The relation between the individual and society is very complex and dynamic. We can look at the own person and/or theme from different perspectives such as the past, the future, the theory and the reality. This is also good work in systems-thinking. Inspired by the idea of Henk Visser I developed and filled the idea of the Field of View further and used it as an organizer and an energizer to clarify the relation between a subject and the world.
In the middle is the bubble of the individual. For some young people the outside world is almost not coming on and others are the epic centre of what’s going on.
Another way to use the Field of View is to place a theme in the middle and to look at this from four different perspectives.
In each field hot items may be placed and these are a kind of collective bubbles such as the internet, globalization, Europe 27, the free market and climate change and the Arab Spring.
Let’s take a look a t each field and the student Barbara Hoyng will make it more concrete in a personal way.
1. The past.
’When I was young I went to a Catholic school, because my mother was a catholic.
At that school I came into contact with the religion, the bible and praying.
When I was old enough to make my own choices about religion I choose not to believe.
I do have respect for the people that do believe, no matter what religion.
I think this is because I went to the Catholic school and learned why people believe and want to believe.’
2. The future
‘In this bubble I will explain the changes in my life.
I am working almost three years on my bubble of change, but I am not finished yet.
When I graduate after half a year, I want to continue with another study called The High Hotel School in The Hague, this education takes four years and then I am ready to work.
So I will take 7 years of work on my biggest bubble of change, the change from going to school, going to work and having a job.’
3. The theory
‘In this bubble I will talk about the influence of economic parts of my life.
When I was growing up our family had no problems with money, my dad had his own company, my mom helped my dad and was part of the day house-wife, everything was good. But, this does not mean my parents spend all the money, had luxury life’s etc.
I am an only child and my parents had enough money but still we went on holiday once a year, went out to dinner sometimes and I had to look for an own job to earn and be able to spend my own money.
Now a days I am alone with my mother and we have to do it together.’
4.. Reality
‘The opportunities of globalization are growing and growing over the years, for example I have Facebook, with Facebook I have contact with my family in America and Hawaii, programs and ideas like this open the world for everyone, give the opportunity to talk and communicate with people all over the world.
But unfortunately globalization is not always as fun as you think it is.
There are world disasters between different cultures which are not good for the society.
An example could be the it is much easier for terrorists to recruit people and set them to action on the other side of the world, by internet for example ; there were video clips posted on the internet of recruitment and treats. ‘
Young people are living in a ‘bubble’ and they decide what comes in.
Or is it something or somebody else?
Google for more information to ‘Peter Sloterdijk/ thebubble’
The most important aim of the project To-Gather is open the bubble for young people and to make it transparent. They should learn to make the right choices and become a ‘multiple choice identity’.
THE BUBBLE Lay out: Noël Abu Hariri
From: Five Minds for the Future: An Overview
Talk to be Delivered at the Royal Society of the Arts, London, October 11, 2006
Draft September 2006.
Copyright 2006 Howard Gardner. All rights reserved. Do not quote without written permission.
The Disciplined Mind In English, the word ‘discipline’ has two distinct connotations. As to the first, we speak of the mind as having mastered one or more disciplines--- arts, crafts, professions, scholarly pursuits. By rough estimates, it takes approximately a decade for an individual to learn a discipline well enough so that he or she can be considered an expert or master. In most cases, such mastery is acquired through some kind of tutelage—either formal, in a school, or less formally, through some combination of apprenticeship and self-instruction.
Perhaps at one time, an individual could rest on her laurels once such disciplinary mastery had been initially achieved. No longer! Disciplines themselves change, ambient conditions change, as do the demands on individuals who have achieved initial mastery. Over succeeding decades one must continue to educate oneself and others. And such hewing of expertise can only continue if an individual possesses discipline—in the second sense of the word. That is, one needs continually to practice in a disciplined way if one is to remain at the top of one’s game.
