Minister of Edification
Not everyone fits into the same mould, or allows the mind to be infected with mold—the age of customization of edification is now permeating throughout Earth.
Nothing quite like an incendiary device to spark ΩNE’s thirst for knowledge—those fortunate to have had a mentor/disciple relationship understands exactly what this means.
Traditional education structures which had served to modernize Earth into a globalized world, has now reached the end of its cycle—no longer serving the future.
Taking a page from the great Meiji Education reformer Mori Arinori, it is now once again time to reconfigure education—in this new paradigm known as—Enlightened Edification.
Mori Arinori—entry into Earth atmosphere—August 23, 1847—anointed to reform and rejuvenate the Japanese education system—founded upon a visionary mixture of stylized Western and Eastern edification protocol, resulting in a nation of literate, highly motivated citizenry—forging Civilization 3.0.
Born into the Satsuma clan twenty-one years before the 1868 Meiji Restoration ended the Tokugawa Shogun’s rule, very few Japanese could have ever foreseen such an abrupt end to over two centuries of peace, or the crucial role the Satsuma clan would play in the transition to Westernized Industrialization.
Moral education in a modern society, as Mori perceived, consisted of close horizontal relationships between people free from religious dogma or other philosophy.
Mutually beneficial relations between individuals means domestic peace—otherwise, society would always be in conflict, was the dialed-in frequency of his intellectualized intuition.
Indeed, friendship is one of the most cherished characteristics of Japanese society, in what Mori considered a positive element when comparing Japanese to Western societies.
Truly, he considered friendliness the essential ingredient of the teacher’s disposition—it was the duty of the teacher to nurture mutual assistance based on friendship.
A teacher’s worth should not be judged from the perspective of the subject matter being taught, but valued according to the human disposition—reflected in the following three traits:
素直 (sunao)—obedience—faithfully following the regulations of the school and the instructions of the principle.
貫禄 (kanroku)—dignity—instilling a sense of self respect to undergo the rigors of training while developing character.
親愛 (shinai)—friendship—the process of cultivating good manners among human beings.
A pragmatic visionary, he recognized the right of teachers to hold personal religious and political beliefs, while warning it was unethical for teachers to impart any personal belief-systems to their students.
Mori also advocated replacing Japanese with English as the national language while suggesting a dual-track school system.
First and foremost is the consequently important mandatory discipline of moral education in the earlier grades, instilling social cohesion and the notion to serve each other.
The higher levels of education were devoted to scientific studies based on principles of academic freedom, where the more adept student would progress as a matter of society’s flow.
In order for Japan to advance, Mori believed the Japanese language should be used in ordinary daily life, and English utilized in school, as it was better suited for scientific studies.
Clearly this vision for Japan was far ahead of the times—imagine what the world would have looked like today, had Japan been a bilingual nation at the outset of the Meiji Restoration.
Within the scope of educational reform, Mori called for loyalty to the state in order for Japan to compete successfully in the international arena.
He was acutely aware that people in the West united in the defense of their Nation State when threatened—regardless of social or religious backgrounds.
Here, the major unsolved problem of the nascent industrial education system for the Japanese was how to develop a sense of nationalism through the schools, without resorting to indoctrination.
For nurturing patriotism and the love of country, Mori turned to the historic symbolism the Japanese Imperial system—long reigning for well over 2,500 years of succession.
Further to his enlightened insight, he grasped the fundamental and critical Universal Truth—no group of people has ever been uniformly endowed with intelligence, morality, and physical development.
In order to protect the weak from the strong, societies make laws, which evolve as human intelligence improves—this is in harmony with the innate Japanese notion of gradual, incremental improvement (kaizen).
Since human inequalities will always exist, some limited form of government must be designed to serve all citizenry.
Mori felt Japanese culture also contained characteristics superior to those of Western societis, specifically fraternal love and paternalism.
Western individualism debases the culture into a form of utilitarianism, whereas the ties that bind Japanese society is based on mutual affection and consideration for others.
Mori also held the deep conviction about the progress of Japan being depended upon two historical pillars—broad support for the Imperial tradition—independence from foreign colonial control.
These two factors would enable Japan to progress by absorbing foreign elements in the modernization process while maintaining the nation’s cultural identity.
Despite the considerably harsh criticism of Mori’s values by traditionalists, his structure for education remained essentially in place until the postwar era.
The future of Human Civilization is clearly build upon understanding Hardcore History in the context of a constructed world, as the Japanese continue to build our nation forward, founded upon a true reflection of Japanese heritage, while internalizing all historic Edification Events—now a distant past.
The visionary Mori Arinori’s divine aspiration for the edification of the Japanese has been reawakened, compelling them to build a model society for all on Earth—look—learn—be.
