o connell unuiversities and humankind

UNIVERSITIES and HUMANKIND

Our Responsibility

J Bruner

Cultures Are

Knowledge Amplification

Systems

Adam and Eve?

Our Evolutionary triumph?

Africa: The Cradle of Human Knowledge

Across Mediterranean To China Cultures Deeply Challenged: New Knowledge the Result

Ways of Knowing

• Philosophy (the abstract mind) • Rationalism/Scepticism (not accepting realities that

are not immediately evident) • Religion (faith in divine revelation and social tradition)• Mysticism (experiences based on spiritual techniques)• Esotericism (intuitive speculation on cosmological

world-views) • Occultism (using psycho-physical techniques to

access hidden realities) • Gnosis (innate wisdom and understanding) • Science (experimental approach to the physical

universe)

The Great Library In Alexandria

The Library In Timbuktu

Political MapScramble For Africa

Humankind’s Great Intellectual Leaps

• Classical antiquity

• Renaissance

• Agricultural revolution

• Scientific revolution

• Industrial revolution

• Digital revolution ******

Some Consequences for Africa

The Continents: To Scale

• The land area of each territory is shown here. • The total land area of these 200 territories is 13,056 million hectares. Divided up

equally that would be 2.1 hectares for each person. A hectare is 100 metres by 100 metres.

• However, population is not evenly spread: Australia's land area is 21 times bigger than Japan's, but Japan's population is more than six times bigger than Australia's.

Tertiary Education

• The highest percentage of the student aged population enrolled is in Finland. Finland is 3.6 times the world average, with 140 times the chance of a tertiary education than in Mozambique.

Science Research

• Scientific papers cover physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, clinical medicine, biomedical research, engineering, technology, and earth and space sciences.

• The number of scientific papers published by researchers in the United States was more than three times as many as were published by the second highest-publishing population, Japan.

• There is more scientific research, or publication of results, in richer territories. This locational bias is such that roughly three times more scientific papers per person living there are published in Western Europe, North America, and Japan, than in any other region.

New Patents

• In 2002, 312 thousand patents were granted around the world. More than a third of these were granted in Japan. Just under a third were granted in the United States.

• A patent is supposed to protect the ideas and inventions that people have. Patenting something will then allow the owner of the patent to charge others for the usage of an idea or invention. The aim is to reward the creator for their hard work or intelligence. But patents can prevent people from using good ideas because they cannot afford to do so.

• A quarter of all territories had no new patents in 2002, so will not profit from these in future years as others will.

██ High income

██ Upper-middle income

██ Lower-middle income

██ Low income 

Un Poverty Index

One of Humankind’s Hopes

HOUSE

WORK

Family and Safety

Good Health

Potable Water

Transport

Renewable Energy

Street Children Begging

Child and Vulture

Child and Starvation

Environmental Challenges

Dennis Meadows: POPULATION

2030: A Watershed

“By 2030 the demand for resources will create a crisis with dire consequences

Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion. Climate change will exacerbate matters in unpredictable ways”. Beddington.

“Change is now ubiquitous, non-linear and persistent Hargreaves

1994: South Africa’s Triple Challenge

• Build a democratic state• Integrate itself into the competitive arena of

international production and finance. • Reconstruct domestic social and economic

relations to eradicate and redress the inequitable patterns of ownership, wealth and social and economic practices that were shaped by segregation and apartheid

• All of this while the entire world is changing dramatically

Dalin’s 10 Revolutions

• 1. The knowledge and information revolution• 2. The population explosion• 3. Globalisation• 4. The economic revolution• 5. The technological revolution• 6. The ecological revolution• 7. The social/cultural revolution• 8. The aesthetic revolution• 9. The political revolution• 10. The values revolution. Per Dalin

Seven Strategic Partnerships with Our Species

There are at least seven human development challenges that universities must champion. Governments can’t or won’t. They are:

1. To move humans in developed countries to understand that they have lived beyond their means and they must prepare themselves for a more humble future.

2. To move humans in developing countries to understand that they cannot use the developed nations as points of reference for their material expectations

3. To move all humans to understand that we must develop a wise relationship with our natural environment

Seven Strategic Partnerships with Our Species

4. To move all humans to think of ourselves as earthlings who must work together to secure our future. This implies an internationalist perspective.

5. To move all humans to understand that there is a direct relationship between population growth and the availability of resources

6. To move all humans to understand that there is a direct relationship between ownership, competence and hard work on the one hand and development on the other

7. To move all humans to understand that safety lies in knowledge and partnerships

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6

3

2

1

5

4

Service

Internal Cohesion

Transformation

Making a Difference

Stage 1: Personal MasteryDevelopment of a healthy

positive ego Need to overcome

deficiency perspectiveSurvival

Relationship

Self-Esteem

The I in relation to the We

Stage 2: Internal CohesionFinding meaning in existence

Balancing self-interest with group interest

Stage 3: External CohesionServing humanity and the planet

Collaborating with partners

7 LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Barrett

uwcA METAPHOR AND

MODEL FOR AFRICA

“What” do we want to say?