Once basic literacies have been mastered, the chief burden of educational systems around the world is the acquisition of an ensemble of scholarly disciplines. In my own work on precollegiate education, I have stressed four disciplines: mathematics, science, history, and at least one art form. I make a sharp distinction between subject matter and discipline. The subject matter of history consists of learning much detailed factual information about the past. Such television quiz show knowledge is always welcome and sometimes lucrative. But this amassing of information differs qualitatively from disciplinary competence. An individual who has acquired the discipline of history can think like a historian: that is, the student of history appreciates that she must work with textual, graphic, and other kinds of records; those records must be reconstructed and interpreted; unlike science, historical events occur only once and cannot be replicated exactly or interpreted unambiguously; historians must impute motives to personages from the past; each generation will necessarily rewrite history; and yet historians are bound to respect the facts and to strive for as accurate and comprehensive a record as possible. The other major disciplines exhibit analogous regularities and constraints.
We first acquire a disciplined mind in school. But relatively few of us go on to become academic disciplinarians. The rest of us will master disciplines that are not, strictly speaking, scholarly. Yet the same need to master a way of thinking applies to the range of workers—whether one is dealing with professionals, like lawyers or engineers, or with those involved in business, be it personnel, marketing, sales, or management. Such education may take in formal classes or on the job, explicitly or implicitly. In the end, a form of mastery will be achieved, one that must continue to be refined over the years.
Nowadays, the mastery of more than one discipline is at a premium. We value those who are genuinely interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary, or trans-disciplinary. But these claims must be cashed in. We would not value a bilingual person unless he or she can speak more than one language. By the same token, the claim of pluri-disciplinarity (if you’ll excuse the neologism) only makes sense if a person has genuinely mastered two of more disciplines and can integrate them. For most of us, the attainment of multiple perspectives is a more reasonable goal.
With respect to any kind of mind, pathological forms exist. There is the individual who is overly disciplined: who approaches every issue, whether professional or personal, through the same set of beliefs and practices. One does not want the legal mind to approach every issue—at work, at home, in the bedroom—as if it involved legal reasoning and verdicts. There is the individual who, at one time, had mastered the discipline but who no longer keeps up—exhibiting the patina of the disciplinarian but no longer the requisite contents, skills, and understandings. And finally, there is the avowed interdisciplinarian, who may in fact be a jack-of-all-trades but the master of none.
The Synthesizing Mind Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Laureate in Physics and an avowed multidisciplinarian, has made an intriguing claim about our times. He asserts that, in the twenty-first century, the most valued mind will be the synthesizing mind: the mind that can survey a wide range of sources; decide what is important and worth paying attention to; and then put this information together in ways that make sense to oneself and, ultimately, to other persons as well.
Gell-Mann is on to something important. Information has never been in short supply. But with the advent of new technologies and media, most notably the World Wide Web, vast, often indigestible amounts of information now deluge us around the clock. Shrewd triage becomes an imperative. Those who can synthesize well for themselves will rise to the top of their pack; and those whose syntheses make sense to others will be invaluable teachers, communicators, and leaders.
Strangely, my own discipline of psychology seems to have dropped the ball in explicating the skill of synthesizing. Compared to a half century ago, we know a great deal about how individuals learn to read, calculate, master basic concepts in history, science, economics, or philosophy. But I have been unable to locate comparable syntheses about how one synthesizes.
Nonetheless, it is possible to identify the basic constituents of the process of synthesizing. To begin with, a person has to decide on the area that he or she wishes to synthesize. Sometimes, one has time to reflect on this; sometimes the demand for synthesis is pressing.
Let’s take an example, from business. Suppose that you are an executive and your company is considering the acquisition of a new company in an area that seems important but about which you and your immediate associates know little. Your goal is to acquire enough information so that you and your Board can make a judicious decision and you need to do so in the next two months.
The place to begin is with any existing synthesis: fetch it, devour it, evaluate it. If none exists, you turn to the most knowledgeable individuals and ask them to provide the basic information requisite to synthesis. Given this initial input, you then decide what information seems adequate and which important additional data are required. At the same time, and of great moment, you need to decide on the form and format of the ultimate synthesis: a written narrative, an oral presentation, a set of scenarios, a set of charts and graphs, perhaps an ordered list of pros and cons leading to a final judgment.
