologue

The aim of this article is to envisage the trans-disciplined educational framework based on “The Interpretation of Human Sciences” and the philosophy of “Practice of Hermeneutic Phenomenology”. The purpose of this framework is to offer education as a mean to flourish the ontology or being of the candidates, not merely as its epistemological end. As a practice, hermeneutic phenomenology argues that who we are and what we do could not be separated as a natural inclusion phenomenon. The title itself suggests that we need to explore natural inclusion as well as its quality of humility through the practice of phenomenology and human sciences. 

It has long came to my experience that text has limitation in interpretation of human meanings, particularly if we believe that human meanings are dimensional and intuitive. Thus, a semiotic approach to the interpretation of human meaning is attempted in this article, that is to see the “input” and “output” of interpretations as back and forth granulation of dialectics, metaphors and human stories. The word “humility” in the title suggests that the existence of intersubjective experience, in its mood of inclusion, projecting through the act of surrendering in intersubjectivity, in the possible form of collective creation. 

Hence, to explore the “humility of natural inclusion” in its utmost authentic truthful matter, the article is written through the co-creation and co-authorship of selected participants. The co-authorship happens through dialogues inserted into places of this article organically. The dialogical polyphony (many voices) would serve its purpose to enliven the intuitive dimensional of the readers, for what linear texts are limited in presence, to further invite possible co-creation. It is the hope that this article, and many similar articles to come, would open up possible co-creation in the world with and through others to bring to the existence of a trans-disciplined educational agency. As many around the world now even envisage building universities from stretch for the 21st century! 

Could Business Schools Radically Innovate #Education For Elevating #Humans towards "Business For Life" ?  

The title of this article(AOM, 2022) is bold, but let's look at why this so called the desire to change in business schools in education for society and planet could only be lip service and ended-up quietly as re-packaging old wines in new bottles without radical innovation:

1. Business schools are not built for #sustainability and #regenerativeworldview & thinking to elevate and flourish through human liveable experience that is collective, co-creative, constructive and #transdisciplinary.  

2. The designated roles of business schools are to fulfil production, operational and consumerism needs under capitalist economy which based upon utilitarian and individualistic mindsets to take, make, waste natural resources and widen social inequality, not for nurturing humans to be better persons for social and environmental #liveability. 

3. Business schools are built on old business #ontology that the sole existence of business is short-term thinking calculating profit for shareholder and capitalists, not cultured the #intention, #intuition and #imagination, passion and purpose for society & planet.

4. The kind of business model taught in business schools is of zero sum game, to be competitive for wealth creation to a few and passing the burden to future generations, not for regenerative thinking of relational #care, co-creative purpose, equality and #distributed prosperity.  

5. Business schools have morbid interests to dehumanised people to analytical machines or instruments replaceable by technology, not elevate humans to be guided by the #good, embed communication in action through vision, aesthetics, design lived experience, mental models, metaphors and rich pictures. 

6. Business schools itself are organised in traditional hierarchical and bureaucratic departmentalised structures that procrastinating change, unable to transform to more adaptive, self organised, #community based #ecosystem for trans-disciplinary paradigm.

7. Business schools are built for exams, grades and division of disciplines, not for constructive social change. The role of educators in business schools are to "teach" and "supervise", not to co-create. 

8. Business schools itself are built for profit, marketability, commercialisation and ranking, not for resurrection of enlightened human beings and courageous activists who could make #impact in the world for the good.

9. Perhaps the most fundamental "impossibility" of change in business schools is that they are designed for the mode of inquiry in reductive thinking to measure(empirical) and repeat(positivist), to separate the role of the inquirer from "evidence", not for the philosophical criticality to reflect, interpret and construct that require the inquirer's #consciousness to being with others.

10. Business schools do not have the #competencies to make space and to culture people with #futuresthinking.

The Interpretation of Human Sciences

I think they are 3 types of people in the world when come to intuition of “human science”:

1. Sense seeing and verification are the only way to know the world.
2. There is another way of knowing that is intrinsic to human beings, perhaps we can find out by observing it, measuring it and duplicating it.
3. I could come to self knowing and through this knowing, know others in the world, and through self interpretation, i could come to grip of the world in its expression and meaning, not entirely in certainty, but self determined. 

The first type of people believe anything other than empirical and positivist sciences are “flaws” and “illusions” in assessing reality. These people are usually extremely methodical, objective oriented, utilitarian minded and demand high visibility and certainty in confronting the dynamic of the world. 

The second type of people believe that we as human are conscious before our experience, they intended to “upgrade” themselves from the first type of people. They do this by instrumenting measurable methodologies to observe conscious experience with the aim to produce objectivity of verifiable science through data, themes and actions.  

The third type of people believe that consciousness before experience exist but can’t be observed directly and could only be intuitively expressed through philosophy of the mind, the hermeneutic phenomenology. These people then contemplate on self knowing and interpret the experience in the world that’s matter to one own standing in leaning to objective truth. These people constantly expand their intersubjective experience in transforming collective self consciousness towards the ultimate development of becoming spirit. These people are dimensional in thinking, seek to know not just oneself, but one own place in the world through others in moral change.  

The third type of people believe in the domain of “human science”, that the objects of the world ought to be interpreted towards the flourishing of the subjects, the human beings, as the purpose of science. The human science is ontological rather than merely epistemological, in such that humans have own meanings that could not be analysed through natural sciences, but requires the determination of self knowing to come to existence of being and the becoming of spirit in the sphere that is intuitive, dimensional and infinitely creative.  

In this 21st century where the world is getting more divided, fragmented, individualistic and nationalistic, the inquiry through human science to interpret the new way of thinking for inter-subjective consciousness becomes purposeful, in order that human civilisation could sustain conflicts and could develop towards the beings that come to grip with diverse culture and ethnicity. A moral change to flourish intersubjective experience is thus required to raise self knowing from the previous centuries to this century that we come the awareness that objects are wholly complex, dialectical and eternal in change.  

