The Book of Yourself Newsletter
Issue 52: March 2026
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The more thoughtful and principled historians, commentators, thinkers and even so-called religious leaders, are rather unanimous in decrying the current state of moral atrophy and degeneration and the utter lack of respect for human rights and international law. What we might have expected to constitute a solid foundation built on lessons from the past, appears to have been pulverized overnight. Such atrocities as genocide, which were utterly condemned as the most abhorrent of crimes, are justified and carried out under the auspices of complicit global powers. These powers once gloried in being the champions of law and order, of freedom and justice. They prided themselves, for example, in having put an end to the Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide. But now they are perfectly at ease committing it themselves, exterminating a whole people for the sake of their pride, profit and pleasure, which is the most cynical, sinister and barbaric expression of evil. This stream of evil has its own long tradition, for it has been passed down from generation to generation since time immemorial. And what is perhaps worse, is that the victims of yesterday are the executioners of today, in an endless round of untold and mindless cruelty. That it is happening in such a blatant and brazen form is rather shocking, mostly because we have all been holding on to the belief that the general progress of humanity has been having an incremental civilizing effect. This is clearly not the case. On the contrary, the glaring discrepancy between the inner and the outer rather suggests that they do not move in tandem, but in an inversely proportional manner, such that the greater our technical and material evolution, the deeper our psychological and moral regression. This raises the question as to whether there is psychological evolution at all or we are condemned to live everlastingly under the shadow and within the prison of our conditioned and conflictive consciousness.
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K saw education as one field in which, in view of this entrenched universal human condition, a radical change could be brought about. For a new society, a new human being and a new consciousness are necessary if we are to move away from this destructive mindset and mode of existence. While the general notion of education was always as a means to bring about a new generation free from the flaws and errors of its predecessors, the systems and methods put in place lacked the depth of understanding and global vision necessary to dissolve the traditional factors of fragmentation and its consequent violence and sorrow. So one way to recover the meaning of education and its central significance in the process of human change and regeneration might be to remedy these fundamental deficiencies, beginning with a revaluation of its deeper purpose and function.
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“The function of education is to create human beings who are integrated and therefore intelligent. We may take degrees and be mechanically efficient without being intelligent. Intelligence is not mere information; it is not derived from books, nor does it consist of clever self-defensive responses and aggressive assertions. One who has not studied may be more intelligent than the learned. We have made examinations and degrees the criterion of intelligence and have developed cunning minds that avoid vital human issues. Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.”
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Education and the Significance of Life, pg. 14
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The traditional function of education was primarily as an instrument of social indoctrination and conformity to the established cultural mores and practices. Thus the individual would be trained to become an ‘intelligent’, useful and integrated member of society. But that’s not what ‘integrated’ or ‘intelligent’ mean in this context. Integrated does not mean well-adjusted to society, but without inner contradiction, and intelligent does not mean skilful in the acquisition and application of information and knowledge. It does not consist in clever responses, self-assertive reactions and being mechanically efficient. It does not mean passing exams and getting degrees. These are the general criteria for the measurement of so-called ‘intelligence’, but the intelligence K is talking about does not depend on erudition or even literacy, for it concerns the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is. For K, awakening this capacity in all of us is education. And the natural question is how integration and the awakening of intelligence are to be brought about.
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“Education should help us to discover lasting values so that we do not merely cling to formulas or repeat slogans; it should help us to break down our national and social barriers, instead of emphasizing them, for they breed antagonism between man and man. Unfortunately, the present system of education is making us subservient, mechanical and deeply thoughtless; though it awakens us intellectually, inwardly it leaves us incomplete, stultified and uncreative. Without an integrated understanding of life, our individual and collective problems will only deepen and extend.”