At last, the actual work of synthesis begins in earnest. New information must be acquired, probed, evaluated, followed up or sidelined. The new information needs to be fit, if possible, into the initial synthesis; and where fit is lacking, mutual adjustments must be. Constant reflection, regular tinkering, is the order of the day.
At some point before the final synthesis is due, a proto-synthesis should be developed. This interim version needs to be tested with the most knowledgeable audience of associates, preferably an audience that is critical and constructive. To the extent that time and resources are available, more than one trial run is desirable. But ultimately there arrives a moment of truth, at which point the best possible synthesis must suffice.
What kind of mind is needed to guide the synthesis? Clearly, though he should have “a home” area of expertise, the synthesizer cannot conceivably be up to speed on every relevant discipline. As compensation, the synthesizer must know enough about the requisite disciplines to be able to make judgments about whom and what to trust—or to identify individuals who can help make that determination. The synthesizer must also have a sense of the relevant forms and formats for the synthesis, being prepared to alter when possible but to make a final commitment as the deadline approaches. The synthesizer must always keep her eyes on the big picture, while making sure that adequate details are secured and arranged in useful ways. A tall order! It is quite possible that certain individuals are blessed with a ‘searchlight intelligence’—the capacity to look widely and to monitor constantly, thus making sure that nothing vital is missing; and that they also have the capacity to value the complementary ‘laser intelligence’ that has fully mastered a specific discipline or problem area. Such individuals should be identified and cherished. But it is crucial that we determine how to nurture synthesizing capacities more widely, since this facility is likely to remain at a premium in the coming era.
Anyone who has read a clutch of textbooks, or attended a variety of weekend seminars, knows that not all syntheses are equally effective. Some syntheses are too sprawling—attempting to cover too much material. Some syntheses are too focussed—they are really briefings for specialists, not nutrient for generalists. Some are too technical, others are too popular. Different aesthetics can also be brought to bear. I favor literary syntheses that make judicious use of organizers, stories, metaphors, and analogies. Others may prefer syntheses that are devoid of artifice, and that rely heavily on charts and graphs. The good synthesizer must know what works for him as well as for those who must make use of his synthesis.
The Creating Mind Most artists, scientists, and scholars plough the same paths as their peers; most politicians and executives are substitutable for one another In sharp contrast to those conventional experts, the creating mind forges new ground. In the current popular argot, creators think “outside the box.” In our society we have come to value those individuals who attempt new things, monitor whether they work, keep casting about for new ideas and practices, pick themselves up after an apparent failure, and so on. And we give special honor to those rare individuals whose innovations actually change the ideas and practices of their peers—in my trade, we call these individuals “Big C” creators.
What is special about our time? Put succinctly, nearly every practice that is well understood will be automated. Mastery of existing disciplines will be necessary but not sufficient. Whether at the workplace or the laboratory, on the political platform or the theatrical stage, one is pressured to go beyond the conventional wisdom or the habitual practice—to try to get a leg up on what has been done before, and what is being done currently by oneself or one’s competitors.
Of course, sheer innovation is much easier to accomplish than effective creation. I could write this essay in numerous ways that are original—for example, putting nonsensical phrases between every sentence. This insertion may well be an original act, but, so far as I can determine, such a ploy serves no useful purpose and is most unlikely ever to influence how future essayists proceed. Suppose, however, I devise a set of web linkages to key points, and those linkages can be varied, based on questions raised by a particular reader, or on a shrewd assessment of the interests and sophistication of a variety of audiences. Were such a practice desired, and my pilot work to prove successful, it is possible that such an innovation might eventually be judged as creative.
It is important to ascertain the relation among the three kinds of minds introduced thus far. Clearly, synthesizing is not possible without some mastery of constituent disciplines—and perhaps there is, or will be, a discipline of synthesizing, quite apart from such established disciplines as mathematics, mime, or management. I suggest that creation is unlikely to emerge in the absence of some disciplinary mastery, and, perhaps, some capacity to synthesize as well.
