J27 - Man and Society (Part II)

We have established in previous journals that human beings are different than all other creatures because humans alone imagine different possible worlds, choose the one they consider to be the most favorable, and act to bring that world into existence. As Alex remarked in his latest journal (which is beautiful, by the way), “we are the bright spot in an otherwise dark universe,” because we alone are creators in the universe, “for creation of the most meaningful kind only stems from the purely human ability to envision a better world, and then make it the real world.” In my own work I have labelled this defining feature of man “reason.” Reason, man’s ability to imagine, choose, and act rationally, is man’s greatest weapon against a world of scarcity and has allowed us to reach a state of existence far greater than that of any lesser species. Still, the question remains: what makes this faculty of reason possible? Why do we possess it and no other species? 

The tackling of this question is rather timely, as both Alex and Feb have recently written journals touching upon it. According to Alex, it is the complexity of the human mind that has created this sentience and ability to act with purpose. There’s definitely something to this: obviously, whatever we are must be allowed by the limitations of our biology. But it’s important to note that we are, indeed, more than our biology. The biology provides the bare bones of our existence. But the flesh, the life we live, is provided by external sources, by the data and experiences impressed upon our biology by our environments. We are born into societies with existing knowledge, norms, practices, cultures, methods, etc., and are raised in these societies so as to become assimilated to them. Man, in the course of his development, becomes “one-sided” as he adjusts to a specialized role in the division of labor that he finds himself in. He becomes part of a whole. His thoughts are not entirely his own, and it is these thoughts that drive his behavior. Biology, therefore, cannot explain all that man is. 

In the course of this journal, however, Alex acknowledges this by arguing that we should be moral to our fellow human beings because of the potential they have to contribute to our lives, complex beings that they are. This insight, in turn, inspired Feb to share a similar revelation she had last year studying the structure of the brain. In her latest journal, she elaborated on the fact that the power of the brain lies in the connections between the neurons. Neurons are indeed amazingly complex cells, but the nature of their connections to one another (which are really just empty spaces through which chemical signals are transmitted) allow the brain to be more than the sum of its parts. In this way, Feb is trying to explain how the complexity of our minds manifests itself as the rational creatures we are today. The magic happens in the empty spaces between the individual parts. She uses this analogy to argue that we humans need to make connections with each other, since this will lead to a product that is exponentially greater than anything we could create on our own.

Now, I am loathe to draw analogies too strongly between biology and society, as such analogies are wont to cause confusion for those without a clear grasp of both subjects, but I think Feb and Alex are onto something great, here, and I’d like to draw it out a little bit more. 

As I discussed in the first part of this piece, in Journal 25, man is not only the rational animal, but also the social animal, for “the development of human reason and human society are one and the same process.” As I established in Journal 24, what makes humans different is not the complexity of our minds, but that we possess reason, the ability to think and act purposefully to change our environment to suit ourselves better. Our biology makes this possible, but it is not sufficient to cause it: rationality would be impossible in isolation. As Journal 25 hopefully made clear, human beings are what we are because of our association with other human beings. Feb’s and Alex’s recent journals confirm this. Society is the outcome of a rational decision by human beings to work together peacefully and thereby take advantage of the increased productivity of the division of labor, but it is this cooperation in society that allows us to act rationally. Man emerged from his evolutionary prehistory as a social, no less than rational, creature. 

As I explained in Journal 25, this dependence of rationality on association with others is partially due to the fact that the higher productivity of the division of labor allows man an opportunity to actually exercise his reason and, as Alex describes it, create a new and better world. But there is more to it than that. The nature of man is informed by being a part of society, a society that is more than the sum of its parts. The key to understanding the power of society lies, like it does in the brain, in the empty spaces between individuals. Man’s ability to change the world is not just strengthened by the contributions of other complex beings, as Alex posits; man’s ability to change the world is made possible by the existence of a society generated by the connections between many cooperating individuals. 

Now, it’s important to realize that all social phenomenon can be traced back to individual decisions and actions of individual human beings. “There are no mysterious mechanical forces; there is only the human will to remove uneasiness.” I am not saying that society is some super-being composed of individual humans like the brain is composed of individual neurons. (See why I hate biological/social analogies?) However, the individual choices and actions of individual human beings, more specifically acts of exchange (the fundamental social relation), generate a price structure, which is a genuinely social phenomenon in the sense that every individual contributes to its formation, and yet it represents more than any particular individual’s contribution. It is the existence of a price system, which appears to the individual as a given, that allows man to act rationally and successfully to change the world. 