In addition to the 21st century context, the business world that is dominated by the 1st and 2nd type of people, accelerated by technological atomisation is losing its grip in providing meaning that is coherent with human flourishing. Instead, the gap of such object-subject renewal is widening, the crack is tearing apart human science into oblivion. 

Lastly, the foundation of social science of which 21st century businesses are structured based on the previous century natural sciences is no longer tenable without the restructuring and relational synthesising of human science. Thus, the sustainable development of businesses must first be rationale with the most up-to-date intersubjective view of human science and its philosophy of hermeneutic phenomenology that is emerging towards the infinity of navigational change beyond data and actions. 

The Hermeneutic Phenomenological Approach

The title of this paper, for the imagination of a trans-disciplinary education framework, is approached through a transformation of consciousness framework that i called “hermeneutic phenomenology”. I will come back to this methodology in details, but here i would do the justification of why it is used with a little background of my own interpretation of the practice. 

First, I am under the influenced of Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, Charles Taylor and Van Manen mainly in mind for the kind of ontological interpretation in knowledge creation that have a primordial ideal and existential consciousness. It is then with this primordial of self consciousness that is absolute and good as well as beautiful in its eternal flourishing, i believe that through my own lived experience, if properly attuned, we are always holding this consciousness in interpreting the world for the purpose of coming to grip of who we are as the beings with and through the others. This one last sentence is what i understand about the word “phenomenology” in a way that does not offer technical jargon i hope but still requires intuition to becoming the sprit for one.   

Second, i shall come to what i mean by hermeneutics. While holding the phenomenological consciousness in mind, somehow our reflection has a way to interpret our lived experience, as like how the poet TS Eliot puts it, we always begin with the exploration and come back to the same place but see the same place anew. As such our reflection is intentional, move in circularity and in spiral of its granulation as its renewal navigation. Within the reflection, an underlying dialectical stream of consciousness is constantly flowing between the changing and the unchanging, if we allow it to attuned to its phenomenological stillness, that is not necessary in opposite or in contradiction, but in correspondence that absorbing each other. It is this interpretation of the movement of thought that i called “hermeneutic”. 

Hermeneutic phenomenology, has evolves from being a philosophy of consciousness from Hegel to Heidegger, to the interpretation of human science by Charles Taylor, and as a practice by Max Van Manen. It is through Van Manen’s “Phenomenology as Practice” that i’ve intend to improve upon as the consciousness practice for solving today’s critical human inflicted crisis (climate change, pandemic, leadership etc) through co-creation and semiotics.

Thus, hermeneutic phenomenology is not just a methodology, but the practice of lived experience. We need a methodical framework based on the ontological authenticity of who we are as human beings, our sensitivity, synchronicity, synthesis of intuition, to approach meaning making in the world, in our case the “trans-disciplinary education framework” and “humility of natural inclusion” because then we can have a thought foundation that we could keep in correspondences to reflect upon our truthful existence as being in the world.  

The improvement we would be contributing to hermeneutic phenomenology for the current context is that the “input” would be the people’s co-creation, and the closed loop “outcome” would be the semiotics, metaphor and human stories, what goes in between are dialogical polyphony and the hermeneutical flow of interpretive consciousness in the form of reflective navigation. In such, we are breaking away from the traditional academic data-analysis empirical or positivist dogmas which separate between who we are and what we do. Instead, we are offering an embodied, trans-disciplinary approach to knowledge transformation, from merely being analytical to embracing social construction, through the up-to-date practice of hermeneutic phenomenology.   

Contributions of Research Innovation To Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Various authors from its Platonic and Hegelian traditions had lay claimed to the “what is” of hermeneutics and phenomenology. To me, hermeneutic phenomenology as a methodology for transformation of consciousness aims at creativity and new way of thinking has the following rational qualities:

1. The being that is capable of self-consciousness and self determination of the ideal. 
2. The experience in the world and the being capable of holding voices in stillness without judgement
3. The simultaneous circling and layering of the intuitive being in attunement of reflective clarity.
4. The purpose of the ideal in human flourishing as the whole of being.
5. The being becoming authentic in the world
6. The authenticity absorbs as co-creation in the form of navigational emergence through participation of inter-subjective experience.  
7. Creativity is seen as the renewal of authenticity
8. The way of thinking in the sphere of the infinite is enlivened

My contribution to this art of scientific transformation for human/intersubjective authenticity is to continue to reflect on the hermeneutical object-subject whole of human flourishing through its good and beautiful as the absolute ideal in its back and forth circling correspondence of becoming and flourishing in the world. The intuition becomes the meaning making function rather than merely the observable reasoning, in such it opens up dimensions of a causal thought as the new way of thinking through holding spaces as another contribution to innovation in research. My third contribution is to go beyond research merely as observable findings or verifiable outcomes, to offer research as wonders and navigational emergence in non linear expressions out of its co-creation practicality. 

From Separation To Co-Creation

In the last 1 year til the present day…

Businesses are still talking about goals, plans, objectives, strategies, technologies, but not about people, on change.

People are isolated (or alienated) from change, we think we are growing, but we are actually dehumanising. 

It is still difficult to get into the mind of business leaders and entrepreneurs the kind of intuitive consciousness that change is by people, for people and about people. "Sensitivity" is a forbidden word in the dehumanisation world of business dogma. 

We have not move a bit from consciousness change, driven more apart from our sense of self.

We still see ourselves as individuals separated from each other, distributed, decentralised, dehumanised... 

We still see that who we are and what we are about, have nothing to do with how we act and what we do. Change is still based on the science of things, not the science about the meaning of our lived experience. 

