I started to write this blog at the train sta­tion when I saw all the peo­ple look­ing at their screens. I could only awe at the genius of Thomas Fried­man, who already years ago con­cluded that the world is flat again. Look­ing over mul­ti­ple plat­forms, only one con­clu­sion was pos­si­ble: we live in a flat screen soci­ety. A two-dimen­sional approach to more dimen­sions and a two-axis way to inter­pret and store infor­ma­tion. We are caught in, if not addicted to, tech­nique. By tech­nique, I do not just mean tech­ni­cal instru­ments, but also the struc­tures and con­struc­tions that allow us to under­stand the world in a par­tic­u­lar way. 

Obvi­ously, when using a flat screen in this way, it gives rise to flat screen think­ing and feel­ing, if not flat screen being. Even when it is some­thing in your hand, it is dif­fi­cult to let go of the fas­ci­na­tion of such a pow­er­ful instru­ment. But when it is some­thing in your mind and soul it becomes both a dan­ger and an opportunity. 

The dan­ger comes from mis­tak­ing your struc­tured world view, your instru­ment, your tech­nique, for the real­ity, instead of a tool that you use to work with the reality.

If we mix those up some­thing strange always hap­pens, we get fas­ci­nated, hooked, addicted. We start to adapt our obser­va­tion skills to the tool. In other words, we start to pre-sort infor­ma­tion to fit in the para­me­ters of the tech­nique if we no longer view it as an instru­ment. This means we can­not clearly view the impact of our deeds or non-deeds have on our con­text, our orga­ni­za­tion or indeed the world. 

The oppor­tu­nity arises when you are aware of your inner and outer tech­niques, the tools you are using able to deal with all the struc­tural infor­ma­tion, with all the tech­ni­cal appli­ca­tions, with all the ‘orga­ni­z­able’ facts. It is not a self-evi­dent capa­bil­ity, to have aware­ness of both the tech­nique and the fact that you are using a technique. 

It is not the flat screen itself that has such a fas­ci­nat­ing influ­ence over us, but the under­ly­ing call from the future trans­lated in skills from the past. We even go fur­ther in say­ing that this addic­tion to our flat screen, so clearly vis­i­ble all over the world, comes from this real exis­ten­tial impulse, to be con­nected, chal­lenged, cre­ative, influ­en­tial. But, unfor­tu­nately, is mostly caught in the sta­tic nature of the basic need trans­la­tion of dynamic impulses. 

This is, in a nut­shell, the con­tent of the book Markku and I are work­ing on; How do we get from basic need tech­niques to dynamic skills?

Basic needs are strong dri­vers that have cre­ated a view of the world and a soci­ety that is solely there to ful­fill our needs from food, shel­ter and secu­rity, through under­stand­ing, belong­ing and sat­is­fac­tion all the way up to plea­sure and self-actu­al­iza­tion. These dri­vers were designed to enable us to take care of our basic needs in the world. They gave us a struc­tural, ‘orga­ni­z­able’ or tech­ni­cal view of the world, because this was the most effi­cient way to orga­nize our life, soci­ety, the world as a struc­ture of basic need providers. 

They have been mov­ing us for­ward to a way of life that tries to achieve the ful­fill­ment of those needs. Noth­ing more and noth­ing less and it has given us much to be proud of and happy about. 

It also has sat­u­rated our life com­pletely and influ­enced our infor­ma­tion intake in such a way that we view our life-style and the orga­ni­za­tion of our soci­ety, includ­ing our ‘bio­log­i­cal’ habits, as life ought to be. 

It takes an effort to think, feel and live out­side of the basic need focused world we have created.

The smart­phone is almost the para­mount of basic need design­ing, we have the world in our hand. It per­fectly fits with the basic need habit of pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion based on gain­ing, hav­ing and con­trol­ling, get­ting grip by fit­ting it in to a model or mold. It has given us a struc­tural under­stand­ing of live and nature. In itself a won­der­ful achievement. 

The prob­lem arises, when this struc­tural and tech­ni­cal under­stand­ing is con­fused with fun­da­men­tal and exis­ten­tial understanding.

