Rebuilding Collective Epistemic Trust
(Revised and re-titled from original publication titled Regenerative Education on July 6, 2022)
Epistemic trust is an important social developmental process; it allows one to trust that interpersonally transmitted knowledge is authentic and personally relevant.[1] In addition to social collaboration and well-functioning kinship groups, epistemic trust may also serve a vital evolutionary function for social learning, and ultimately the cultural transmission of knowledge.[2] In light of our increasingly complex planetary precariousness, however, our generation risks rupturing this epistemic trust if the cultural information we pass down to our children is no longer useful to them. A rupture of this kind of trust at the collective level could have profound consequences for civil society. In the clinical setting, the absence of epistemic trust can lead to the development of a variety of personality disorders. At the collective level, this could impede the development of prosocial behaviors like cooperation, and cause intergenerational mistrust, leading to a breakdown in our overall social fabric.[3] Prosocial behaviors like cooperation and collaboration, as well as intergenerational trust and respect, will be crucial if humanity is to survive the planetary health crisis.
During this time that is being called “the great transition,” we are in a liminal space, or the space between two worlds. The old is no longer useful for the future, but the new has not yet been born. What are we to do then? In his essay, Education Must Make History Again, Zachary Stein writes that “drastic educational crises that remain unresolved result in failures of social autopoiesis, and eventually civilizational collapse…Time between worlds – liminal epochs – always involve profound educational crises.” Aside from building emotional intelligence, which is crucial, the current educational curriculum does little to prepare our children for the future they’ve inherited. A new path is needing to be born. Thus, we have an opportunity to build something new and meaningful that is both useful for future planetary conditions and regenerative for years to come. To move from what climate psychologist Sally Weintrobe calls the “culture of uncare,”[4] we need to co-create a new culture built around tenants of care. However, cultural shifts require educational shifts since education is “the process by which society renews itself, including an intelligent patterning of institutional deaths and cultural births.”[5]
The current educational paradigm came into existence at the dawn of the modern era, and as Zachary Stein notes, “the shadow of colonialism hangs over all of the first modern innovations.”[6] Education designed for the industrial age is irrelevant now as students no longer need to prepare for a passive life on the production line. Building a new educational paradigm will require the integration and negotiation of care for self, care for the other, and care for the earth. What this might look like is complex, and can evolve over time as it emerges from the future. One thing that sticks out as needing review Darwin’s survival of the fittest; that only the fittest survive was not meant to encourage individual competition at all costs, but rather to foster coevolution, and ensure that the species that survive are the best fit for their respective environments. Our impact on our environment is currently degenerative, rather than regenerative. The result of this is not only our planetary crisis, but also our unraveling social and economic crises. While competition is favored within groups, researchers found cooperation to be favored between groups. Therefore, western culture’s continued focus on competition at all costs fails to represent the whole story.
Developmental psychologist Darcia Narvaez correctly states that the “USA is a nation of survivors, not thrivers.” In general, the knowledge being passed down to us is primitive in that it’s sole focus is survival. While survival is important, of course, it does not necessarily lead to happiness or a life worth living. The effects of merely surviving are detrimental to our physical and mental wellbeing. Shouldn’t human progress be focused on improving our wellbeing, rather than material advances. What kind of world might we live in if progress was defined as increasing human wellbeing, rather than material advances? To thrive, we need to grow in healthy conditions. At the core of any educational paradigm formulated around care of the self, care of the other, and care of the earth, therefore, should be healthy human attachment relationships, and resources for families and communities to raise children with this in mind. Early attachment relationships shape the way we perceive and act in relationships. It is well-documented that secure attachments serve as a significant protective factor against adverse experiences, promote healthy brain development, emotional regulation, confidence, self-esteem, sociability, physical health, and lead to better academic success.[9] Healthy attachments, however, require community. From an evolutionary perspective, humans were meant to be raised in healthy communities, or as Darcia Narveaz argues, healthy nests.