Natural sciences are not sufficient to interpret human meanings, we need "Human Science".

Change is still re-presented through data and analysis, not the presence of collective creation and social construction.

Some insightful ones are convinced that change is only possible through outliers.

More outliers are convinced that change has reached its descriptive limits, change need to be reflected, told in metaphors and human stories to invite intuition. 

Intuition is the only way to open up to the "humility of natural inclusion", the navigation and renewal of change made possible only through collection creation.

Is time to revisit "leadership is about" in this continual human crisis and emergence of co-creation

“The job of the government is to get on with governing....no matter how brilliant, to talk about... ourselves,” - Boris Johnson(Guardian, 2022a)

"I also believe a team is as good as its team captain, and that a captain is as good as his or her team. So loyalty must go both ways." - Sajid Javid (Guardian,2022b) 

The background story of this leadership crisis is that the UK's prime minister thinks his action and his job is the ultimatum, not who he is as a person. But his key team members think leadership is about co-creation. 

We are facing human crisis one after another, from climate change, COVID-19 pandemic and now on leadership.

We are used to the thinking that what we do is separated from who we are as a person.

We are used to the thinking that CAN-DO means do it at all cost and expense with actions and things, in regardless if a person's ethics and values are degenerating and dehumanising.

We are used to this utilitarian mindset (with goal setting, objective planning, command and control, analysis of empirical data etc), individualistic separation from who we are in the world with and through others.

This is the dehumanising process rooted in the thinking that thought and our beings are not in co-existence and correspondence. As if the oblivion of our sense of self would have no bearing in how we act, vice versa. As if becoming a better person would have no place in our actions that all eventually affecting others in the world, vice versa. This is obviously wrong way of thinking about who we are as human beings, as a community-based species who are evolved with collective self consciousness. 

We need a new kind of leadership that spiral to the granulation of collective self consciousness, the thinking that who we are not separable of what we do that ultimately affecting others (Inc, 2020) 

Leadership ought to be about the well-being of the people, that is, if one sense of being is unwell, he or she is unfit in how-and-what of the actions, vice versa. Ultimately, a sick person is infectious to others, in regardless of the actions. 

Leadership is about think beyond actions as ends and means. The ends and means of leadership are the others, the people and nature. 

Here's Why A Total Overhaul in Education Is Critical To Overcome Human Crisis.

Our current education is based on empirical and positivist epistemologies that designed to create separation between being or sense of self and the world. This Newtonian educational framework obliterates who we are from what we do, our deep sense of values is disconnected from the actions in the world. Then what happens? We have a world now that full of human materialistic marvels with looming human existential crisis one after another : climate change, COVID-19 pandemic, leadership and more yet to come.

We need to re-educate the current and next generation of leaders and people based on 21st century ontological philosophy, science and practice of collective consciousness.

The prime minister of U.K., one of the most developed G7 country, arguably the "worst PM of the country in history", has just resigned, but Boris Johnson's resignation speech was full of educational errors in authenticity:

"...I tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we’re delivering so much and when we have such a vast mandate... I felt it was my job, my duty... " - Boris Johnson (Guardian,2022c)

1. Boris doesn’t see himself as a person, but merely “a job to be done”. He seems to get the ontological philosophy wrong about the Science of Humans, individualistic nihilism is an illusion of existential separation. The truth is our sense of self is never separated in the world with and through others phenomenologically and as a hermeneutical whole. It is archetypical error in understanding dehumanisation of alienation to see reality not as a person, but merely as glorious dogmas of "can-do objectives" or "tasks to be achieved”, without the correspondence with the flourishing of beings in us that deeply embedded in values.  

"...our brilliant and Darwinian system will produce another leader, equally committed to taking this country forward..." - Boris Johnson (Guardian,2022c)

2. He seems to get the kind of science that is out of date about evolution. Darwinism is the thing of the past. Humans as a species, evolved with collective consciousness, thrived on altruistic cooperation, the survival capacity that is way more superior & sustainable than competitive selfishness:

“…he was rattling through his standard talking point, rather than reflecting deeply on what he did and why." - The Guardian (2022c)

3. He seems tremendously lack the practice of collective self consciousness to bring consistency between what he does and how it affects him as a better person for others.

But most importantly, people who elected a dehumanising leader ought to reflect the same that the future leaders must be ensured of the proper acquisition of 21st century education based on the trans-disciplinary of philosophy, science and practice for collection creation.

Reflection To “The Humility Of Natural Inclusion”

 "Upon an immaterial climbing frame...Into the flow...From our learning...That keeps us yearning" - image and quote by Alan Rayner 

Unfolding from my reflection, i am envisioning an urgent need for a trans-disciplinary education agency, to offer the conscious practice to systemic change, of pressing human inflicted crisis - climate change, pandemic and leadership, 

More interconnected dehumanising phenomena are expected to emerge in economy and technology, caused by alienation of sense of self in the world. Who we are as persons are separated from our sensitivity and synchronicity towards others. There’s no “better persons” in what we do, but merely plans, objectives, jobs for materialistic marvels. 

The current Newtonian education (empirical and positivist epistemologies) is the deep damage that done to ontological separation and continues to eat into the dehumanising emergence. “Who we are” is objectively separated from “what we do” in quest for knowledge. This is utterly wrong and inaccurate view of education!

 A down-to-earth dialogue in sharing lived experience between me and Alan Rayner envisaged the needs to inspire the dimensions of this intuitive-based education, with “humility of natural inclusion” as metaphor, based on the practice of collective hermeneutics (Yang, 2022) 

The background consciousness flowing for this clarity is a long time coming through Tai Yi, a global Mindwalking practice for Collective Presencing founded by me and Andrew Wilson. We felt deeply that an outlier approach is needed to reset and bring disruptive yet critical change to the business world.