The purpose of every human action is to survive and thrive in a world of scarcity. As I explained in my first SDA, this purposive striving after ends with scarce means gives rise to the market, “the foremost social body.” The establishment of society was a purposeful action to take advantage of the higher productivity of the division of labor, a choice to peacefully cooperate to increase the production of economic goods. The fundamental form of society, therefore, is the market economy. Everything else we associate with the concept of society developed afterwards, atop the fundamental economic relation. We choose societies because they are more economical; they provide for the satisfaction of ends which we could not achieve on our own. If societies did not provide this, then we would not live in them. They do, however, fulfill this purpose, through the operation of the market. It is the market that permits the development and persistence of a social order. Furthermore, the market “puts the whole social system in order and provides it with sense and meaning,” through the generation of a price system. 

It is the price system, a structure of given relations within an economy, that makes the market successful by allowing the development of economic calculation. Without economic calculation, individuals would be unable to evaluate the outcomes of their actions, and would therefore be unable to determine whether their actions were truly economical. The market, and therefore society, is impossible without calculation-informed action. “Where there are no money prices there are no such things as economic quantities….There is no means for man to find out what kind of action would best serve his endeavors to remove his uneasiness as far as possible.” My first SDA delves into the function of economic calculation with some more detail, but suffice to say that the development and persistence of civilization depends on the ability of man to reduce all economic means to a common unit of measurement and to arithmetically compute the most economic use of those means. 

Economic calculation is a nuanced subject. It is a very difficult concept to understand, especially at such a fundamental level as I’m trying to use it at (which is a shame, since it is so important to understand). I won’t spend more time developing the idea any further here, however, because it’s not totally necessary for my point. For a more thorough elucidation of the topic, please see the works of Ludwig von Mises, especially Human Action, chapter 13. It should be clear, though, that it is economic calculation that makes possible the existence of social production processes. That is, it is the price system and economic calculation which allow men to actually realize the increased productivity of the division of labor. It is economic calculation, then, which renders the division of labor (and society) advantageous to acting man. And it is society, the collective efforts of many men integrated into a complex division of labor, which has transformed the world into one tremendously more fitting to man. An individual could not have so transformed the world on his own.  Society enables man to be and do more than his biology would otherwise allow.

Man is a product of his biology. But he is also a product of his environment. What sets man apart is that he himself has produced his environment to suit himself better, and continues to further improve this environment. He therefore changes himself. But his ability to do so is dependent on the efforts of other men to change the world with him, and the ideas and choices and actions of these other men also inform the shape of the new world and therefore the man who lives in it. This is what makes man what he is. Man alone is no man. Society allows man to be the rational actor that he is, one who imagines and chooses and acts to change the world, and society provides the resources man needs to effect the changes he desires. Without society, man cannot be a creator, cannot be a bright spot in a dark universe. Man is different because he is rational; he is rational because he is social.

What Is EMC2?

I answered these questions for a grant-application the coordinators recently filled out.

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Provide a high-level description of the current program and its overall impact on preparing students for the demands of the 21st century. (Limit: 500 words)

Our program, Exploring with Mindful Creativity and Curiosity (E=mc2), is an independent inquiry program where students are given the opportunity to research and investigate a topic of their choice for the year, with a librarian serving as their research coordinator.  Throughout the year, students regularly record their thoughts, questions, goals, and struggles with regards to their projects through a series of journals posted on their own websites.  Students also demonstrate the progress they’re making in their projects, from their first question to their final product, through monthly self-designed assignments.  In addition, students are required to conduct interviews with experts or professionals in their field of study, collaborate with and provide feedback to each other, and present their work and explain its importance in a TED-style speech at the end of each semester.

The goal of the program is to develop the students’ thinking and questioning skills.  The extremely low student-to-coordinator ratio (4:1) allows for a student-centered, conversation-based learning process that is focused not on the acquisition of knowledge, but the growth of critical faculties.  The curriculum, which is individualized for each student, is centered around the importance of questioning and an emphasis on our 5Cs: curiosity, creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.  The role of the coordinator is to push the students out of their comfort zones, assist in the development of the student’s project, and help keep the student accountable to his or her own goals.