Have you ever noticed that all the tech­ni­cal designs are sta­tic by nature? And that we have to adept to them instead of the other way around? Have you noticed that you have to trans­late your obser­va­tions into the para­me­ters of the man­age­ment infor­ma­tion sys­tem, thereby los­ing the vital ele­ments of your obser­va­tion? Most frus­tra­tion I have seen in orga­ni­za­tions or in soci­ety comes from this coer­cion of struc­tures, pro­grams, schemes, laws and frame­works, because they are sta­tic. They are not able to adept to the dynamic of live and the ver­sa­til­ity and unique­ness of human beings. 

This is all due to the sta­tic ten­dency in basic need dri­vers and this ten­dency is found, in the roots of every­thing we cre­ate with this mind-set, includ­ing tech­nique. The con­trol of life’s resources has proven to be the best way to guar­an­tee a con­stant flow of basic needs. 

How­ever, if we view this in a broader per­spec­tive, we can observe how this con­trol­ling, struc­tured way of life is reach­ing it lim­its. How come? 

Sta­tic inner and outer activ­ity has the ten­dency to become pre­dictable, stereo- and arche­typ­i­cal, because all ideas and inno­va­tions come from the same sta­tic source (The world is to be used as a resource). When source of inno­va­tion and cre­ativ­ity is in its roots unchanged, it pro­duces out­comes with sim­i­lar effects. Still a new idea might give us the feel­ing we are on top of things, we are hav­ing fun, we are in con­trol, even in the lead, we are using brand new tech­nique. It is a dis­ap­point­ment when it proves to be an illu­sion, not last­ing and some­times a shock when it has larger unfore­seen effects. 

We have to be hon­est in admit­ting, that the basic needs world view is not capa­ble of over­see­ing a whole liv­ing sys­tem. Basic need dri­vers are designed by evo­lu­tion to use the resources of the world, they are not capa­ble of stewardship. 

This may sound as a rejec­tion of mod­ern tech­nol­ogy or tech­niques, but it is not. Because if there is a real dynamic source under­neath it, a smart phone for instance, becomes a very pow­er­ful tool in change. Tech­nique and the tech­ni­cal world-view belongs to the basic needs era and it works well if it serves the basic needs of all. Our technical/scientific under­stand­ing of the world could well be the right plat­form to sup­port our next endeavour. 

For human beings, for the world as a whole, the basic needs era is a phase in the dance of mas­ter­ing the com­bi­na­tion of the two cre­ative forces: cor­re­la­tion and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. To learn the next dance-steps we need to mas­ter the art of the dynamic of life and dynamic liv­ing sys­tems. Some­thing that comes very nat­ural to us. 

At the same time, we have seen much fear and anx­i­ety, when we stim­u­lated peo­ple in orga­ni­za­tions to let go of all these struc­tures, believe sys­tems and ‘cer­tain­ties in life’. They went as far as ‘play­ing’ to dis­cover new infor­ma­tion, because it had no direct con­se­quences. Embed­ding this newly learned infor­ma­tion or skill in an exist­ing sys­tem or struc­ture is an entirely dif­fer­ent thing. 

Struc­tures, orga­ni­za­tions or tech­ni­cal sys­tems in par­tic­u­lar, have dif­fi­culty with the dynamism of infor­ma­tion, the dynamism of life, because it dif­fers fun­da­men­tally from our present ten­dency to break down all our obser­va­tions into sta­tic images, struc­tures, believes and per­sonal gain. The nice thing is al the sta­tic infor­ma­tion, has given us rel­a­tive safety, secu­rity and pros­per­ity, we are used to it, it has become some­thing worth­while, some­thing to defend. 

We also have to be hon­est about the dev­as­tat­ing impact on our planet and fel­low species our life style has. Even when con­fronted with the data of our impact, there the strong belief that the very lifestyle and its prod­ucts that cre­ated these chal­lenges, will solve the prob­lems in the end. Any idea, inven­tion or plan can only cre­ate or inno­vate what it is based on, what it believes. And our cur­rent world-view, it is very much based on view­ing the world as resource for our well-being. Many ‘inno­va­tions’ there­fore that are dri­ven by the fear of short­age of basic needs in future, still see the world or fel­low human beings as a resource for personal/tribe sat­is­fac­tion and benefit. 