In the going co-creation in reinitiating the frameworks of “human capital”, me and Leif Edvinsson are fore-searching a new kind of “Future Center" for the renewal of navigation of sense of self towards the natural spiral of implicit knowledge granulation in the world. 

Me, Andrew, Leif and Frédéric Caufrier 柯付锐 had conceptualised the "Creativity Lab" for global companies which increasingly see asynchronous creativity as new way of thinking urgently needed to maintain zero distance synchronicity with marketplace.

In my recent co-curatorship of a 100+professionals global forum in “sustainability development and regenerative models”, offered through the amazing leadership of Adriana Marina, concluded that, the needs to close forward “the spiral that granulates towards the humility of natural inclusion from separation to co-creation”, is now!

My reflection that keeps coming back and calling to "humility of natural inclusion" is alive!

Holding the richness of thoughts above in mind, i invite you to co-create with me and others, in the re-imagination of a, future centric, creativity led, people's regenerative, trans-disciplinary education agency, with the philosophy, science, art and practice aim at flourishing the beings in us in becoming sustainable in the world. 

The Co-Creation Approach To Trans-Disciplinary Education  

(Image: Vinod Rams, 2014)

We have to see education for the purpose to be "better persons' in the world with and through others If the current Newtonian education framework is to be reset to stop the damage done to dehumanisation and ontological separation. But it is easier said that done because we used to the individualistic separation in talking for ourselves, not talking through together. 

We need to practice new way of thinking sensitivity of seeing interdependency as the only way in the making of human meanings and have courage to reach out to others, in that way perhaps, we reach out to ourselves. Collective consciousness is the only reality to self consciousness. And this co-creation thinking is possible through the contemplation of "humility of natural inclusion" as its semiotical metaphor. 

What is “humility of natural inclusion”? Perhaps we have to come to the reconciliation of and surrender to our existential reality, ultimately, this is where we are going, back to nature, as the way of how we see humility as humble as it could be, as vulnerable as we are, as truthful as it is.  

As we are attempting the experimental journey of co-authorship of a dialogical article meant to introduce the practice of trans-disciplinary education while holding "humility of natural selection" as a metaphor, Noora Kassem says, "to be vulnerable is to receive humility, and to become a better person as a result", how beautiful! I shall write my reflection in Chinese below:

善不美，不正，（shan bu mei，bu zheng）

美不善，不义， （mei bu shan，bu yi）

真善美，至正义。（zhen shan mei， zhi zheng yi）

good without beauty, no righteousness,

beauty without good, no dignity,

true beautiful good, becoming just in our presence

In a way, interdependency and co-creation do require the justice served to conscious practice of sense of self in vulnerability. 

If you feel something relating to your lived experience listening to the poem below while holding the above, write me to co-create and to co-author for the better persons in us :) :

"Two hearts my body can hold, 

so I mould my legacy:

to make space enough for all, 

standing tall, I rise, breathe free.

Two hearts – a strength none can take; 

love’s a lake and the world is thirsty." - My Body Can House Two Hearts, Hanan Issa (2019) 

Trans-Disciplinary Education Is Gaining Timely Traction To Undo Damage Done To Dehumanisation Of Ontological Separation

The article (LSE, 2022) is very consistent with the practice in co-creation of semiotics and cultivating of dimensional thinking i am envisioning with others! Replace "students" from quotes below with business professionals and leaders, you will see an immense impact through trans-disciplinary education as systemic trajectory of change :

"‘whole-person learning’...as antidotes to purely negative or destructive critique..."the ‘embodied learners’...represents a challenge to the metaphysical foundations of Western reason..."

"‘the world has long dreamed of possessing something of which it only has to be conscious in order to possess it in reality’"

"where ideas from a range of disciplines meet and interface"

"based on social and ecological justice"

"to capture a ‘pluriverse’ of experiential accounts"

"decolonising the...monoepistemic...curriculum...challenge dominant ideologies, discourses and research agendas in the social sciences"

"addresses...one-dimensional economic rationality of the business model...critique of instrumental or one-dimensional thought and behaviour"

"multi-dimensional conception of the student as producer..as opposed to a passive recipient..."

"...conception of students as self-optimising, perpetually networking, self-disciplining, entrepreneurial subjects"

"students as dialogical and relational co-producers of intersubjectively generated knowledge, ethics and practice"

"developing students as global citizens...subject as constituted by its relationship to the other, and a responsibility to act"

"the educational experience can be existentially transformative...social and environmental issues becoming central to the evolving identity of the self..where aesthetic and ethical reason are...eclipsed by economic rationality".

"methodologies and practices...arts...creatively and imaginatively transposed to social science...trans-disciplinarity...can be seen as the guiding philosophy informing the argument".

"fosters students’ tolerance for ambiguity...as characteristics of a more advanced and mature civilisation –roughshod (by neoliberal universe) over by a one-dimensional, goal-orientated brutishness that is bereft of empathy and humility."

"prepares students for tackling ‘wicked problems’... the ability to see things as polysemic..”

The Practice of Trans-Disciplinary Education 

(Image : Jacob's Ladder - William Blake) 

The aim of all trans-disciplinary educations ought to be about the practice of transformation of collective self consciousness to be "a better person" in the world with and through others.

We can't overcome human inflicted crisis in climate change, pandemic, leadership, economy and technology etc caused by dehumanisation of ontological separation, if we unable to live and experience the flourishing of "a better person" with and through others. Collective consciousness is self consciousness. 

It is perfectly OK to show our vulnerability and face our existential struggle as practice of this "humility of natural inclusion". It is only moments of self deficient ambiguity that is most valuable to open up to our deep values and ask ourselves "what makes us a better person?" and "In what way what i do in the world through others makes me a better person?". 

