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EQ for a sustainable world (by Roel Stemmer) (follow up on discussions after a new poll for EQEE (30sept 2005) and after an inspiring debate about 'violence & education'. See: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EQEE ) EQ for a sustainable world. I have doubted to give a contribution to this interesting and very important discussion. Why? Because it takes place within the context of EQ... Is that wrong? Oh, no, that I do not have a view. But I think the context of EQ is too small and so I am afraid that people do not understand me when I broaden it in a nutshell, in going to depth afterwards. The contributions however stimulate me to react. I try to give it a first move. Of course we can go back in history, learning about the violent situations in this world expressly made by men. And that is in my view a necessity. But do we realise that we are still participating in a man-made world and not in a woman-made world? Mark that I do not say that women are better than men, although I am self a man. What has to happen is that by participation of women, systems in which we are functioning have to transform, while in my view women adjust themselves too much within man-made systems, in order to have the possibility to function publically. I am very involved in the development of sustainability and therefor a week ago I was in Lithuania to join the IX-th Conference on Environmetal Education in Europe. There I have given a presentation about what in my view has to happen for a more sustainable world, starting with education. And happily, there were many good reactions. We have to go back to our very roots. That will say to our roots concerning caring. That's deeply a feministic approach. When a child is born, and we all were in those first phase of life, the first thing it gets is care and as soon as it is possible it will give care. Systems, and it is the overwhelming and compelling western economic system in particular, are based on competition, while they are for a big deal responsible for our behaviour. So, every thing in education has to be based on care: the organisation, the teachers etc. in order to care for plants and animals, for the inner circle, for your family, for ideas etc. etc. I think that has to happen word wide. We are frustrated by the weighing systems that were created in a man-made world and we do not realise it by ourselves. It is expressly the American scientist prof. Nel Noddings, who has written and always is writing many books about care and education. So EQ fits under the umbrella of sustainability and has to go hand in hand with care and not with competition. It goes back to the development of our personality in the way that our two daily motives of existence, the Self and the Other, will positively integrate. Integrated persons are able to change systems in a more integral way by supplying care and decreasing competition, the source for violence. Anyhow the systems within we are functioning are for a big deal responsible for our behaviour. That's our security, our safety. So there where EQ is used to have more commercial success, it finally contributes to educate dualistic personalities, while the world need integrated personalities. We need people who analyse the weighing systems in their contribution to a dualistic world, while we should get a dialectic world. A dualistic world vindicates the gap between poor and rich (the ''free'' market), the gap between the rulers and the opposition (democracy) and the gap between our existence and our acting participation within eco-systems (the more and more suffering earth). So in my view EQ has to activate dialectic personalities in order to change the world in a sustainable direction. All in all finally violence is an expression of dualistic personalities. In education children need very much emotional attention in order to get the possibility to develop oneselves, because emotional and social development facilitates the cognitive learning process. That's in my view only possible within a context of care, will there be talk of sustainability. Roel Stemmer Website 'Enviro net': http://enviro-net.landstede.nl Reactions: network@eqee.org European Network on Emotional Quality © 2002-2008 |