Competitive mentalities only aggravate the distress, mistrust, disparity, resentment, and conflict already fueling today’s social, psychological, and environmental crises. Yet, from the earliest years of schooling, we are taught to see learning as a race by conditioning ourselves to compete for ownership, status, and perfection, rather than to participate in the living, co-creative flow of life. How did we come to believe that competition is somehow good for learning and evolutionary advancement?
This discussion invites us to confront the false dichotomies at the root of our education systems, between self and other, matter and space, subject and object, which reduce life to a struggle of isolated individuals against one another. Such foundations perpetuate fear, exploitation, and conflict, holding the creative pleasure of learning hostage to ideals of control and possession.
By contrast, natural inclusion, points toward a new art and science of learning: one that views life not as a discrete possession but as a gift of natural energy flow. Here, identity arises within, not apart from, our shared natural neighborhood of being. Education becomes a receptive and responsive attunement and communication of this re-evolutionary understanding by holding life openly and passing it on with care – rather than hoarding it as trophies of individual merit and achievement.
Join us in exploring how such a transformation in educational thinking might reshape our relationships, deepen our sensibility, and open up possibilities for creativity, play, and co-creation at the heart of human community and evolutionary diversification.