It is quite clear that, if we follow this path of navigational renewal if we may, to be in most honest state of humility to our own being, the stillness of thought in the world with and through others, we will inevitable come to the clarity that "natural inclusion" is about experiencing co-creation. 

One has to co-create to live in "natural inclusion". We can talk about our own thought, but it takes a lot of practice in transformation of collective self consciousness to talk together while holding "humility of natural inclusion" as a semiotic. We all need the big picture to navigate through our intuition and to renew from the spiral granulation of thought dimensions. 

"Natural Inclusion" is a concept, a metaphor, but the semiotic co-creation of hermeneutic phenomenology is a practice to (co) create meanings for "Natural Inclusion", cultivating the humanistic space of trans-disciplinary education. 

The Co-Creative "Invisible Hand" For Trans-Disciplinary Education? 

A trans-disciplinary approach to transform capitalistic economics is crucial, because "Capitalism as we know it has two egregious flaws: it relentlessly widens inequality and destroys nature", as Peter Barenes (Barnes, 2021) said.

The ideal is that trans-disciplinary education embraces co-creation, not separation, in the world with and through others. The economics of co-creative “invisible hand” is also very phenomenological aligned with the human science approach to trans-disciplinary education, that is, to flourish the “better person” in our sense of self, as Peter put it, “to transform individual self-seeking into widely shared well-being”. 

Peter “envisions a transformed market economy in which private property and businesses are complemented by universal property” because “capitalism’s most grievous flaws are, at root, problems of property rights.“ 

The solution suggested by Peter is reconstruct the semiotic of the separative “invisible hand” through the transformation of collective self consciousness because economics “are constructs of human minds and societies” that requires “our imagination and political will”. 

Peter is inviting us to look at extraction of wealth not merely earned by ones hard work, but as “inheritance” from nature and others social construct, as much as 80% are not due to our own effort alone. This is appeal to “humility of natural inclusion” to me, the metaphor that trans-disciplinary education is contemplating. As Peter put it, “Universal property…is a set of non-transferable rights backed by a subset of wealth we inherit together. Such property isn’t mine, yours or the state’s, but ours”. 

He has given examples if how “universal property” are carried out through “trusts..., and pension-like funds”.

Co-creative "invisible hand"'s outlier outlook is worth the semiotic contemplation of possible social construction in the perspective of trans-disciplinary education. 

The view that co-creation is “inherited” creates a sense of renewal to our humility and presents a new meaning of “natural inclusion” in navigating ourselves forward as “better persons”.  

Could Trans-disciplinary Education Tackles Inequality and Embraces Diversity? 

Educations and schools, supposed to be the primordial place for human flourishing, creative growth and systemic change kicked start, but is now the last place that people what to be associated with, the place where the distress of poverty begins and deepens;

It is utterly dehumanising to see people are more concerned with rat race in the parliament, but pay no attentions at all to the overhaul of education systems to stay co-creative with society at large (Guardian, 2022d)

"children were arriving at schools in England hungry, tired and anxious, while older pupils were missing sixth form because they were already out working to help their families as the cost of living crisis bit" - Lee Elliot-Major OBE 

This above picture is very wrong for 21st century's mission of "sustainability development" at all levels of human inflicted crisis, where regenerating the collective consciousness to co-create is systemic to sustainability development. "Individual's success is a collective endeavour", said Lee in an open-up TED session talked about the collective and social mobility (Major, 2019) 

While the wealthy ones are retaining their places through privileged educations, but the education systems that is outdated with 17th century Newtonian mindset is unable to flourish the deep values needed to appreciate the 21st century trans-disciplinary reality. The rich and powerful become more separative and "disconnected" in their mindset, unable to level-up with the underprivileged. What worst, is this outdated knowledge becomes the tyranny to deny trans-disciplinary education from the true level-up across the society needed to adapt to this 21st century.

Thus, in order to tackle inequality and diversity, perhaps, is to introduce trans-disciplinary education to all levels of people across the society in regardless of the background. In such people are re-educated to think differently through collective creation, not separation.

The “Human Science” Of Trans-disciplinary Education 

"biosemiotics offers a way of interpreting and studying nature, culture and their mutual entanglements by reading the way organisms influence each other through a continuous process of communication.”- (Aeon, 2022) 

I would want to reflect on biosemiotics (as quote above), to come to my standing on trans-disciplinary education through "Human Science". 

Biosemiotics pushes the semiotic boundary of Pierce's and Eco's towards the significance of the spirit of "inclusive interdependency". It offers the metaphorical interpretation along with hermeneutics as phenomenological practice of co-creation. 

In contemplating biosemiotics, i could relate to the phenomenological practice (following Van Manen) that would flourishes our presence as world spirit (as Hegel put it) in the absolute good as “eternal sign”. This critical interpretation of biosemiotics affirms the meta-communication of beings in the world of purposeful good. 

Thus, I resist the dogmas to be merely the passive Darwinian selfish body or Freudian static-for-lifetime childhood traumas or the " wave/particle of quantum uncertainty". 

I should reject this non-interpretive and unreflective descriptions of science. We could experience the truthful of good for love as well as compassion signifies through humility of this natural inclusion despite all our existential struggles and misfortunes. 

Therefore, I must defend that consciousness is science (following David Bohm et al), the science of being in the world (following Charles Taylor), in equal standing with trans-disciplinary of natural sciences. 

Thus, i am offering to see biosemiotics as the signification of consciousness, humbly bounded by our existence in the world (as how Heidegger put it), but to be critical from Heidegger, as the practice of co-creation.  

