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Waking Up to Chaos: The role of the global educator during times of upheaval
On the second week of our family road trip this winter break in Taiwan, I found myself staring at this beautiful rock formation, one of the oldest tombstones in Asia, dated five thousand three hundred years ago. My spouse turned to me and asked, “Do you think humans were smarter back then?” The date was January 7th, 2021 and we had woken up on the other side of the globe with the news of a storming of the US Capitol building by a mob of domestic terrorists. I thought about his question for a moment and then responded, “Humans back then had to understand their connection to the natural world in order to survive. They had connections with their family and next of kin, knowledge was respected and passed down, cultures and rituals preserved.”
As we drove back to our home city that afternoon, dreary rain fell from a gloomy sky, it matched all of our moods in the car. Unsurprised but still devastated that the democracy the global world revered had been chiseled away these last four years and put to an end with such an embarrassment to the rule of law and the US Constitution.
I thought about the differences between indigenous culture and knowledge and the life of the modern white person. Indigenous peoples today continue to strive to preserve their way of life and their connection to the natural…
