My purpose here . . .
is not to enter the complex and longstanding philosophical debates about the nature of selfhood and existence but to challenge conventional ways of thinking that I (and many others) believe contribute to inequitable and socially and ecologically destructive ways of being in the world. C. A. Bowers (1995) describes this challenge in terms of what he calls our taken-for-granted beliefs and practices that are largely invisible to us in the way that I have suggested technology can become invisible to us. Bowers writes:
People's thought processes and value frameworks are deeply embedded in the taken for granted patterns of everyday life. In effect, the locus of deep and long lasting change is at the preconscious level of a culture's symbolic foundations that provide answers to how human purposes and relationships are to be understood. Yet the primary agent of political action is the person whose experience and thought /value processes are at odds with some aspects of these otherwise taken for granted cultural patterns. Individual members of a culture may make explicit certain cultural patterns, such as gender discrimination in schools and the work place, but continue to reinforce other taken for granted patterns-such as the belief that change is progressive and the individual is the basic social unit. (2)Like Bowers and other scholars concerned about how education is implicated in the crisis of sustainability, I am suggesting that such "taken for granted patterns" must be identified and challenged in ways that would enable us to counteract the problems such patterns can lead to. In my view, the way in which we understand the self in Western culture (a way of understanding that is rapidly being transported throughout the world as capitalism becomes the dominant global economic system) is the most important of these "patterns," for our ways of being in the world are a manifestation of how we view ourselves as "the basic social unit," in Bowers' words.
The idea of a nondualist sense of self therefore becomes a critical tool with which we can identify and understand conventional beliefs and ways of thinking that contribute to the social and environmental problems we wish to address; it can also serve as a framework within which we make sense of how we live with each other and in the world we inhabit and assess our practices in terms of their impact on our communities and ecosystems. For teachers of writing and especially for those who make technology integral to their teaching, this nondualist sense of self can function as a foundation for pedagogy and curriculum in the same way that Bowers suggests traditional modernist notions of the Cartesian self serve as a foundation for most contemporary educational practices and systems.
Alternatives: Nonduality, Inter-connectedness, and Being-in-the-World | Works Cited