Nonetheless, we must bear in mind that the most creative instances of creating (!) typically energe with individuals who are young—perhaps 20 or 30 in science or mathematics, perhaps a decade or so later in other pursuits. Disciplinary acumen and synthesizing capacities continue to accrue throughout a lifetime. This fact suggests to me that too much discipline, or excessive synthesizing, may actually prove counterproductive for the aspiring creator. The challenge is to acquire enough discipline and sufficient synthesis early in life, so that one can take the confident leap—go beyond what is known, and tweak it in new and unexpected directions.
As a student of creativity, I had long assumed that creating was primarily a cognitive feat—having the requisite knowledge and the apposite cognitive processes. But I have come to believe that personality and temperament are equally, and perhaps even more important for the would-be creator. Many of us know a great deal and most of us can continue to acquire knowledge and skills indefinitely. In addition the creator must possess a robust personality and temperament. More than willing, the creator must be eager to take chances, to venture into the unknown, to fall flat on her face, and then, smiling, pick herself up and once more throw herself into the fray. Even when successful, the creator does not rest on her laurels. She is motivated again to venture into the unknown and to risk failure, buoyed by the hope that another breakthrough may be in the offing, able to “frame” an apparent defect as a valuable learning opportunity.
I like the story that is told about Sigmund Freud. In 1909 he and his close associate Carl Jung went to America. It was Freud’s first and last trip—he did not like the New World. Jung remained longer. He was lionized by audiences. With great enthusiasm, he wired back to Freud. “Great news: psychoanalysis big success in the United States.” According to legend, Freud immediately wired back “What did you leave out?” Far from enjoying the acclaim, Freud was more intent in raising the tension, in going beyond anything that smacked of easy acceptance or conventional wisdom.
In the United States I am often asked about how to cultivate creativity. I give two responses, neither of them expected or immediately popular. First of all, I talk about the need to pose challenges, obstacles, boulders. One cannot build up a robust temperament without taking chances, failing, and learning that the world does not thereupon end. Of course, the frustrations have to be manageable; they cannot be allowed to break one’s spirits. Second, I question whether it is important to cultivate creativity in American schools. That is because messages about the importance—the cash value—of creativity are ubiquitous in our society: on the streets, in the media, in the marketplace. Probably emphasis on disciplines and synthesis would yield greater dividends. But in other countries, where rote instruction is entrenched and innovations are greeted with suspicion, I would favor a curriculum and a pedagogy that is oriented toward the cultivation of the creative person and the discovery and exploration of the creative idea.
Until this point, I’ve reviewed the kinds of minds most familiar to me, as a cognitive psychologist. If I had written this essay a decade ago, I would probably have stopped here. But events have prompted me to postulate and ponder two additional kinds of mind—the respectful and the ethical. To begin with, there is my decade-long collaborative study of good work—work that is excellent, engaging, and ethical. This line of research has sensitized me to kinds of minds that I might otherwise have ignored. Then, in addition,
I have been disturbed by many social and political trends in our world. More and more, sheer cultivation of cognitive capacities, in the absence of the human dimension, seems a dubious undertaking. I agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s assertion that “Character is more important than intellect.”
The Respectful Mind Almost from the start, infants are alert to other human beings. Absent frank pathology, even neonates display keen interest in anything that resembles a human face or voice. The attachment link between parent (typically mother) and child is predisposed to develop throughout the early months of life; and the nature and strength of that bond determines the capacity of individuals to form relationships with others throughout life.
Of equal potency is the young human’s capacity to distinguish among individuals, and among groups of individuals. Within a few months, the infant can distinguish his mother form other young females; by the end of the first year of life, the infant recognizes, and can modulate his reaction to, a range of individuals in his environment. And by the age of two or so, the toddler is able to make all manner of group discriminations: male vs. female, young vs. old, familiar vs. unfamiliar, and, most revealingly, classification of members of different racial and ethnic groups.
