Earlier this month, I presented a talk on Global Thinking, and why Unlearning is the starting point.
The talk referenced the book by Mark Gerzon, Global Citizens, who agues that "our vision of the world is outdated".
We all like to view ourselves as global thinkers, travelling around the planet Earth, aware of other cultures, keeping up to date on what happens in various regions across the world. But no-one has a passport saying “global citizen”. We are all nationals of defined countries, travelling with views of those nations, and thinking in ways that we have learned from our families, our education and faith systems and influenced by our particular domestic politics.
All of us have worldviews that we have created in our minds. These are “simplified narratives” that help us make sense of the world. Our circumstances and education systems teach us to live and think within various borders, such as those defined by Mark Gerzon as “Individual, Tribal, Religious, National, and Corporate”. Mark Gerzon argues that we all live within “a combination of these borders”, and that they prevent us from thinking globally.
Our economic wealth, minerals, food, and water derive from the environment. New economic models that understand that the economy depends on the environment must evolve globally. But first, we will need to pass through an uncomfortable time, an uncertain time, a time of unlearning.
Unlearning opens options. As Jedi Master, Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, who was faced with a task that seemed impossible, “only different in your mind! You must unlearn what you have learned”.
So are you really a global thinker, or are you one who wishes to share their comfortable and non sustainable reality and values, with others?
pic The World ex Flickr by Homies in Heaven