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Education and the Significance of Life, pg. 14-15
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Values are definitely one of the issues at stake. Just about everyone understands the significance of values in the overall ordering of human thinking, feeling and action. Human beings could be defined as purposeful creatures and values are the guides of our purposes. If the values are wrong, then the purposes are equally misguided, and the resulting actions will bring disorder. These kinds of values are perhaps the ones K refers to as formulas and slogans, whose inculcation does not affect either the understanding or the springs of action. Nationalism, for example, creates political barriers, just as the classes create social ones, and both breed antagonism and make for injustice, exploitation and violence. State education, or any education controlled by specific ideological, racial or confessional organisations, will seek to perpetuate itself by enforcing its tenets. The present system emphasizes the intellect but leaves us inwardly stultified and, emphasizing a subservient attitude and the mechanical operation of thought, it makes us uncreative. This fragmentary approach does not cultivate an integrated understanding of life, so our personal and social problems will continue. Such values are no values, for value means strength and fragmentation is the essence of weakness. So whatever structures we build on such foundations must fall. That’s why education should help us discover the ‘lasting values’ on which we can build a good society and a peaceful world. What are these values?
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“The purpose of education is not to produce mere scholars, technicians, and job hunters, but integrated men and women who are free of fear; for only between such human beings can there be enduring peace. It is in the understanding of ourselves that fear comes to an end. If the individual is to grapple with life from moment to moment, if he is to face its intricacies, its miseries and sudden demands, he must be infinitely pliable and therefore free of theories and particular patterns of thought.”
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Education and the Significance of Life, pg. 15
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Once I asked an old, experienced teacher at a K school what she thought was more important in education: the study of mathematics or freedom from fear. She said it was the study of mathematics, because that was bound to have a more lasting impact on the students’ lives. If I had had to make a wager, I would bet that K would have answered exactly the reverse, for the psychological invariably trumps the academic and pragmatic. But such a premise is implicit in our standard educational system, in which the primary goal is not the inner freedom and integrity of the individual but the acquisition of the cognitive tools to make it in society. K, however, is clear that the purpose of education is not to produce ‘mere’ scholars, technicians and job seekers but integrated human beings who are free from fear. He does not deny the significance of scholarship and technical training, which are necessary to make a living, but being professionals does not guarantee that we are whole and free from fear. The importance on the latter, as K sees it, is immense because only among human beings who are free from fear can there be enduring peace. This is not necessarily the case among those who are merely very good at maths. Just look at how good are all the technocratic oligarchs who are massively improving the efficiency of automated killing and accelerating the destruction of the planet through their data centres. But what is the connection between freedom from fear and peace?
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One way to understand it might be to consider that fear is a reaction of self-defence against any real or perceived danger. Its principal concern is with safety and security, so when threatened, the reactions of fear are fight, flight or freeze. If people are conditioned to be nationalistic, racist or class-conscious, and these identifications in which they have invested their security are threatened, they may either freeze, run away or respond defensively. So there is a connection between aggression, fear and the concern with security. And, K says, fear comes to an end when we understand ourselves. That means, more generally, that an education for peace and integrity must be concerned with self-knowledge. It is in the awareness of oneself that there comes the necessary freedom not only from fear but from the habitual patterns and theoretical constructs of thought, whose mechanical operation prevents the pliability needed to meet the complex challenges and miseries of life as they present themselves.
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“To understand life is to understand ourselves and that is both the beginning and the end of education. Education is not merely acquiring knowledge, gathering and correlating facts; it is to see the significance of life as a whole. But the whole cannot be approached through the part – which is what governments, organized religions and authoritarian parties are attempting to do.”
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Education and the Significance of Life, pg. 14
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The understanding of life is the understanding of ourselves. That is rather a big statement to make, as it implies that we and life are one and the same. If so, the total understanding of ourselves is the same as understanding the significance of life as a whole. This suggests that the principal purpose of any holistic education, however much it may necessitate the gathering, correlating and application of factual knowledge, is to bring about this total understanding of ourselves, of the totality of our consciousness, for it is in this consciousness, as he said elsewhere in this same seminal work, that the whole of existence is gathered. But the whole, as K says, cannot be approached or come upon through the part, which is what all kinds of organizations, from governments to religions, are attempting to do. The understanding of the whole requires a holistic, non-fragmentary approach. And as that is the key to such a transformative education, we must ask what is involved in it, for we most certainly need it.
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Be well, amigos, and ponder at your leisure on these beautiful challenges. Although K raised them within the field of education, what he proposed concerns us all, for it is the way of self-knowledge and transformation of the individual as the embodiment of the whole of humanity.
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Photos by J. Gómez Rodríguez: 1. Sunset (the dragon's silhouette), Ibiza, Spain. 2. Sunset, Es Vedrá, Ibiza, Spain.
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