It is an ugly thing to see how self-inter­est or com­bined self-inter­est can be most coer­cive and harm­ful by cling­ing on to their rights and gains, act­ing within the law, blam­ing oth­ers and find­ing all sort of argu­ments to stay sta­tic. And even more impres­sive to observe, how addic­tive hav­ing too much basic needs and how dev­as­tat­ing short­age of basic needs has become. 

The ques­tion towards the future will be: Are the deeds you do or not do based on basic needs motives suf­fi­cient? We think we will have to find some­thing closer to our being, some­thing more fun­da­men­tal. What is this ‘more fundamental’? 

Most peo­ple want to do good with all their heart. From this good­ness comes the real exis­ten­tial impulse, to be con­nected, chal­lenged, cre­ative and influ­en­tial. Why? They want to con­tribute, if they were not pinned down by basic need cares and basic need oblig­a­tions they would do so. If they would have another per­spec­tive on life, they would act. 

More accu­rate: In our cur­rent life-style sys­tem, the impulse to be con­nected, chal­lenged, cre­ative and influ­en­tial, is over­whelmed by our basic need skills. We are trained in pre­dictable con­trol and scripted behav­ior to be able to act. If the infor­ma­tion is more com­plex, too much, unfa­mil­iar or deep, we usu­ally react in an even more con­trol-like and coer­cive fash­ion. Every­thing is stream­lined and struc­tured: the more we orga­nize with tech­nol­ogy and the tech­ni­cal mind­set, the more oblig­a­tions and lia­bil­i­ties we seem to have. By far most of us are busy with the com­mit­ments of plea­sure, self-actu­al­iza­tion or even sur­vival when using our phone in a train sta­tion. We human beings are capa­ble of much more. 

A friend was vis­it­ing a school to observe their ‘method­ol­ogy’ in math­e­mat­ics because of their out­stand­ing results. The pupils had to study frac­tions. Their assign­ment was as fol­low­ing: You have seven chop­sticks divided them in a friendly way between two peo­ple, you have to find the solu­tion in your work-group and you have to make a pre­sen­ta­tion of how your group came to your answer. 

My friend was amazed about the dif­fi­culty of the task because this were young chil­dren. And quite frankly irri­tated by the remark “in a friendly way”, which he thought highly sub­jec­tive and also that there was not given any indi­ca­tion about time or way in which to present an answer. 

But the pupils did not seem to mind, they worked actively and with full attention.

My friend also had to work hard. He said he con­stantly had to move away from all his ideas about edu­ca­tion because of what he saw was going on: some­thing which he later described as active learn­ing. He also noticed that the teach­ers did noth­ing to help but were very atten­tive and obser­vant. Even when he could clearly see that one group did not do very well, the teach­ers sim­ply let the boys and girls struggle. 

With regards to the pre­sen­ta­tions my friend later said that this was the defin­ing moment for him to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between learn­ing and teaching.

These were the solu­tions they came up with:

• Give each of them three, but the fourth chop­stick you are only given every other week.
• Give each of them three and give the sev­enth away.
• Get another chopstick.
• You only need two chop­sticks so let the other three be.
• And of course, break the sev­enth into two halves.

But it has to be said that this last solu­tion was not approved by most of the chil­dren, because you can­not eat with half a chopstick.

And then the teacher said some­thing pro­found:” that is true, but we use frac­tions in arith­metic if we have to break the whole down into pieces to be able to do some­thing with it. You are able to share it or join it in a dif­fer­ent way. And for some things that works and for oth­ers it does not. So some­times it is a handy tool. Can you give me an exam­ple of what you can break down to use it?” And later: “ And join together in a dif­fer­ent way?” 

You can imag­ine the answers. My friend thought this was excel­lent teach­ing. But it had not fin­ished because now the groups had to tell how they came too an answer. Those lit­tle reflec­tions of the chil­dren telling about their col­lec­tive think­ing were won­der­ful, he said: “I had not pre­vi­ously known that chil­dren were so observant”. 

It became clear that the dif­fi­cult group, that actu­ally came up with break­ing the chop­stick in half, did not had a col­lec­tive intel­li­gence process at all. One boy already knew how frac­tions worked and told the oth­ers this was the answer and left lit­tle room for any alternatives. 