We are wired to make such distinctions readily; indeed our survival depends upon our ability to distinguish among those who are likely to help and nourish us, and those who might do us harm. But the messages in our particular environment determine how we will label particular individuals or groups. Our own experiences, and the attitudes displayed by the peers and elders to whom we are closest, determine whether we like, admire, or respect certain individuals and groups; or whether, on the contrary, we come to shun, fear, or even hate these individuals.
At a time when human beings met only a few hundred people at the most, the nature of their interpersonal or inter-group attitudes was of less moment. But we live in an era when nearly every individual is likely to encounter thousands of individuals personally, and when billions of people have the option of travelling abroad or of encountering individuals from remote cultures through visual or digital media.
A person possessed of a respectful mind welcomes this exposure to diverse persons and groups. Such a person wants to meet, get to know, and come to like individuals from remote quarters. A truly cosmopolitan individual gives others the benefit of doubt; displays initial trust; tries to form links; avoids prejudicial judgments. To be sure, such a posture is not uncritical or automatic; it is possible for another individual to lose one’s respect, even to earn one’s distrust or hatred. But the respectful mind starts with an assumption that diversity is positive, and that the world would be a better place if individuals seek to respect one another.
The threats to respect are intolerance and prejudice. A prejudiced person has preconceived ideas about individuals and groups, and resists bracketing those preconceptions. If I am a disrespectful straight white American and you are German, or a black, or a homosexual, I will assume that you are no good, distance myself, miss no opportunity to put you down verbally or physically. An intolerant person has a very low threshold for unfamiliarity; the default assumption is that “strange is bad.” No matter what you look like or who you are, if I don’t already have a reason to embrace you, I won’t.
Sham forms of respect exist. For example, I might “kiss up and kick down”. That is, so long as you have power over me, or can do me a favor, I will treat you well; but once I am in a more important position, I won’t give you the time of day. Or I might respect you publicly, but once you have left the room, I will make fun of you or the group to which you belong.
It is not easy to come to respect others whom you have feared, distrusted, or disliked. Yet, in an interconnected world, such a potential for growth, for freshly-forged or freshly-renewed respect, is crucial. In war torn lands, commissions of truth and reconciliation have taken on deserved importance; and at least at times, they succeed in reconstituting ties that have been badly frayed. When countries have been at loggerheads, common athletic events (ping pong diplomacy between Chinese and Americans) or cultural events (orchestras composed of young Israelis and Palestinians) can sometimes pave the way for a reconciliation with ‘the other.’ When it comes to the causes of terrorism, these are no quick fixes; only genuine respect, nurtured and earned over the decades, can reduce the appeal of terrorism.
The Ethical Mind The road to respect is paved from the earliest age, one brick at a time. An ethical stance is in no ways antithetical to a respectful one, but it involves a much more sophisticated stance toward individuals and groups. A person possessed of an ethical mind is able to think of himself abstractly: she is able to ask “What kind of a person do I want to be? What kind of a worker do I want to be? What kind of a citizen do I want to be?” Going beyond the posing of such questions, the person is able to think about herself in a universalistic manner: “What would the world be like, if all persons behaved the way that I do, if all workers in my profession took the stance that I have, if all citizens in my region or my world fulfilled their roles in the way that I do?” Such conceptualization involves a recognition of rights and responsibilities attendant to each role. And crucially, the ethical individual behaves in accordance with the answers that she has forged, even when such behaviors clash with her self interest.
My own insights into the ethical mind come largely from a dozen years of study of professionals who are seeking to do good work—work that is excellent, engaging, and ethical (Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, and Damon 2001). Most individuals admire good work and want to achieve it—that is, they would like to behave, and they would like others to behave, in ways that are ethical. But this wish does not translate automatically or smoothly into reality. Determining what is ethical is not always easy, and such a determination can prove especially challenging during times like our own, when conditions are changing very quickly, and when market forces are powerful and often unmitigated. Even when one has determined the proper course, it is not always easy to behave in an ethical manner; and that proves particularly so when one is highly ambitious, when others appear to be cutting corners, when different interest groups demand contradictory things from workers, when the ethical course is less clear than one might like, and when such a course runs against one’s immediate self interest.