Furthermore, biosemiotics ought to be seen as the “noosphere” semiosis (following Teilhard de Chardin) beyond materialistic biosphere, and to hold this conscious ambiguity of Negative Capability (following John Keats) as the dialectics and navigational space as poetic as we could, in inviting clarity jump, not pushing through reasons, in the becoming & renewal of "better persons". 

Trans-disciplinary education, operates through human science, is about the ontological transformation from separation to collection creation. 

From Sense Making To Space Making - The "Consciousness Gym" of Trans-Disciplinary Education For The Practice Of Co-Creation & Leadership

Many now believe that we need to make sense and meaning of the world through transformation of self consciousness, to construct and co-create with others for purpose, rather than passively separated as individualistic instruments.

But how to we actually come to grip of our sense of self? We all know by now that reason is not the only way to come to thinking. In fact, the judgmental way of thinking separates our conscious being of who we are from what we do. Reason is the thinking that alienates and dehumanises our deep sense of values to illuminate from what we do in the world.

Thinking, in the ancient philosophies of the east and west, long before the modernity of Newtonian Science, Enlightenment, Industry Revolution and Capitalism, is about making space for "inviting" thoughts. Even when materialistic thinking started to become dominance as the illusion of our default mode of thought, the idealists who believe in primordial sense of self, were urging us to think differently; feel our thinking, be intuitive with feeling and think in dimensional. Poet John Keats, called this intuitive thinking "Negative Capability", that is the ability to remain in ambiguity without rushing to reason. Philosopher Martin Heidegger, under the influence of Chinese Taoist WUWEI philosophy, called this "Stillness". In Quantum worldview, is about the ability to hold the flow of the "wave" without collapsing into "particle". Thus, it seems like the space in-between the motion is the place where thoughts are invited.

Thus, i propose that we need to first make space as practice of transformation of consciousness before sense making is possible. We need this space to invite not only ourselves into it, but to invite others for co-creation, to know our place in the world(the space) through and with others.

Nevertheless, making space for intuitive and dimension thinking is "difficult", because it requires many more times the conscious energy than single-dimension reasoning. In each level of making more space for co-creation, from "sensitivity", "synchronicity", right up to "synthesis" and leadership dimension, the capability of holding more thoughts with and through others requires more conscious energy to remain in consistency and coherence. I propose that this conscious energy, like the physical muscles that produces physical strengths, requires the practice of "consciousness gym" to sustain its strengths.

"Moral Imagination" - Making Space For Co-Creation

"Moral Imagination"(2005) by sociologist John Paul Lederach, the book that's ontologically resonates so seamlessly with my pursue in #transdisciplinary #cocreation guided by internal good. In saying that i am held coherently by the Hegelian practice of hermeneutic phenomenology and its absolute good, as I also see phenomenological footsteps all over in this book, with profound interpretation of the role of imagination in retrieving the good. 

"Moral Imagination" arrives to centripetal like-mindedness of constructive framework for knowledge co-creation; i. to know one place in the world through others, ii. via the spiral of sense of collective self consciousness, iii. granulates towards becoming "better person".  

"Moral Imagination" is about constructive social change, the "capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenges of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist.". As Einstein put it, imagination is knowing "everywhere, instead of the logic from A to B". 

What is "moral" is relational, beyond reasons and dimensional in intuition;

a. synchronicity - "requires the capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships";

b. synthesis - "the ability to sustain a paradoxical curiosity that embraces complexity";

c. semiotics & systems - "the fundamental belief in and pursuit of the creative act; 

d. sensitivity - "and the acceptance of the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown" 

Moral Imagination "invites the practitioner to suspend the need for tools, answers, technique...empirical evidence...replicable", instead, see the flow...and arrives to "the wellspring...lies invisible below the surface but gives life to a stream that trickle". "Flow" as the new way of knowing and thinking ahead. 

Lederach speaks about the needs of creative act for social change, i would go one step further to suggest the creative act requires co-creative leadership.

Co-creative #leadership cultivates who we truly are for common good, "to find this deeper sense..our bearings, our compass...our way toward becoming...intentionally", based upon the common sense of the good. This centripetal capacity, as Lederach suggests, where "relationships create and emanate social #energy and are places to which energy returns for a sense of #purpose and direction". Our sense of self and identify in the world is this "force that pushes out and pulls in, and in so doing creates a “center that holds.”, the common good. 

The "social energy" could be interpreted as the level of #consciousnessenergy for making space. "Imagination" of constructive social change is about space making in inviting co-creation, for the place we not yet arrived but through "discipline of stillness" of co-creative leadership (akin of a "consciousness gym"), creates a “center that holds” the common good for the becoming of who we truly are.

Why Are We Being Separated From Common Sense of The Good?

While we are experiencing the "unrecognisable meltdown"(Guardian, 2022e), the future way out may not be in the hand of the experts, but our common sense of the good.

1. Illusion of separation. Experts like to use the word "denial" as reason for not being adaptive to change, as if "denial" is hardwired as a pre-conditioned, unreachable separation. We have to solely rely on the comfort of the experts who would keep telling us change is impossible. 

2. The absolute good. While experts are urging criticality of change, but often short of suggesting change requires the pre-conditioning of the absolute good. Humans are only seen as "instruments" of change, whom, like machines, must be then fed with data (input) in order to produce desirable outcomes as dictated by the experts. 

3. The Newton Sleep. Humans are oblivion from becoming spirit of the absolute good in the "equation of change" suggested by empirical and positivist minded experts. Who we are and what we do are separated and atomised by this Newtonian thinking of change. 

4. The common sense. If we are not guided by the internal good and know our pre-conditioned of being good in the world, we lost the common sense of change, no? If one's sense of self is not pre-conditioned to the primordiality of the good, we can't see each other from the good in reciprocity, thus there will be no common good as purpose of collective lives. 

