Compassionate Humans

Rage against the machine

NOT!

Are we Human?

Are we Human?

• Are humans in the 21st Century compassionate?

• Are we educating students to be economic machines or human beings?

• What does the evidence say?

Are we Human?

Are we Human?

HomelessHungry

ThirstyDepressed

AfraidLonely

Neglected

Abused

Are we Human?

DecartesDewey

DarwinFreud

CopernicusDerrida Heidegger

Foucault

Blanchot

Are we Human?

Being human should be about using available resources to try to resolve society’s ills, being compassionate and preserving the world for future generation. At one level technology can help us to achieve this by sharing knowledge and improving peoples’ skills, but only if the elearning is designed to promote compassion, not greed.

Are we Human?

Are we Human?

Fearing or adoring technology does little to improve humanity. But it is not the machines that are the ‘problem’, it is how ‘people’ employ the machines to either advance society as a whole, or to exploit the masses so as to make the elite few wealthier still.

Are we Human?

Are we Human?

“I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume – a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies.” (Illich 1973a: 57)

Illich, Ivan (1973a) Deschooling Society, Harmondsworth: Penguin.