Better Paideia: The foundation for the improvement of humanity.
* Paideia (παιδεία) in ancient Greek doesn't just mean "education" in the modern sense. It's a holistic concept that refers to the cultivation of the whole person – intellectually, morally, and spiritually. It’s about shaping character, values, and wisdom, not just transferring knowledge. It suggests that we are not just talking about schooling or instruction (μόρφωση), but about the transformation of humanity through conscious cultivation.
• To improve the “quality” of a society, of humanity, or of life itself, we must above all engage with the concept of “who” (the concept of being) rather than the concept of “what” (the concept of nature).
• Engaging with the “who” primarily means engaging with the deep improvement of paideia.
• Improving humanity through paideia is undoubtedly a time-consuming process, whereas through electronic semiconductors and microcircuits, it seems to promise a rapid process.
• However, the side effects, the irregularities in all the vital functions of the human world, have not even been studied or foreseen.
• We cannot impose the improvement of beings through external means alone. The only true and sufficiently enduring quality of “creating” (“ποιώ”) – which implies intentional transformation, not just activity, but meaningful, conscious formation – is built through “realizing” (“συνειδητοποιώ”).
• What is needed is paideia, not merely instruction, because instruction alters beings only superficially; it stops at the depth that only form possesses – hence the term “instruction”, “μόρφωση” (from “form”, “μορφή”).
• If instruction (μόρφωση) is considered the pinnacle, without understanding the vast distance that separates it from true paideia – and even more so from wisdom – and is praised within a society as the supposedly most important asset of humans, it will simply mutate, gradually leading to a dramatic distortion (παραμόρφωση).
• Instruction (μόρφωση) – or better yet, learning (μάθηση) – is valuable if we understand it through its original ancient word: “mathos” (“μάθος”). This form of instruction, “mathos”, meaning “with athos” (“με άθος”) – athos: meaning moral strength or virtue, that always entails a steadfast devotion to what is Right and Just – yes, this can be a foundation for paideia.
• But if instruction & education have degenerated into mere accumulation of information, artificial enhancement of memory for retention, storage of terminology, development of technical skills in hyper-specialized and therefore excessively narrow fields, without the ability for multifaceted associations on multiple levels, without a unified perspective, without the capacity for conceptual understanding, isolated in calculations and incapable of transcending them, without critical thinking, without synthetic function – then we are speaking of an instruction (μόρφωση) that very often leads beings and societies into utterly horrific distortion (παραμόρφωση).