This program was created to fill a perceived gap in the standard school curriculum, to change the focus for students from learning content to the learning process itself, and to provide greater opportunities for subject exploration and original contribution for students seeking such a challenge. Our goal was to provide an opportunity for students to explore and take risks while learning in the process. We believe this ability to apply one’s knowledge and thinking skills will prove vastly more useful than basic subject matter knowledge in our world of constant change.  It has become increasingly apparent that, in the 21st century, information is cheap.  What our students will need to succeed in the world of today and tomorrow is the ability to question the status quo, rapidly acquire and apply new knowledge, and adapt to change.  These skills are what our E=mc2 program seeks to give them.  

Explain how the program objectives and outcomes specifically address the following Challenge criteria: (Limit: 800 words)

• Critical thinking
• Communication
• Creativity
• Collaboration
• Between students
• Among educators
• In real-life engagement with the industry or your community

Critical Thinking: The E=mc2 program starts developing students’ questioning and critical thinking abilities on Day One.  At a summer “boot camp,” students are asked a series of ambiguous questions, such as “Who was the greatest president?”  The students start out by immediately formulating answers, but they quickly learn that the only way to answer these questions is to ask more questions, such as what is meant by “greatest” and “president.”  Through similar activities and regular individual feedback throughout the year, it is made clear to the students that the conclusions they come to through their project are arguments, truth-claims about the world that must be justified and defended with evidence and clear reasoning.  Students are also pressed to always keep in mind their “so what?” as a way of deciding what material is relevant, what steps need to be taken next, and why their work is important.  This focus on questioning, justifying, and reflecting is emphasized throughout the year, contributing greatly to the development of the students’ critical thinking skills.

Communication: Opportunities to develop students’ communication skills are built into not only the curriculum, but the very structure of the program.  The E=mc2 program is not a class that meets regularly; communication with one’s coordinator must happen outside of channels that students are accustomed to, either through email/phone or by setting up in-person meetings.  The primary responsibility for communicating is put on the student.  Furthermore, the students are required to show their thinking, record their questions, reflect upon their research, and share their conclusions through a series of journals throughout the year that are posted on each student’s website.  Monthly self-designed assignments, which are meant to demonstrate progress, show use of the 5Cs, and communicate the importance of the student’s project to his or her stakeholders are also posted on their website.  Finally, after each semester, students participate in a symposium where they display their work to a wider audience and provoke thinking in the community.  

Creativity: In the E=mc2 program, creativity is synonymous with originality.  The program is designed to give students the freedom and flexibility to experiment with assignments, and this freedom has, over the life of the program, yielded many manifestations of creative originality.  We’ve had students experiment with digital design, paint on sheets of glass, construct a telescope, embody mathematical equations in music, write/draw picture books, write stand-up comedy, build robots, and manipulate gene sequences in worms.  By stressing the importance of originality and giving students the flexibility to find it, the structure of this program elicits greater variety of artistic expression and thought than any specific assignment could ever produce.

Collaboration: a) We often find that this can be the most difficult of our 5Cs for the students to appreciate.  They start out the year by thinking of their work as an “independent” research project.  However, inevitably, a point in the year is reached where the students start to come together.  As their analyses of their various topics go deeper, they begin to see the connections between their projects and naturally begin to reach out to each other for aid.  To encourage this process, coordinators create assignments that are designed to get the students looking at and questioning each other’s work, require that one self-designed assignment be done with a partner, and provide an environment where students can work together.

b) We often remark that “we’re building the plane while we’re flying it.”  The E=mc2 program is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the students, shedding assignments and plans that don’t work, adding assignments and plans that are more purposeful, and allowing more flexibility and individuality for those who want it.  This process requires constant collaboration between the coordinators as we experiment with the curriculum and communicate to each other the different methods we’re trying and the results we’re getting.  Each coordinator has their respective strengths, and often we meet together to discuss and give feedback on specific aspects of each student’s work.

c) The students are taught to connect with others and view outside experts and professionals as resources that have the potential to significantly enhance their project.  The upper level of the program requires students to write a thesis over the course of the year, and, to that end, students must assemble thesis committees composed of community members (local attorneys, researchers, activists, and teachers) to help guide them in that process.  Our students use their community resources in other ways, too.  Currently, one student studying the role of computer science in our lives is teaching coding to elementary students, and another student studying neurological symptoms of Alzheimer's is working in a research lab at a local hospital.

Explain how your previous approach to teaching this information (identical or similar) was adapted to include 21st century skills. (Limit: 300 words)

The E=mc2 program began as a research-intensive information literacy class.  Emphasis was placed on identifying reliable sources of information and developing one’s research skills, especially crafting effective search queries, distilling relevant information, and assembling bibliographies of support.  The students were asked to create some sort of end product, in addition to their end-of-year speech, but these products were reminiscent of other school research projects: papers, displays, and simple presentations.