The teacher asked every group:” What did you learn?”

Among them­selves that had learned a lot of the prin­ci­ples of “frac­tions” and “whole”, allo­cate and join, which cre­ated an open­ing for learn­ing the tech­nique, was my friend’s con­clu­sion. The dif­fi­cult group started to men­tion all kind of social-emo­tional things. “It made it very clear to me that there was learn­ing, but not about frac­tions” my friend said, when he dis­cussed it with the teach­ers at the end of the day. But one of them said laugh­ing that in this case it did, because the group had frac­tioned. I thought this was very accu­rate under­stand­ing of the aware­ness of the whole, but my friend found it far-fetched. He had greatly enjoyed the school visit and it changed his whole approach to edu­ca­tion. “I really had to re-invent myself”, he said. “they some­how pro­vided fun­da­men­tal learning.” 

My friends under­stand­ing was: You need to be able to learn, before you can be taught. Whereby learn­ing is always activ­ity of the learner mak­ing a con­nec­tion to the prin­ci­ples of what can be learned. I know quite a few schools that are start­ing to explore this prin­ci­ple and the Finnish edu­ca­tion sys­tem for instance, has embraced most of it. Obvi­ously, a born teacher does stim­u­late learn­ing at all times, but most of the edu­ca­tion sys­tem is about teach­ing because that is the only thing you can mea­sure with tech­niques like exam­i­na­tion. It is also mostly about teach­ing to serve the for­mats and molds of our cur­rent soci­ety, more specif­i­cally our econ­omy. Econ­omy, a real prod­uct of basic need think­ing and believ­ing. In its cur­rent shape, so far removed from its being, that it can­not see the harm in using the resources of all, for the ben­e­fit of few. 

This is good exam­ple of how los­ing con­nec­tion to the roots of things, always, with­out excep­tion, has a harm­ful impact some­where in the sys­tem. It hap­pens when we are accept­ing the tech­ni­cal side of a phe­nom­ena as ’why it is’, we have not learned to con­nect to the deeper mean­ing and pur­pose of economy 

Most of us are used to view edu­ca­tion as a (eco­nom­i­cal) resource, to find a place in the world as it is. It pro­duces good results, even excels in a sys­tem dom­i­nated by basic needs cri­te­ria. We make use of what we have build as a soci­ety, by far most of it still based on what the world gives us. 

But in the past few decades we slowly begin to see the impact of this mind-set, using the world as a resource, behind our edu­ca­tion sys­tem on soci­ety and planet. For con­tribut­ing to the world, work with it as a part­ner, learn­ing is needed. 

My insight after hear­ing the chop­stick story was: Before you are able to use a tech­nique, you will have to have a con­nec­tion to the prin­ci­ples, the spirit behind it, on which the tech­nique is based. It does not mat­ter if this is a cal­cu­lus, a smart­phone, the econ­omy, or a project man­age­ment tool. Tech­niques can only serve you as tools, if you have your own con­nec­tion to the roots and prin­ci­ples that cre­ated the tool. Not how it is made, but why it is made. 

My being has to be con­nected to deeper mean­ing behind the think­ing, that cre­ated the tech­nique, to be able to use it in lib­er­at­ing way. I know, for our basic need skills this is a very abstract sen­tence, we want to have an exam­ple, we want an expla­na­tion, we want good teach­ing…… But for our dynamic skills, it is a nice exer­cise. Because learn­ing is acti­vat­ing a dif­fer­ent part of our­selves than the ones we are using when we are taught. 

Any­way, under­stand­ing of being is not a fixed, fac­tual know­ing (as tool under­stand­ing is), it is a con­stant dynamic learn­ing. But if we do not have an indi­vid­ual con­nec­tion to the roots of a tech­nique, it is not uncom­mon to lose our­selves in power and coer­cion of tech­niques. Many experts have this dif­fi­culty. We will become depen­dent and some­times even addicted to it, with all the rec­og­niz­able symp­toms. The tech­nique is using us. We become our tech­nique and in this there is no future. No way out of a flat-screen once you are caught in it. 

