Education should be directed to producing genuine “world citizens” who are loyal to the Earth and the common good of present and future generations, qualities that are also required for an ecologically sustainable civilization. Becoming such world citizens requires cognitive, moral, and spiritual development on the part of human beings, actualizing their capacities for reason, love, and intuition. Let us examine the dynamics of education from a holistic perspective in order the show the fundamentally transformed understanding of power that arises from holistic educational practices.

Every human being lives in the dynamic present, that is, every human being lives within a pervasive process of recalling and synthesizing the past within the ever-changing present in a process of projecting a future on the basis of perceived possibilities. Thinkers from Kierkegaard to Heidegger to Ricoeur have articulated these structures of human temporality. We live only in the present, a present synthesizing its past and envisioning its future in an ever-changing and ever-renewed process of projecting itself toward that future. This same dynamic holds true of families, groups, societies, nations, and cultures.

With the development of a universal consciousness of human beings and our common history upon Earth, the dynamic of a synthesized past, in a lived present, projected toward future possibilities begins to operate for humanity itself. We can ask about human destiny, human opportunities, human possibilities, and our common human future: about the gigantic hope for a transformed human future. Education must take place with teachers as well as students, and within a context, that evokes development to higher levels of spiritual awareness in the learners.

Human beings possess immense possibilities for cognitive, moral, and spiritual development. Education, therefore, is about enhancing, refining, articulating and enlivening this creative process of actualizing these possibilities for individuals, for groups, and for humanity as a whole. It draws upon history and human knowledge in a dynamic interaction between the older generation and the younger generation directed toward a future of enhanced or transformed possibilities, including the possibility of living fully and blissfully in the present.

As Jiddu Krishnamurti affirms, education is not simply about getting a job or fitting into some role in society, it is also about how to live, about living fully decently and fearlessly with love, beauty, and order (1964: 9-13). The development of spirituality cannot be turned into an ideology or doctrine imposed by a teacher on the students because spirituality involves inward awakening that must be realized by each individual person. Teachers can point the way and institutions can provide a harmonious, balanced and conducive environment for spiritual, moral, and cognitive growth, but none of this can be imposed. As Krishnamurti expresses this:

Life is really very beautiful, it is not this ugly thing we have made of it; and you can appreciate the its richness, its depth, it extraordinary loveliness only when you revolt against everything –against organized religion, against tradition, against the present rotten society – so that you as a human being find out for yourself what is true. Not to imitate but to discover – that is education, is it not? (Ibid.: 11)

The fullness of human life involves the mysterious duality of human existence: we need to live fully and blissfully in the present while at the same time synthesizing a past within a dynamic projection of our lives into the future. Education is about both these dimensions, for the structure of human temporality – moving from a recalled past through a dynamic present toward an imagined future – is always about some future, always projecting toward some set of imagined possibilities, while at the same time living fully and deeply in the present. These two dimensions of our cosmic-divine situation also characterize the world: the blissful, eternal fullness of the present (what Whitehead calls God's primordial nature also reflected in the world) and the evolutionary development of ever-greater, more complex holistic systems (what Whitehead calls God's consequent nature). These two dimensions, as they operate in and through human life, compose the subject-matter of authentic education.

Perhaps most people, much of the time throughout human history, have experienced life as a nightmare of scarcity of resources, or the dehumanization of oppression of one form or another. History records experiences of domination, slavery, exploitation, war, hate and fear, clinging to a precarious and uncertain existence in the face of horrible possibilities of disease, suffering, death, and destruction. We may want to preserve some values, insights, and wisdom from the past, or an understanding of sacred scriptures, or some ideals of culture, but these preserved remembrances are invariably in the name of a better future, a future transformed in the direction of peace, justice, truth, love, community, and freedom.

Some contemporary Christians, such as Paul Tillich, Enrique Dussel, and Jürgen Moltmann, have understood the future in terms of God: the power of God and the call of God toward a transformed future. Moltmann writes:

When we speak in such an absolute and dominant way of “the” future which defines all history and therefore itself does not pass away, God is meant as the power of the future. The power of the future affects people in such a way that they are liberated from the compulsion to repeat the past and from bondage to the givenness of what is already there. To speak of the history of the future means to speak of the history of human liberation. That is the basic thinking of the eschatologically oriented hermeneutic of history. (Italics in the original, 2007: 106)

Human history can be rightly understood as the story of the struggle for human liberation in general. Several of the world’s great religions have understood history this way, as did Karl Marx who criticized religion as a fetter on the process of liberation. Since the Axial Period in human history 2500 years ago, there have been religious and philosophical thinkers who have seen humanity as one reality and history as the actualization and articulation of that one temporalized reality.

By the 20^th century the unity of humanity has become widely recognized and articulated in documents such as the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Authentic education is about human liberation into a decent future for everyone on Earth. It brings the experiences and knowledge of past generations into the present with a view to a better future. In situations of broad structural injustice, it is inherently revolutionary.

