The subject of memories is one that seems to hold a lot of interest for 3D Eye readers.
Carl Jung wrote an autobiography that he called Memories, Dreams and Reflections. Memories are our link to the past, and form an essential guide to the present and the future. Our dreams arise from past experience, and also express our fears and hopes for the future. The process of conscious reflection is something we do in the present as a synthesis of our current thoughts and feelings, of our past memories, and of our thoughts on the future. Our psychology is three-dimensional. Thinking, feeling, imagining. Past, present, future.
3Di’s concern with memories, dreams and reflections is that schools should be places where students begin to understand the importance of reflection as a means of increasing their personal intelligence – which is their understanding of what makes them tick and what makes them unique. Learning about ourselves is surely as important as learning about the rest of the world. It’s certainly more important than simply learning how to pass examinations.
Carl Jung was easily as important a figure as Sigmund Freud in the field of human psychology. These are some of his thoughts on education:
Certain souls, I imagine, feel the state of three-dimensional existence to be more blissful than that of Eternity.
The longing for light is the longing for consciousness.
As a rule, however, the individual is so unconscious that he altogether fails to see his own potentialities for decision. Instead he is constantly and anxiously looking around for external rules and regulations which can guide him in his perplexity.
Aside from general human inadequacy, a good deal of the blame for this rests with education, which promulgates the old generalizations and says nothing about the secrets of private experience. Thus, every effort is made to teach idealistic beliefs or conduct which people know in their hearts they can never live up to, and such ideals are preached by officials who know that they themselves have never lived up to these high standards and never will.
What is more, nobody ever questions the value of this kind of teaching. Therefore the individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost, of self-knowledge – that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish – as he ought – to live without self-deception or self-delusion.
The individual’s task is to differentiate himself from all others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities, such as membership in organizations, support of “isms,” and so on, interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible; but they are equally shelters for the poor and weak, a home port for the shipwrecked, the bosom of a family for orphans, a land of promise for disillusioned vagrants and weary pilgrims, a herd and a safe fold for lost sheep . . .
We look around us now and see in our societies thousands of lost sheep and shipwrecked and weary pilgrims; not to mention the poor, the lame, the timid and the weak.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Our children have a right to schools and to learning that can help them become strong, independent, confident, creative individuals with a sense of responsibility for themselves as well as duties and obligations towards others in a society that cares for all its members, and not just the fortunate few.
Later in the week we’ll post a list of the characteristics and traits of ‘self-actualised’ individuals whom Abraham Maslow studied and thought of as fully evolved human beings.
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3D Eye 