The impor­tance of the dif­fer­ence between teach­ing and learn­ing can­not be over­stated. Teach­ing is mostly the con­densed result of learn­ing from the past, with­out the orig­i­nal obser­va­tions and indi­vid­ual rela­tion to the source of the learn­ing. You can absorb as much teach­ing infor­ma­tion you can han­dle, pro­vided you also are able to learn: that is to con­nect the infor­ma­tion to its orig­i­nal meaning. 

We have to main­tain a strong sense of mean­ing of both our­selves and the infor­ma­tion, not to be over­whelmed by the coer­cive impact that tech­ni­cal sys­tem like gov­ern­ments, insti­tu­tions, our take on life, the “con­trol” of nature, etc. have over us. Learn­ing always starts with using our senses and then pro­cess­ing the infor­ma­tion. If there is just the teach­ing, like: ”this is how we do things”, “this is how it works”, or the tech­ni­cal moti­va­tion like: “You will have to do this” or “ this is how sys­tem works once and for all, I can­not help it”, we will develop no sense of con­nec­tive­ness with the impact of what we do or not do. We sim­ple have not observed the effect and there­fore we can­not under­stand it, in the sense that it has impact on us. We can think about it, but that does not mean we have an under­stand­ing of the effect on “being”.

Think­ing is the won­der­ful char­ac­ter­is­tic enabling us to use the data of ones learn­ing expe­ri­ence in other sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions (just like feel­ing does this with rela­tions.) How­ever, if we do not have an ini­tial learn­ing expe­ri­ence or use an expe­ri­ence in a dis-sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion, it makes us vul­ner­a­ble for the per­suad­ing pow­ers of tech­niques. Our doing or not-doing become abstract, the impact has no indi­vid­ual mean­ing to me and deeds will be moti­vated solely by per­sonal, tribe or orga­ni­za­tional benefit. 

Learn­ing is the skill to con­nect to the “being” of all that is, so there can be healthy bal­ance between mas­ter­ing the art of learn­ing and the tech­niques that are taught. Teach­ing is about tech­niques. Learn­ing is about, where things came from, what the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples are and why peo­ple start using them. Teach­ing can be done by teach­ers. Learn­ing I do myself, stim­u­lated by con­nec­tions, chal­lenges, cre­ativ­ity and influence. 

The result of too lit­tle learn­ing is, tech­niques are fre­quently mis­taken for indis­putable facts, for truths, for “this is how it is” instead of “this is our cur­rent tool to deal with the real­ity”. That is quite a dif­fer­ence, because if we see a tech­nique as a tool, it is there to serve us in any given sit­u­a­tion, it can change, it adapts or we can use some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent is that is more effective. 

If it is not a tool but a fact of live, a fact of being, then I have to adapt then I have to learn to work with it, con­nect to it and let its pur­pose flow through me. For instance: 

• Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is a fact of live, hier­ar­chy is a technique;
• Obser­va­tion is a fact of live, knowl­edge is a tool;
• Cre­ative dynamism is a fact of life, reli­gion is a methodology;
• Love is fact of live, being in love is a tool;
• Bal­ance is a fact of life, account­ing is a tool;
• Cor­re­la­tion is a fact of life, rela­tion­ship is a technique;
• Equi­lib­rium is a fact of life, laws are a methodology;
• Har­mony is a fact of life, cal­cu­lus is a technique;
• Indi­vid­ual being is a fact of life, self-actu­al­iza­tion is a method­ol­ogy etc.

Con­nect­ing to these “beings and mean­ings” is a flu­ent, con­stantly chang­ing thing. We are actu­ally very good at it, if we allow our­selves to step into this dynamic. 

How­ever, it is not with­out con­se­quences. If we fol­low pro­ce­dures, rules, sys­tems, orders when the real­ity in fact is ask­ing for some­thing else, we are dimin­ish­ing our capac­ity to deal with dynamic sit­u­a­tions. Usu­ally, we start to dis­like dynamism, place it in the cor­ner of sur­vival, where changes are dan­ger­ous and dif­fer­ent or unknown things might be poten­tially harmful. 