Law has also been a feature of most human societies throughout these past 2500 years. And thinkers have reflected on the nature and foundations of the idea of law in human societies. Is the law simply the expression of the arbitrary power of rulers or a ruling class? Or is there a moral basis behind the idea of law that makes arbitrary power illegitimate and only democratic systems of law morally legitimate? Ronald Dworkin (1978), for example, argues that the power of the law (legal coercion) only has moral legitimacy if it arises from a “true community,” that is, if the members of the community consider that the obligations to the law that are an expression of their community are: (1) specific to their community, (2) personal obligations binding them to other members of the community, and (3) directed toward the common good or welfare of the entire community.

If a community of people operates according to these principles, then it will be a system of “integrity” based on fundamental moral principles and the equally recognized human rights of all. In such a society, the common understanding of the citizens creates a social and moral harmony that is bound together and enlivened by the rule of enforceable laws.

It is clear that the conflict and chaos of the world as a whole today is linked to the fact that the world is not a community in this sense and that there is no morally legitimate regime of enforceable law over all nations and citizens that could establish and institutionalize a community of peace and harmony for the entire Earth. However, it has become clear that the idea of such a community is presupposed in the very concept of law.

The story of the human project as an emerging global community has only come to real prominence in the 20^th century, and in books like through Swimme and Berry’s, The Universe Story, we see that we can integrate the human story into that of the evolving universe itself. Yet the story of the rule of law within this emerging global community has yet to be fully told. How can the rule of morally legitimate enforceable law establish, enhance, and undergird a world of peace, justice, freedom, harmony, and sustainability? How can the human community as a whole appropriate a common past within a dynamic present of reflection and decision-making and project itself toward a future characterized by moral legitimacy and harmony?

Education, which clearly bears on enhancing the future possibilities of individual students, can also be about creating a transformed future for humanity. It can be about creating a harmonious civilization for all humanity on Earth, empowering both the individuals and the community. Indeed, every aspect of human knowledge, when taught, operates within this dynamic of a recalled past synthesized in a dynamic present with imagined possibilities for the future. If we study war, military training and strategy, we are similarly recalling a past and defining or imagining certain future possibilities. However, it is dawning on people worldwide that we do not have to study war; we can study peace and in doing so establish and articulate long suppressed possibilities for human liberation and a transformed future.

In this sense education is not simply about the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next through classrooms, books, lectures, and electronic media. Education becomes a universal process by which each of us and society as a whole engages reason and imagination in a dynamic process of learning from the past, and the horrific failures of the human project throughout the past and present, and exploring the immense possibilities for a future beyond war, poverty, injustice, and oppression. Reason, imagination, love, and intuition do not stand as opposed faculties, but rather as complementary powers through which the processes of growth and transformation are energized.

Reason here is not the tired positivist reason that erroneously constructs the world as a collection of facts and maintains that the future must be merely an extension and continuation of these depressing facts.  Rather, reason, with power of imagination, opens up a world of possible alternative futures, understanding the immense creative and transformative powers flowing through human beings that can bring very different futures into existence. Reason also understands that the very possibility of parts presupposes the wholes that encompass them.  Positivism fails to understand the creative power of values, principles, and imaginative vision within human life and history. The tired and unimaginative study of war brings with it a future of war. The creative and hopeful study of peace and harmony draws with it a future of peace and harmony.

Education is also about cognitive, moral, and spiritual growth. Across the board, psychologists and spiritual thinkers show broad agreement about stages of growth, the higher stages being fundamental to global harmony. It is understood that perhaps a majority of persons remain at the lower stages of growth throughout their lives. In Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” (1970), people are understood to have a primary need for “belongingness” that often binds them to their local community and its conventions. Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) and philosopher Jürgen Habermas (1979) call this lower stage “conventional.” Carol Gilligan (1982) calls this stage “ethnocentric” and James Fowler (1981) calls it “synthetic-conventional.” If one’s identity is defined by local religion, local conventions, national customs, and regional mores, then global harmony is not likely, since it appears from this level of growth that the other religions in the world and other national customs and perspectives are simply wrong or misguided.

These thinkers posit the higher stages of moral, cognitive, and spiritual growth as essential to universal  harmony.

Maslow speaks of self-transcendence, and Kohlberg of harmony with nature and the cosmos (embracing all people and cultures). Habermas (1998a) speaks of developing the capacity for dialogue directed toward mutual understanding, which assumes the equality of the other and makes possible the harmony of mutual understanding. He shows that the very possibility of language presupposes claims to truth, truthfulness, and normative rightness: making possible true mutual understanding among peoples. Fowler speaks of “conjunctive faith” in which truth is recognized as multidimensional and found in all faith traditions.

Spiritual philosopher Ken Wilber (2007) articulates a number of developmental stages applicable both to individual persons and the historical development of the human species. Lower stages include the “mythic self” and the “achiever self,” neither of which can harmoniously embrace the diversity of humankind. Higher stages move through the “sensitive self” to the “holistic self” to the “integral self” where people are now able to more and more fully embrace and affirm the vast unity-in-diversity of humanity. The educational process directed toward harmony must address the need for development toward these higher, more universal, moral and spiritual stages of growth.

