et us begin with a story. The art of Steiner tells us that it’s good to tell stories, and Reggio Emilia gives us 100 Languages in which to tell them; the science of Montessori is centered throughout its years around each of the “Great Stories”; the classical philosophy of Aristotle and Plato comes to us through the stories they told over 2,000 years ago; and the mysticism of Indigenous Education is premised almost entirely on the Dreaming and other stories. Let us begin with a story.
When Mankind was created, the gods or spirits or concise sets of inanimate, indifferent, universal laws—however you understand it—sat in a conundrum.
“Truly, we have outdone ourselves: what an exquisite machine.”
“Yes, yes, truly.”
“But, I say… How shall we finish the task? Surely, something more than a machine is needed, something much more is possible.”
“Yes, yes, surely.”
“We have made the tools, of course, they have been endowed. Perception and imagination; movement and manipulation; mind, emotion and creative potential.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“Well, perhaps Man?“Man”, in the sense this site shall use it, does not refer to a gender. Though perhaps now co-opted, the word comes from the roots *men-, “to think” and man-, manu, “hand”—the gifts that, when endowed with spirit, hu-, “breath”, are that which make us Human. can finish the job himself? For is it not that which is greater that the sum of these things in combination that would differentiate Mankind from the mere automaton? It will be the journey, then, that will awaken his potential, and that will make all the difference.”
“Yes, all the difference.”
“But with everything there at his disposal, what’s to keep him from simply realizing himself immediately?”
“No, no, then the journey would make no difference.”
“So we’ll have to hide it, then, the spirit of that understanding. But where?”
“Maybe under the ground?”
“Man will dig.”
“Maybe in the sky, then?”
“Humans will reach above themselves.”
“Maybe on the Moon?”
“Mankind will lay awake at nights, pondering upon her beauty, gazing and sharing their dreams with one another. The Moon will be too close to their hearts.”
“Yes, yes, it’s true. The Sun, though, is far away. Perhaps the Sun?”
“The Sun knows only how to give, consuming its very self to provide the energy of life without distinction. It will give every material it makes even in its last act of dying. The Sun would not keep a secret for long.”
“Yes, no, not long. The stars, though, are very distant and forever moving. Surely Mankind would not find its potential in a place so cold and far?”
“The stars are all suns, too.”
“Yes, yes, suns forever giving, of course. Where, then, will Mankind not look?”
“You ask where Mankind will not look, where his secret will be safe, where may be contained such a creative force as surpasses that of even the Sun and stars…
“We will hide it inside his very self.”
