weekly Go Flip Yourself

If the culture in a school is at odds with its pedagogical goals, energy will be wasted trying to deal with the friction between these value systems: You get disruptive students and motivation issues. An educator might have an easier time if they found a way to align the peer culture with the pedagogy. But crafting aligned cultures is not how mainstream education works.

Culture is a catalyst. It multiplies the effectiveness of all other interventions and tools. A kid that grows up in an academically oriented family might use the internet to accelerate their rate of learning. The same kid in a different context might use the same tool to distract herself. Knowing how to scale up cultures that support us would be immensely useful, but it is a difficult problem.

“Children are biologically programmed to imitate the behavior of our older peers. There are no actions that an adult can take to rival the effectiveness of older children modeling desired behaviors for younger children.”

In the 1860s, Charles Baudelaire bemoaned what we might now call doomscrolling:

Every newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a tissue of horrors. Wars, crimes, thefts, licentiousness, torture, crimes of princes, crimes of nations, individual crimes, an intoxicating spree of universal atrocity.

And it’s this disgusting aperitif that the civilised man consumes at breakfast each morning … I do not understand how a pure hand can touch a newspaper without a convulsion of disgust.

The conception of well-being as value-fulfillment is solid enough to ground us in reality, but rich enough to point us towards a life that is about far more than simply staying fed, clothed, sheltered, and alive. Yes, we pursue health, longevity, and comfort—values which are directly provided by material progress. But we also seek meaning and personal fulfillment: a career that uses our talents and does good in the world; loving relationships with friends and family; the enjoyment of art and music; an understanding of our place in the universe. And we seek self-actualization: the full exercise of our skills and abilities, regardless of whether this is needed for any practical end.

In addition to physical exercise and my family fondness, walking remains important to me as an emblem of the sacredness of life. Humans think. Human feel. Humans move. 

We encounter others in our walks. The world – nature, cities, streams, forests – unfolds underfoot. Walking remains a primary way we go beyond ourselves.