Seeing an orbital picture of planet Earth at night you right away become mindful of 2 things. First how much energy is used to maintain the human experiment ; second, how inequitably it is distributed around the world. As James Lovelock latterly noted, civilization is energy-intensive yet the genuine energy that’s concerned in human existence can’t be seen as simply as the orbital photograph of our nightly planet commends.

The real energy driving the human experiment is mystic energy. There’s definitely some link between the physical energy emitted each night by our towns and the mystic forces that are driving late-modernity, yet this tells only part of a much bigger story.

Much of the psychic energy driving the human experiment is bounded by traditions. In fact it is quite a plausible proposition to claim that traditions are energy streams that draw on energy from the past, condense and focus energy in the present and, like a torch light, channel and project energy into the future. The fibre optic cables and satellite transmissions that bring speed and flexibility to the planet and its globalising economy and culture, as well as the urban incandescence of the Earth at night, are in fact the by products of an invisible but clearly defined confluence of energy generating traditions.

Roots & Brooks

Rabindranath Tagore, one of India’s great poets, describes creation as an awakening, an explosion of energy. Not the normal Gigantic Bang, but something similar as Brahma awakens and its joy is limitless. The roots of the Indic custom lie in this expression of boundless-joy. Today this story has combined with many others like the course of the Ganges as it first meets the great brooks of Yamuna, Ghaghara and Kosi and goes on thru twists and turns, eventually spitting again in the monsoonal Delta of Bengal.

Similarly, the turbine engines of culture are alive with the dynamic dance of traditions, churning away like the great brook Ganges as it makes its ( untidy ) way to the ocean. The stories cultures tell themselves are the source of much energy, the dreams ( and nightmares ) that induce countries, drive business and government big wheels are way more strong than nuclear energy. The parables and metaphors that frame our comatose daily coming and goings are what we want to turn to when looking to rethink civilisation and our task in its upkeep.

The Academic energy bill

When you think of traditions as conduits of power it is possible to look at any social structure and ask about it: What traditions power it? Who pays? Are there alternative energy sources?

Take one of societies most complex and contested institutions: Education. Far from being monolithic education is a veritable power grid generating huge energy for the expansive and predatory economic and the cultural practices of a globalising world.

The energy of this system draws on an array of practices each bringing to the existing system energy in the shape of values, practices and principles. The humanism that drove education for hundreds of years has been soaked up by the practical wishes of a rapidly globalizing society. The pragmatic concerns of utilitarianism are at least in part off set by an opening up of democratic processes and a greening of the high school. Additionally , we also have the romantic convention putting the kid at the center of the learning equation. So we find humanist, practical, democratic, environmental and romantic strands at work ; all provide energy and work to maintain the coherence of the system.

And the cost? The humanist convention privileged the old elites, where culture and cash and power coalesced, the poor payed ; the practical, as power shifted from the old elites to the new, a new kind of education appeared and the user pays, eventually the poor are excluded and as cash flows upwards, they pay again.

The democratic offers a way out, as does the environmental : both come from traditions that challenge hierarchies, yet both are too fragmented to test the dominance of the practical, their effect is ameliorative but they contain the potential energy to challenge this dominance should a movement in the world-system set off a power failure – such a shift may be either social or environmental. And the romantic? Child centredness is powerful, as it’s the root of both soft and hard individualism, but it is too simply coopted by the dominant cultural elites, especially those looking for a cultural off-set for the vacuum made by the loss of humanism to utilitarianism.

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