In addition to nestedness, education rooted in complexity and systems theory is also tantamount to understanding how everything is connected. This will enable better decision making and policies at micro, mezzo and macro levels of society. Decolonizing ourselves and unlearning all that we have been indoctrinated to believe as a result of the western colonial mindset is essential to stop the cycles of abuse because what we do to the other and to the earth, we also do to ourselves. Weaving in indigenous knowledge, education and experiential practices in rewilding, deep ecology and interconnection also need representation in any new educational paradigm to gain a deep understanding of the natural environment.[10] We also need resources to build prosocial groups and collaboration, as well as psycho-social-spiritual support for redefining who we are in the face of a dying culture, as well as deteriorating environments. Finally, care of the earth requires education in bioregional design and economic systems compatible with living systems to ensure that natural resources work with us, rather than for/against us. Historically, the only species ever to survive severe climate disruption have been species that have lived bioregionally. They understood the water cycles, the soil composition, the local flora and fauna, as well as the relationships between them. Indigenous tribes in Minnesota survived extreme winter temperatures, for example, by using a variety of strategies that could only have been learned by cultivating an intimate relationship to the land and other beings they shared the land with.[11]
Business as usual in service of modernity and the myth of progress that we’ve hung onto for so long is rapidly hurdling us off a cliff. Systems science has long provided us with enough evidence to reasonably conclude that the earth is a living organism.[12] We, therefore, have an ethical and moral duty to undergo transformational change in service of regenerative culture; to care for the living system that we know as our only home, and to rebuilt collective epistemic trust. The beauty in this pivotal moment in human history is that we can all choose to participate in the co-creation of something new, but the act of participation requires that we humble ourselves to the more intelligent workings of the universe and ecosystems that we call home.
[1] Fonagy, P. and Allison, E. (2014). The Role of Mentalizing and Epistemic Trust in the Therapeutic Relationship. Psychotherapy. 10.1037/a0036505.
[2] Granqvist, P. (2020). Attachment, culture, and gene-culture co-evolution: expanding the evolutionary toolbox of attachment theory. Attachment & Human Development. 23(1): 1-24, DOI: 10.1080/14616734.2019.1709086.
[3] Yong, E. (August 8, 2008). Why cooperation is hard for people with borderline personality disorder. National Geographic. Available online at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/why-cooperation-is-hard-for-people-with-borderline-personality-disorder.
[4] Weintrobe, S. (2020). Moral injury, the culture of uncare, and the climate bubble. Journal of Social Work Practice, 34:4, 351-362, DOI: 10.1080/0265053.
[5] Rowson, J. (January 27, 2022). Foreward to Stein, Z., Education Must Make History Again. Available online at https://systems-souls-society.com/education-must-make-history-again/.
[6] Stein, Z. (January 27, 2022). Education Must Make History Again. Available online at: https://systems-souls-society.com/education-must-make-history-again/.
[7] https://ecoversities.org/ecoversities/
[8]Kumar, S. & Cenkl, P. (2021). Transformative Learning: Reflections on 30 Years of Head, Heart, and Hands at Schumacher College. Canada: New Society Publishers.
[9] Hoffman, K. (September 20, 2019). Nine Ways Children Benefit from Secure Attachment. PsychCentral. Available online at https://psychcentral.com/pro/nine-ways-children-benefit-from-secure-attachment.
[10] Kimmerer, R. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass. Canada: Milkweed.
[11] Chanen, D. (March 4, 2019). How did Minnesota’s indigenous people survive the extreme winters? StarTribune. Available online at: https://www.startribune.com/how-did-minnesota-s-indigenous-people-survive-the-extreme-winters-curious-minnesota-investigates/506217201/#:~:text=The%20Athabaskan%20Indians%20of%20Alaska,the%20University%20of%20Alaska%20Fairbanks..
[12] Capra, F. and Luisi, P. (2014). The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
July 6, 2022