But maturity also means freedom, autonomy in relation to that institutional framework. This understanding goes all the way back to Kant:

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use your own understanding!” – that is the motto of enlightenment. (1983: 41)

This effort to bring people to moral autonomy and maturity is fundamental to the purpose of education. But good laws under a universal social contract, Kant also insists, help bring people to moral autonomy and maturity. All three of these functions of good law are educational for the citizens who find themselves within the embrace of this law. The fact of a global social contract, establishing democratic world law for Earth, alone helps lift people from ethnocentric and partial perspectives to universal, more all-embracing perspectives.  Erich Fromm stresses the relation between the individual and society that, as for John Dewey, makes possible the actualization of our higher human potential:

Positive freedom on the other hand is identical with the full realization of the individual’s potentialities…. The victory of freedom is possible only if democracy develops into a society in which the individual, his growth and happiness, is the aim and purpose of culture…. I have stressed the psychological side of freedom, but I have also tried to show that the psychological problem cannot be separated from the material basis of human existence, from the economic, social, and political structure of society. It follows from this premise that the realization of positive freedom and individualism is bound up with economic and social changes that will permit the individual to become free in terms of the realization of hisself. (1941:270-71)

The economic transformation of global society under the Earth Constitution (see Martin 2010) and the guarantee of universal human rights and freedoms, permit people everywhere to grow to maturity. The making possible of a dialogue directed toward mutual understanding by the law (what Fromm terms genuine democracy) also lifts people out of their parochial, strategic, and instrumental patterns of speech and helps them actualize the maturity of genuine openness to the other through authentic dialogue. Moral autonomy (the ability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another) and openness to others through dialogue are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary, both essential features of moral maturity. The actualizing of positive freedom similarly helps bring citizens to a more and more universal understanding of what it means to be human and the role of a diverse global community in supporting freedom and the roughly equal capacity of everyone to live a decent, morally mature, human life.

The rule of democratic law is essential to this process. As Errol E. Harris declares: “If the implications of this scientific revolution and the new paradigm it produces are taken seriously, holism should be the dominating concept in all our thinking” (2000: 90). Holism is revolutionary holism, the source of our gigantic hope for a transformed future, for the emergence of new, holistic levels of human existence on the Earth. Education concerning the law must carefully study today’s law – its nature, strengths, and limitations.

Education must reveal the law’s role in our current conflicted and endangered human situation. It must also study the relation of law and the development of our higher human potentialities to the new holistic paradigm. It must show the potential of that law for contributing to a transformed and harmonious human future. It must show that this future is presupposed in the very concept of law. Power becomes something entirely different within this context. It becomes the power of life, the power of human flourishing, the power of living blissfully and fully in the present, the power of free people using their understanding without guidance from another, the power that arises from a holistic and harmonious community. It is this transformed conception of power that will inform the Earth Federation government under the Earth Constitution.

But I think it is clear that education does not provide our only hope. It will contribute substantially toward awakening humanity to its common vocation of becoming ever more fully human and creating a worldwide consciousness of world citizenship. Yet it is but one element within a holistic context that is creative, dynamic, dialectical, flexible, and in process.

The mechanistic world view of the early-modern paradigm made no room for teleology, for dialectical emergence of higher levels of synthesis, nor for the influence of the unspeakable depths of existence on the surface dimensions of existence.

It made no room for a future that is substantially different from the past. And, predicated as it was on the fragmented systems of capitalism and sovereign nation-states, it denied the holism of our human situation.

To affirm our holism is to affirm transformation across cultural, social, economic, and political contexts. By far the best model for this complete transformation of our fragmented civilization to holism is provided by the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. The Earth Constitution dynamically draws into self-governance the people of Earth, the Nations of Earth, and the wise and learned scientists of the Earth (in the House of Counselors). It sets us a holistic interface with the natural world that ensures sustainability across the board. It also implies a global system of education directed to holism through spiritual and moral growth of citizens across the world. Holistic transformation requires holistic education, but also so much more: a holistic world-peace, justice, and sustainability system. This is what is offered by the Earth Constitution.

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Works Cited

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Fromm, Erich (1941). Escape from Freedom. New York: Rinehart & Company.

Gilligan, Carol (1982). In a Different Voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Habermas, Jürgen (1979). Communication and the Evolution of Society. Thomas McCarthy, trans. Boston: Beacon Press.

Habermas, Jürgen (1998). On the Pragmatics of Communication. Edited by Maeve Cooke. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Harris, Errol E. (2000). Apocalypse and Paradigm: Science and Everyday Thinking. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Kant, Immanuel (1983: 41). Perpetual Peace and Other Essays. Ted Humphrey, trans. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.

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Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas (1992). The Universe Story – From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era, A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.

Whitehead, Alfred North (1978). Process and Reality. Corrected Edition. New York: Macmillan.

Ken Wilber (2007). The Integral Vision. Boston: Shambhala.