Yo-Yo Ma, a very well-known American cellist, recently spoke to World Post on the need for empathy, the place for arts and literature, and the need for education to move from STEM to STEAM. His article can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoyo-ma/behind-the-cello_b_4603748.html.
Some of his critical remarks are reproduced here, the connection to Honour being that to honour each other, we need empathy. A full sense of his thinking is best obtained by reading the full article.
“Advances in neurobiology now make it clear that we humans have dual neural pathways, one for critical thinking and one for empathetic thinking. Only one pathway can be activated at a time, so when one is on, the other is off. Yet we are also aware that wise and balanced judgment results from integrating the critical and empathetic, taking emotions as well as reason into account. While this can’t be done it tandem, it does occur, we now know, through a loop-back process of layers of feedback.”
“This integrative awareness is especially important today as our science-driven, technologically advanced world is breaking down into ever more compartments, specializations and disciplines — even as the interdependence of globalization is creating more links with other cultures through which empathetic understanding is vital.”
“To be able to put oneself in another’s shoes without prejudgment is an essential skill. Empathy comes when you understand something deeply through arts and literature and can thus make unexpected connections. These parallels bring you closer to things that would otherwise seem far away. Empathy is the ultimate quality that acknowledges our identity as members of one human family.”
FROM STEM TO STEAM
“Because the world economy is so hyper-competitive, much of the focus in education these days from Singapore to Shanghai to American schools is on STEM — science, technology, engineering and math. As important as that is, it is short-sighted. We need to add the empathetic reasoning of the arts to the mix – STEAM.
“The values behind arts integration — collaboration, flexible thinking and disciplined imagination — lead to the capacity to innovate. A pianist skilled to both read and improvise music is open to listening to what is around him but knows that, to reach excellence, he needs to filter the imagination through the discipline of knowledge. When he performs, you will know instantly if he has achieved that right balance and it works or not.
“For me the most proficient way to teach the values of collaboration, flexibility, imagination and innovation — all skill sets needed in today’s world — is through the performing arts. If you have these tools, you can do well in any field from software engineering to the biosciences.
“Empathy is the other key tool. Empathy and imagination, the artificial layering of different realities, are linked. Empathy is your capacity to imagine what someone else is going through; what they are thinking, feeling and perceiving. That will not only give you an outlook on who they are — continually corrected by evidence — but also what your alternative possibilities are.
“Empathetic thinking is something that is severely missing in education today that is only STEM oriented.”
IT’S ALL ABOUT EQUILIBRIUM
“Finding meaning and living — all of what we do as humans in society — occurs in that brain space between life and death. In our industrial societies there is a great deal of controversy these days over what life is and when it begins and how we approach the agony of death which, in industrial society, we try to avoid thinking about. Therefore we spend an unbelievable amount of money on medical care in those last few years before dying.
“The arts help us cope with these issues by engaging, not avoiding, the deep emotions of intimate loss involved and retelling over and over again the story of the human condition and its limits. Only then can we can regain our spiritual balance and find meaning in more than trying to technically manage every aspect of our being from womb to tomb.”
WE ARE MORE THAN WE CAN MEASURE
“We live in such a measuring society, people tend to put a person in a box they can put on their mental shelf. People think of me as a cellist because they can see my performances and take my measure as a musician. I think of my life as a musician as only the tip of an iceberg. That is only the audible part of my existence. Underneath the water is the life I’m leading, the thoughts I’m thinking and the emotions that well up in me.
“We all get into trouble if we think the universe only exists of the matter that we can see and measure, and not the anti-matter that is the counterpart that holds it all together.
“Michelangelo famously said, ‘I liberate the statue from the marble.’ Similarly, my music emerges from the life all around me and the world we all share together. One is the condition of the other.”
Win with “STEAM”. Win with Honour.
Photo credit: http://www.tbo.com/storyimage/TB/20140331/ARTICLE/140339886/AR/0/AR-140339886.jpg