However, as the coordinators continued to study educational philosophy and came to more accurately understand the need this program was meant to fill, the structure and curriculum of the program changed.  Currently, the program’s goal is to help the students view their project’s claims as arguments requiring justification based on evidence and clear reasoning.  Research abilities are a necessary component of this justification process, but these skills are presented now as a purposeful step towards a more important end product.  In addition to research, we now stress the importance of the 5Cs: critical thinking in formulating and testing one’s conclusions, curiosity in being willing to explore related fields and consider alternative viewpoints, collaboration in finding new avenues for progress, creativity in exploring one’s topic and developing a novel approach to one’s central issue, and communication in presenting the results of one’s efforts to an audience of stakeholders.  

The program continues to change as the coordinators reflect on the efficacy of our current approach and elicit feedback from the students about their needs.  We expect the program to continue moving away from abstract research skills and more towards the utilization and questioning of the information they find.  Again, we believe that these 5Cs will more properly prepare our students to succeed in the 21st century, where information is easily accessible and yet ever-changing.

J26 - Comments on Mansour's "Isolation Amidst Connection"

Feb's latest journal, "Isolation Amidst Connection," is such a wonderful representation of much of my own thinking that I needed to share it here and thus make it a part of this project.  I fully endorse Feb's insights and reflections in this journal.  I just wish to make a few comments...

First, the person who told Feb that the life of an intellectual is a lonely one was myself.  Objectively, there are very few people in the world who are capable of engaging with high-level intellectual issues and sustaining high-level effort in thinking through the issue and advancing our collective knowledge in regard to it.  However, I want to be clear that this doesn't mean that the intellectual can operate strictly on his or her own.  Advances in knowledge, improvements in theory, come from exposing one's findings and ideas to the outside world and receiving the criticisms and compliments of other intellectuals.  Progress cannot come from just one person.  The life of the intellectual is empirically lonely; it cannot be totally isolated.  One of the greatest elements of the EMC2 program is that it brings together a number of intellectuals with the potential to help each other grow, even though each may be studying their own topic.  

Second, I think the gradual development of connections between one's subject of study with other subjects is the hallmark of any mastery of a subject.  Thinking that different topics exist independently of each other, even though they exist in the same world as each other, is a sure sign that the individual does not understand the topics he or she is considering.  People make fun of me all the time for always relating every issue or topic back to economics, but I don't consider this to be a bad thing.  It means that I see economics in all of these other topics.  I've reached such a level of understanding with economics that I can see how it connects to and informs everything else.  I merely find it frustrating that others can't see what I see, and reject information that I know could help them because they think it is coming from a category of knowledge irrelevant to their own.  Additionally, as I explained to Noah the other day, the process of analysis (good thinking) is to break down one's subject into its parts, and to consider each part in turn.  The purpose of analysis is to get at the core of the issue, something fundamental that more people will understand and agree on, thus providing support for your more complicated conclusion.  Analysis, breaking down subjects, therefore, is meant to reveal the commonalities between their parts.  So, the fact that many of the topics being studied in EMC2 are beginning to come together on fundamental issues is unsurprising, though gratifying, and I am proud that Feb can see this.  

Finally, I want to relate this all back to my project, developing a theory of being human.  Alex has been writing a lot about how people are all substantively the same, that we should break down borders between us and begin recognizing ourselves in each other.  This is true to a significant degree.  We are all human beings, meaning that we are all creatures of reason struggling to survive and thrive in the same world as each other, a world of scarcity.  This is the human condition, the one all the English teachers have been talking about throughout our school careers.  The human condition is striving to be better off in a world of scarcity.  We are all the same in this regard.  So, even as we all embark on different paths of study, it's important to realize that we are all doing substantially the same thing, as Feb recognizes in her journal.  Every search for knowledge is a personal one, but we all have the same fundamental reasons for our search because we're all fundamentally the same.  Knowledge is for a purpose, and that purpose is the same for every human action, to make us better off despite living in a world of scarcity.  At their core, all big questions of human knowledge come down to more fundamental questions: What are we?  What should we do?  How can we do it?  The routes we take to answer these questions may appear very different, but, beneath the surface, we're all working toward the same essential goal in essentially the same way.  

Well done, Feb.  This journal was impressively insightful and beautifully expressed.  Thank you.