Rules, method­olo­gies, struc­tures or pro­ce­dures are designed to behave, feel and think within a cer­tain pre­de­ter­mined and mostly two-dimen­sional frame­work. In such an approach to life, all dynamic ele­ments are framed and fixed in order to fit in sta­tic under­stand­ing. They are not designed and equipped to deal with a dynamic sit­u­a­tion. Whether we like it or not, get­ting used to a very struc­tured lifestyle, that is lit­tle con­nected to the fine­tuned and inter­con­nected dynamism of live, is harm­ful for our­selves and others. 

But these triple loop facts are dif­fi­cult to observe in a struc­tured world­view, where all infor­ma­tion is reduced to lin­ear cause and effect think­ing. In a sin­gle loop world-view I am used to act only, if the change is directly threat­en­ing my sta­tic status. 

We hon­estly should ask the ques­tion: what has been the effect of impos­ing a sta­tic men­tal­ity on the dynamic inter­ac­tive nat­ural sys­tem of our planet? Because we are the species, able to pass on infor­ma­tion with words and sym­bols which allowed us to go beyond expe­ri­ence and instinct. This gift gave us the instru­ments to plan life and we have done so accord­ing to our basic needs. 

Progress over a long period of time has been sign­posted by tech­ni­cal inno­va­tion to help us to pros­per. We see this devel­op­ment going hand in hand with mas­ter­ing our basic needs. A period also defined by the shadow-side of tech­nique become more appar­ent as our tech­ni­cal knowl­edge increased. It is a typ­i­cal basic need dri­ven belief that the next gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple or tech­nol­ogy will solve the prob­lems that the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple and tech­niques cre­ated. In spite of the fact that the last few ages have shown quite the oppo­site. It is how we see the future: a pro­jec­tion of the solved prob­lems of today in an effort­less par­adise of plea­sure and per­sonal well-being. This belief makes it dif­fi­cult to accept that our planet is ask­ing us to change our view on life and world as a basic need provider. You know, we are fine. Tech­nol­ogy brought us the ful­fil­ment of our basic needs and it grants the pos­si­bil­ity to learn beyond its lim­its, if we shift our objective. 

All the prob­lems arise, because it sim­ply is not in the basic need sys­tem aware­ness to share equally, to take the next step away from just per­sonal ful­fil­ment or change our sta­tic into a dynamic life-style.

The world is not fine, our fel­low species and the very sys­tem that is sup­port­ing us, are not doing well.

Tech­nol­ogy might free us up from the oblig­a­tions of basic needs ful­fill­ment in future, pro­vided we human­ize it. Our cur­rent view of tech­nique can never bring us in the next phase of exis­tence as human beings, what­ever long­ing, desire and fas­ci­na­tion we project in our instru­ments. Nor can it dimin­ish its shadow side of coer­cion and addic­tion, because it uses the basic need par­a­digm, in which the found­ing prin­ci­ple is: the world is our ‘infi­nite’ resource, it pro­vides and takes care of us. 

But if we start to see our­selves as a resource, if we learn to mas­ter the dynamic skills, we already started using in a minor way, much more active and con­scious, our capa­bil­i­ties as indi­vid­u­als and as smart col­lec­tives can pro­vide the step out of basic need oblig­a­tions and its shadow effects.

The skills to become the resource of our stew­ard­ship would include:

• Aware­ness of the impact of our deeds and non-deeds on the whole (what do we contribute?)
• Aware­ness of the impact of our deeds and non-deeds on the whole (what do we contribute?)
• Aware­ness of the liv­ing ele­ment forms and struc­tures we make (do they pro­vide qual­ity live and living?)
• Aware­ness of ease (do our actions give free­dom and being?)

Just imag­ine the trans­form­ing effect these skills would have on our tech­ni­cal capac­ity and design.

Learn­ing those skills to be ready for our next task, tak­ing care of the world and all the life on it, is an ener­giz­ing perspective.

The world is no longer flat, it has granted us three-dimen­sional aware­ness for ages.

The mag­i­cal fond­ness we have for our tech­ni­cal achieve­ments could take us back to become two-dimen­sional, flat-screen beings again, or we could take the step to become con­nected, chal­lenged, cre­ative and influ­en­tial by learn­ing the mean­ing behind those designs. It would allow us to access infor­ma­tion of a fourth dimen­sion: future. 

Con­nect­ing to the future, is up to us.