5. Trick by logic. Why do humans lost the common sense to common good? Maybe it is the continual separation of deep sense of self from values to see only the value as experts are suggesting. Experts always wanted us to do something by showing they have a way to create value, from one set of failure to another set of "success" so to speak. Experts use LOGIC to trick the minds to follow certain deterministic and predictable path, and they called this "science", to show they are in authority, superior above us and demand the command of our actions. 

6. The trans-disciplinary #cocreation. Experts denied reality is #transdisciplinary, the construct of complex phenomena. There's no way one can know the future ahead and thus knowledge is co-creative through others, tearing down the fear to the unknown and clearing the wall of the unknowable.  

6. Leadership. Experts rarely say be good together, show co-creative #leadership, know your thoughts while holding others, know your actions through others and know your purpose in the world and see your good as being in the world. 

7. Demystifying experts. Experts made it sounds "difficult" for humans to be good as who we truly are, instead, experts want you to do something "quickly" separates from the good, as if they are trying to "sell" you something of their own deep self-interests and have no patient for attunement of the common good. After all, if we can come to grip of our sense of good, which is practical and free, we won't need experts anymore, don't we ?

Empirical World View Dehumanises Good Life

An empirical world view could never come to contribute to good life, but the world’s today is still ruled by empirical dogmas. 

A good life is guided by moral imagination, that is, the intuition between the intentionality to deep sense of virtues corresponds with socially constructive complexity. A good life is essential to all sustainable organisational development and regenerative models. A good life is authentic, conscious, navigational towards mediation of concepts and becoming the mind aware of its infinitum as being in the world.  

Empirical mindset is pathological and analytical, compulsively singled out the palimpsest and polyphony of non-linear complex construct. It is single-dimensional in thinking, individualistic, reductive and logical, deterministic for objective outcome and motivates by fostering positivist repetitive rules. While empirical rigidity is necessary for engineering and procedural visibility, but it could not come to grip of the embodied flourishing, wellbeing and sustainable consciousness of human social life.  

We often hear from empiricists that consciousness is not enough or could not be assessed or measured to achieve objectives or goals, as if the human world is merely mechanical and sensory controlled deliberations. Empiricists are in ignorance of the structure of the mind and paradigm shift[1] of the socially mediated mind or phenomenological consciousness. The mind is not a blank slate that is written upon by the empirical world[2]. The mind is instinctively in mediation of concepts, not simply given to it[3]. The existential instinct of who we are is not separated from what we do in the world[4]. The mediation of concepts is infinite construct of signs and semiotics[5]. The mediation of concepts is intrinsically guided by and aimed for the good[6], it required practice[7]. The mediation of concepts is intuitively the imagination for constructive social change.

In this 21st century, we have come to acknowledge that social life is complex, relational and a causal. Empiricists view of complexity is causal, bounded, descriptive, reactive, rational, rigid and reduce life to sense making for merely decision making, rather than seeing life as good, infinite, constructive, co-creative, contemplating and reflective as consciousness concepts of space making for inviting dialectical thoughts for synthesis of its semiotic, communicative actions. 

There’s a lot of others empiricists out there also envisioning “good life” with old way of thinking, particularly with the folks from positive psychology and critical realism, selling old wines in new bottles.

Knowledge creation has to be based on entirely new thinking of constructive social change, not just about tacit/explicit interchange which see the role of the mind as merely for mechanical analysis. The problem with empirical “evidence based research” is you look for what already exist to understand the past, but not necessarily the future. For the future’s evidence not yet exist and one has to create and construct first. This deep flaw of empirical thinking is preventing any meaningful innovation and re-paradigming impact for the future. One has to do or construct something first to have the evidence, but the evidence is not analysable because it is constructed through web of relationship, understanding of the future is achieved through making space for such relationship.

Research outcome coold no longer just about the dogmas of empirical positivist analysis but the construct of the non-existence and the ever changing, re-paradigm from the limitations of traditional academic which is based on productive mindset, not of the constructive. Research outcome is about the construct of the mind, through co-creation. In such, one overcome the existential fear of the future by “creating something to become someone”, to seek courage and identify not merely from fixation within but intuition in the world. To see the world aa unknown as known through the moral imagination of one place through co-creation. This good life world view could transform the current world which are separated by individualistic national identity, culture and ethnicity and to focus on creating the trans-disciplinary future through non-conflicting diversity world view.

Inspiration from authors:

[1] Thomas Kuhn

[2] Immanuel Kant

[3] Hegel

[4] Heidegger 

[5] Merleau-Ponty

[6] Charles Taylor and Paul Ricouer

[7] Van Manen

[8] Jean Paul Lederach

The Pursue Of Good Life - Trans-Disciplinary Hermeneutical Research based on the Phenomenology of “Complex Thought” of Edgar Morin

Edgar Morin is a complexity philosophical sociologist and founder of trans-disciplinary advocating the good life world view. However, his propensity to methodology is by no mean misunderstood as positivist (repeating the past) as how some empiricists and realists in the field of complexity wanted to twist.

According to Edgar Morin, the goal of methodological research is not to find a unitary principle of all knowledge, but to indicate the emergence of a complex thought, which is not reduced to either science or philosophy, but which allows their intercommunication by operating dialogic loops. (Morin, 1982)

The empirical way of thinking could not come to grip with our lived experience that are trans-disciplinary and of complexity paradigm in phenomenological mediation of the mind for good life world view, that is in contemplation and reflection “present to the complexities, paradoxes, tragedies, joys, failures, and successes…rich in feeling, intuition, and connection to the larger social and historical context”(Montuori, 2008: pg.18) 

“Knowledge must…be constructed…To do this, a new form of thinking is needed…separates must be… with.. connections…woven together,,,Secondly, it is necessary to come to grips with uncertainty. The dogma of universal determinism has collapsed. The universe is not subject to the absolute sovereignty of order; it is the outcome of a “dialogical“ relationship…‘Complex thought incorporates uncertainty and is capable of conceiving organization.’ - (Morin, 1996)

In Morin proposed 3 principles; The dialogical, organizational recursion and the "hologrammatic”, it is very clear that he is the proponent of hermeneutic consciousness in complex thought, that is, parts are the reflective dimensions in the incompleteness of web of relationship. Uncertainty is not a weakness, but the necessary mediation of the mind or ontological navigation for knowledge co-creation.   