While conceptualizing the ethical course is not within the province of most children, the building blocks for an ethical life can be identified: the words and actions of respected elders at home, at school, and in the community. It is so much easier, so much more natural, to develop an ethical mind when one inhabits an ethical environment. When adults are reflective about their decisions, and explicitly cite moral concerns, young people “get the message” even when the details elude them. But such an environment is neither necessary nor sufficient. Crucial contributions are made by the atmosphere at one’s first places of work: how do the adults in power behave, what are the beliefs and behaviors of one’s peers, and, perhaps above all, what happens when there are clear ethical deviations, and—more happily if less frequently—when an individual or a group behaves in an ethically exemplary fashion. Education in ethics may not begin as early as education for respect; but neither ‘curriculum’ ever ends.
Given the high standards necessary for an ethical mind, examples of failures abound. It is not difficult to recognize behaviors that are strictly illegal—like theft or fraud—or behaviors that are obviously unethical—the journalist who publishes a story that he knows is not true, the geneticist who overlooks data that run counter to her hypothesis. More subtle to discriminate are instances of compromised work—the journalist who fails to confirm a tip before publishing, the geneticist who elects quick publication over running an indicated control group. Institutions and societies can be undermined by compromised work as well by bad work; the former may occur more slowly, but unless the trends are reversed, the undermining of the profession is equally decisive.
My examples of ethics have been drawn from the professional world, the one that I’ve studied. But none of us are not simply professionals: we are also family members, citizens of a community, inhabitants of the world. In each case, the ethical mind must go through the exercise of identifying the kind of individual one wants to be. And when one’s own words and behaviors run counter to that idealization, one must take corrective action. I would add that as one gets older, it does not suffice simply to keep one’s own ethical house in order. One acquires a responsibility over the broader realm of which one is a member. And so, for example, an individual journalist or geneticist may behave in an ethical manner; but if her peers are failing to do so, the senior worker should assume responsibility for the health of the domain. I denote such individuals as trustees: veterans who are widely respected, deemed to be disinterested, and dedicated to the health of the domain. As the French playwright Jean-Baptiste Molière commented, “we are responsible not only for what we do but for what we do not do.”
Tensions Between and Among These Minds Of the five minds, the ones most likely to be confused with one another are the respectful mind and the ethical mind. In part, this is because of ordinary language: we consider respect and ethics to be virtues, and we assume that one cannot have one without the other. Moreover, very often they are correlated; persons who are ethical are also respectful, and vice versa.
However, as indicated, I see these as developmentally discrete accomplishments. One can be respectful from early childhood, even without having a deep understanding of the reasons for respect. In contrast, ethical conceptions and behaviors presuppose an abstract, self-conscious attitude: a a capacity to step away from the details of daily life and to think of oneself as a worker or as a citizen.
Bouke Mekel and Wim Kratsborn are writing on the script for the film ‘It’s hard to become who you are’. Before Christmas in December 2010 we did make the teaser for the film with students from the minor and the leading actress Duygu Akkaya. It was just a try out with a small part of the crew. We would like to see what would happen. It was for all of us an amazing experience.
Get inspired to give feedback on the meaning of the teaser and communicate about it on Facebook (mail first to m.tros@st.hanze.nl). Focus on the plot, the motivation, the actors, the setting, the image, the soundtrack, the target-group and the message.
The minorstudents of 2010-2011 sing about what the international minor ‘Create your future’ means to them.
Get inspired as a teacher to motivate students or as a student to motivate other students. You may make your own version on the instrumental version. Place your result on YouTube.
Listen to the song
Get the lyrics
My granddaughter Nicky had the idea to make and sing the song ‘Dreamland’ about the dreams and fears of a granddaughter and a grandfather. She did write her own text and I did write mine. Get inspired to write your own lyrics with the instrumental version.
Listen to the song
Listen to instrumental version
Get the lyrics
The To-Gather project was the source of inspiration for many songs. When I was in Damascus Kinda Tabbah and I wrote the song ‘I am a landscape’. She is an architect at Arabian International University and specialised in virtual urban landscape.
