Meaning, Education, & Sustainability: Building connectivity through dissociation

• Main Author: Graham, Peter
• Format: Others
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/978621/1/Graham_MA_S2014.pdf.pdf; Graham, Peter <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/view/creators/Graham=3APeter=3A=3A.html> (2014) Meaning, Education, & Sustainability: Building connectivity through dissociation. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

This thesis addresses current unsustainability and role the education system plays in propagating and perpetuating a collectively acquired and transmitted habitus and praxis of unsustainability. The origins of the contemporary unsustainability are theorized as continually recurring collective traumas having a negative impact on cultural tools at the level of both individual and social mind. These cultural tools in their totality constitute a system of meaning that works to normalize unsustainability as the “right” way of being in the world. This ongoing process works to remove connectivity from the shared meaning system. Remediation is theorized as involving first, recognition that the cultural tools are more the result of historical accident than genetic inheritance and second, a process of dissociation between the self and the dysfunctional cultural tools. It is argued that there are many examples that would suggest this process of dissociation is already underway, such as educational programs intended to overcome mind-body dualities for example. It is suggested that the metric of connectivity can serve as a proxy for the healthiness of the social mind and that unsustainability might productively be conceptualized as a mental illness of the social mind.