Edgar Morin is an ontologist in Hegel tradition (Kelly, 1998) as revolution to epistemology, in coherent with Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology, pro-creative in existential context but signifies the humanistic of co-creation sociologically, to create something with others in order to know one place in the world as becoming being through mediation of the mind.

What Morin brings to the future of good life world view is eco-hermeneutics, the circle of hermeneutical interpretation as recursive loop spiral for which the parts and the dialectics in co-creation. This eco-good life world view flourishes the sustainability practice of complex thought, to create something with others that's ecological to the nature to return as a better person.

As i have came to the constructive practice of up to date phenomenological mediation of the mind for trans-disciplinary co-creation. Perhaps in the perfection of Edgar Morin complex thought for social change, he hasn't dive comprehensive enough to the hermeneutics of his trans-disciplinary foundation, to include the neurodynamic of phenomenological intuition (of sensitivity, synchronicity, synthesis and semiotic) and existential intentionality of the good, of which the recursive thoughts concurred

Why Trans-disciplinary Education Has To be Grounded In The Philosophy of Hermeneutics and its Phenomenology 

Education must meant for the sole humanised purpose. This future view of education is supported by Critical Theory of Adorno and Habermas (Adorno et al, 1976) To Complex Thought of Edgar Morin(Demirel, 2019) contributing to trans-disciplinary education to save humanity from existential crisis and dehumanisation as a result of empirical world view of education. 

The flourishing of humanisation emerges from the paradigm (the renewal and navigation) of the authenticity and intentionality of lived experience. Who we are and what we do could not be separated as the ethical-complex of education. As our lived experience could not be reduced to single discipline, so does education. Thus, the trans-disciplinary of education has to be grounded in the humanistic philosophy of hermeneutics and its phenomenological authenticity. 

The empirical, analytic and positivist (and so to the pragmatic) view of education are partial and dehumanised, as it separates epistemology from the socio-ontology necessary to ground education to its ethical-complex. The reductive view of education produces humans who are separated from self-other ecological complexity. Thus, no paradigm shift would be possible when this linear, sense dependant thinking is engaged to solve the current, ethical-complex, human-inflicted socio-ecological sustainability crisis such as climate catastrophe, inequality etc. The ethical-complex phenomena requires entirely different socio-ontology intuition and imagination for cultivating co-creation, communicative action and leadership needed to thrive in ecological complexity.  

The criticality to empirical world view is that the uncertainty and interdependency of collective lived experience could not be :

a. reduced to its categorical predictability and repetition 

b. divided in its significance between practice/action and communication(content). 

c. separated from the authenticity and intentionality of socio-ontology of hermeneutic phenomenology in the becoming of ethical-complex being in the world.   

in order to achieved paradigm shift in education. 

Who we are could not be separated from what we do and who we are is simply not blank sheets waiting to be filled in or act dogmatically but we are capable of self-consciousness for the moral imagination to do good things, How we do it is depend on the context of interdependency that we could not predict but we are also capable of the will to social courage to face the existential uncertainty of creative life-world.  

"Statement of Need"

#Education is the most recursive reflection for all current critical humanistic endeavours

The current world is polarised, de-globalised and dehumanised driven by nationalistic politics and inequitable economics.  

Humans are getting more individualistic, competitive, separative, selfish and are doing more harms to each other. 

We are heading towards the collapse of human civilisation and possibly existential extinction due to our own doing of separating with each other.  

We need to bring people back together for the #good through education.

The existential purpose of education ought to be social, not of individuals. 

In this current era of ecological and sociological emergencies, we need to be re-educated in in "futures thinking", in how to live through the presence of being the others, our collective consciousness to planet and people: 

a. We need new tools and thought practice to elevate, flourish and sustain humanistic endeavours, not collapsing it. 

b. We need to radically innovate the current education system to elevate humans for constructive social change, to co-create, not separate.  

c. We need a new kind of education, one that is based on constructing and designing the spaces of lived experiences with others, rather than defeating others. 

d. We need a new kind of education that could be : i) sensitive, ii) making meaningful connection, iii) synthesise and iv) construct new meaning between science and spirituality, in becoming fulling minded as better persons in navigating our existence through collective experience, through despair or joy.

e. We need a new kind of education to critically embrace the intuition and imagination of “relational care” in constructing and designing collective experience. 

f. We need a new kind of education to go beyond empirical diversity of colours or genders to be based on diverse thought in regardless of identity or ideology. 

g. We need new thinking to see life as dimensional, not reductive. Life is trans-disciplinary, our lived experiences are economical, technological, environmental, social, communicative and philosophical all at once. 

h. We need new kind of education that is based on effort in trans-discplinary co-creation, not just learning.

The effort-based methodology to education 

1. Make space for human connection, not learning 

2. Shift from knowing to Be-ing in knowledge creation 

3. Think regenerative, not extraction or exploitation 

4. Design collective lived experience 

5. Embed communication into action, co-create, not separate

6. Become a net constructor to social change 

References

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Guardian (2022d). “Children in England in deep poverty ‘stealing food from schools’”. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jul/14/children-in-england-mired-in-deep-poverty-stealing-food-and-tissues-from-schools

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