Get inspired to make your own clip with images related to the lyrics and download it on this website. It would be great to have different versions from different places.
Listen to the song
Get the lyrics
On 23-1-2011 Audiofeel played live in Paradiso in Amsterdam for an enthusiastic audience. In Paradiso all the big names in modern music played before such U2, Greenday, Muse, Radiohead, White Stripes etc. etc.. The band is involved in To-Gather in different ways. They perform and give a workhop at festivals. During the workshop the participants make lyrics to ‘Song for Europe’ and present this to the audience. They also give feedback on products and preflect on plans in To-Gather. Coming soon : Audiofeel at the festival in Torhout on April 8 and at the festival in Presov on June 2.
From 11-00h-14.00h. on 26-1-2011
Minor-students, coach Henk Visser, projectleader Wim Kratsborn, beatboxer Jarno and poppin-dancer Jeffrey presented the minor during the break. Also the band Vanderlinde played live and unplugged. For three hours the Atrium changed into To-Gatherland. The aim was to motivate students to take part in the international minor ‘Create your future’ in February 2012.
Watch the video
The relation between the individual and society is very complex and dynamic. We can look at the own person and/or theme from different perspectives such as the past, the future, the theory and the reality. This is also good work in systems-thinking. Inspired by the idea of Henk Visser I developed and filled the idea of the Field of View further and used it as an organizer and an energizer to clarify the relation between a subject and the world.
In the middle is the bubble of the individual. For some young people the outside world is almost not coming on and others are the epic centre of what’s going on. Another way to use the Field of View is to place a theme in the middle and to look at this from four different perspectives.
In each field hot items may be placed and these are a kind of collective bubbles such as the internet, globalization, Europe 27, the free market and climate change and the Arab Spring.
Let’s take a look a t each field and the student Barbara Hoyng will make it more concrete in a personal way.
1. The Past
’When I was young I went to a Catholic school, because my mother was a catholic.
At that school I came into contact with the religion, the bible and praying.
When I was old enough to make my own choices about religion I choose not to believe.
I do have respect for the people that do believe, no matter what religion. I think this is because I went to the Catholic school and learned why people believe and want to believe.’
2. The Future
‘In this bubble I will explain the changes in my life.
I am working almost three years on my bubble of change, but I am not finished yet.
When I graduate after half a year, I want to continue with another study called The High Hotel School in The Hague, this education takes four years and then I am ready to work.
So I will take 7 years of work on my biggest bubble of change, the change from going to school, going to work and having a job.’
3. The Theory
‘In this bubble I will talk about the influence of economic parts of my life.
When I was growing up our family had no problems with money, my dad had his own company, my mom helped my dad and was part of the day house-wife, everything was good. But, this does not mean my parents spend all the money, had luxury life’s etc.
I am an only child and my parents had enough money but still we went on holiday once a year, went out to dinner sometimes and I had to look for an own job to earn and be able to spend my own money.
Now a days I am alone with my mother and we have to do it together.’
4. Reality
‘The opportunities of globalization are growing and growing over the years, for example I have Facebook, with Facebook I have contact with my family in America and Hawaii, programs and ideas like this open the world for everyone, give the opportunity to talk and communicate with people all over the world.
But unfortunately globalization is not always as fun as you think it is.
There are world disasters between different cultures which are not good for the society.
An example could be the it is much easier for terrorists to recruit people and set them to action on the other side of the world, by internet for example ; there were video clips posted on the internet of recruitment and treats. ‘
Young people are living in a ‘bubble’ and they decide what comes in.
Or is it something or somebody else?
Google for more information to ‘Peter Sloterdijk/ thebubble’
The most important aim of the project To-Gather is open the bubble for young people and to make it transparent. They should learn to make the right choices and become a ‘multiple choice identity’.
From: Five Minds for the Future: An Overview
Talk to be Delivered at the Royal Society of the Arts, London, October 11, 2006
