About Me
I've had the uncanny good luck to grow up as the son of parents who placed the highest value on education, and who did everything humanly possible to help me learn. (If you would like to see more about me in the form of a traditional résumé, just click on any photo of me.)
Both as a teacher and a student, however, I have mixed feelings about education. "Knowledge is power" wrote Francis Bacon in 1597 in his Meditations. In some ways, I agree. A country with nuclear weapons is a country with immense power in the sense of tyrannical capacity for absolute physical supremacy. And without knowledge of nuclear fission, alpha particles, and isotope decay, nuclear weapons would not exist. So yeah. Knowledge is power. From that vantage point.Knowledge might also qualify as power insofar as it increases our chance to become "better off" in the world. Go back to school. Get an education. Make more of yourself (or more accurately, for yourself) than just a maintenance worker (unclogging drains, fixing broken parts) or a custodial worker (cleaning, mopping, and taking out trash). In the United States, high school graduates average about twice the yearly income of adults who never go beyond 8th grade; college graduates average about 50% more than high school graduates; and PhD's average about 50% more than college grads. So knowledge might qualify as power insofar as it pays.
But what if we harp on the value of knowledge so much that we lose our knowledge of value? Cleaning and emptying trash belong in the category of "caretaking." They exemplify being-of-service. Being-of-service seems as admirable as any human aspiration. How could anyone want learning to become an escape route from the most valuable of human activities?
No one could. But I believe that our educational disparagement of activities like cleaning or emptying trash involves a disregard for reciprocity. More specifically, a reciprocity between humans and the world. Unless the world is better off with us in it, being better off in the world is a bogus achievement. We always need a place to be better off in, and eventually, we will lose our personal ability to be better off because we won't have taken good enough care of the world.
After 25 years of teaching, writing, speaking, and doing research in the field of nutrition, I've arrived at many of the same conclusions as my friends and colleagues. Our approach to food and nourishment in the U.S. doesn't work. It's unsustainable, unjust, and unhealthy. But unlike much of what I read from other writers, I have trouble blaming corporate America, or the U.S. government, or the globalized economy for this failure. I agree with Marion Nestle in her book, Food Politics, when she says that food companies make relentless use of politics to increase their sales. I also agree with Eric Schlosser in his book, Fast Food Nation, when he points to nationwide boycotts as a realistic way to overcome fast food giants like Burger King, KFC and McDonald's. And I agree with Michael Pollan in his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, when he describes industrial ingenuity surrounding corn production as a phenomenon that hides the true cost of a meal. But when I buy an organic banana that was grown in Peru - requiring 4,635 miles of fossil fuel-based transport and generating wages of 35 cents an hour in Peru - non-sustainability and injustice come directly from my food decision, not from activity carried out by governments or corporations. And when I take my homegrown, backyard vegetables and store them inside my refrigerator, I am making use of an appliance that - along with my other appliances - drains 7,500 kilowatt hours of electricity each year, including 2,700 kilowatt hours from the burning of coal and 150 kilowatt hours from the burning of municipal solid waste. Refrigerator storage of my homegrown vegetables is part of my 8,504 pounds of annual CO2 release, and it's an undermining of sustainability carried out directly by me.
"You see a lot, Doctor," says Clarice Starling to Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. "But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself?" If Hannibal Lecter had been able to turn his high-powered perception back on himself, it would probably have been a good thing. But I'm not sure it would have been a game-changer.
As long as we experience learning as a gathering and absorbing of information and a gaining of insight from increased powers of perception, learning will remain trapped inside of us as learners. The flow of energy will remain recursive. In this experience
of learning, energy will start somewhere inside us as a passion for discovery. We will direct this energy outward into the world, where it will flow into the world's
nooks and crannies. And then we will draw it back, start it hurtling backward in our direction like a boomerang that would never have been released without expectation
of return. Absorption of information takes place inside us. A gain in insight is our gain. This approach learning can pay off and it can provide us with a type of power.
But its energy cannot lead us anywhere and it cannot accomplish the goal of education, since the goal of education is always to take us outside of where we are, following the
Latin root, e + ducere, to lead out.
What I love most about learning is being caught up and entangled in the world. Challenged to make room for more and more. There is no satisfaction for me in saying that death metal might be great for some people, just not for me. I want to hear what death metal lovers hear. And lovers of doom metal, Mafioso rap, New Age ambient, 16th century opera, and 20th century atonal. It's the inclusiveness that is satisfying, not the selectivity. I've never taken courses in music appreciation or art appreciation, but I love the idea of learning to hear and see what other hear and see.
The only "more" that still feels satisfying to me about education (make "more" of yourself than just a maintenance or custodial work) is "more" in the sense of "more appreciative." Appreciation feels satisfying to me as a primary outcome of learning, because in addition to feeling outwardly-focused, it also feels world-directed. I can express appreciation, and it's the energy boomerang in reverse. The energy of appreciation starts outside of me. It flows into my nooks and crannies, and then hurtles back out into the world. When I express appreciation, it feels like I am waving my hand in a welcoming gesture that recognizes and acknowledges what has come my way. It's amazing to me that through a simple act of recognition, I can make more of myself and get left out of nothing. As an educational outcome, I'd call it sweet.
For the record, I also love prime time TV, blockbuster movies, and shopping malls. My favorites are listed here.
