Vision of HOPE

Welcome

HOPE stands for Hierarchy Offering Power thru Education which is an attempt to VIEW the natural and artificial entities in and thru which we as individuals "exist" and "participate" during our lives

• as a HIERARCHY that highlights their different properties and methods, strengths and weaknesses, relationships and conflicts, direct and indirect,
• OFFERING a variety of potential pathways [eg. top-down and bottom-up] thru which POWER and information flow
• in the evolution of our common human calling to learn about ourselves, our role and place in the cosmos and the flow of order and purpose, potential and actual, through and around our lives which instills in us the perpetual sense of duty and reverence which have ever proven to be the aims of EDUCATION.

We hope

• that each of us can understand and/or play one or more specific roles in this great hierarchy and
• that, by bringing our specific roles together, we can learn how to cooperate and compete
  
• to reduce conflict [justice], promote peace [mercy] and reconcile all things [humility] in the great spirit of Micah 6:8 and Matt 23:23.
  

Why hierarchy?

In the western tradition, we tend to deny the existence and neglect the study of hierarchies in the name of democracy and equality. But in doing so, we have lost an important value-driven dimension of our existence.

The most powerful ideas of the nineteenth century denied or at least obscured the whole concept of "levels of being" and the idea that some things are higher [and lower] than others. This, of course, has meant the destruction of ethics, which is based on the distinction of good and evil, claiming that good is higher than evil. Again, the sins of the fathers are being visited on the third and fourth generations who now find themselves growing up without moral instruction of any kind. — EF Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, 1973

And, perhaps, the problems arising from our loss of hierarchies is not limited to the lack of "moral instruction" but includes the teacher's and student's inabilities to translate moral instruction at one level into liveable principles at another. For example, in our drawing, does the church have the ability to formulate, judge or determine policy considerations at a state or national level? If not, why not? If so, how? And what are the implications, either way, for education?

Levels of existence

We will find it useful to try to identify the levels in our hierarchy and to consider the implications such levels present:

• logos - the precursor for and source of existence and order - Creator
• cosmos - comprehensive existence and order [be it universe or multiverse] - Creation
• oikos - mankind's domain [from Latin domus=house] - natural planet Earth
  
• nomos - the wide range of "art"ificial human endeavors that manage the oikos - Community
• religion, science and regulation
  
• monos - the individual as member and participant in the levels above - Creature

It is noteworthy that our drawing shows logos both above and below the other levels ... surrounding them. What is the significance of this and of the arrows connecting logos above and below? Top down or bottom up or both?

Kingdoms and leaders

"Kingdoms"  organize the various levels and, as such, are an important concept in understanding "how" hierarchy works to bring order. "Leaders" are another way of organizing across the various levels within a hierarchy.

logos - reckoning, holding to account

God wants his world to be run through wise human beings, but God wants to hold them to account and he will use a wise, humble, creative, new-creational church to do that holding to account. That's, perhaps, the most central and important thing that I'm likely to say to you today. That's a really important ethic, I think, and goal. — NT "Tom" Wright, Leading and How the Gospel is Political 50:34, 2024

Flows of order

Some will find it odd that we refer to "flows" [plural] of order. What we wish to communicate is that order is the convergence of two streams: information and authority ... truth and power. Attempting to separate these two streams is dangerous ... but assuming they are always united is foolish ... believing they never converge may be the very definition of despair [ie. hope-lessness]:

Is the essence of truth to be impotent and the essence of power to be deceitful? And what kind of reality does truth possess if it is powerless in the public realm, which, more than any other sphere of human life, guarantees reality of existence to natal and mortal men? ... Finally, is not impotent truth just as despicable as power that gives no heed to truth? — Arendt

We sense that information and truth have something to do with education ... but what is the direction of its flow in the hierarchy? We also know from experience that authority and power appear to flow vertically in the hierarchy ... but in what direction and why? The drawing above is designed to help us think about the task before us as a mandate

• to understand and facilitate the flow of information and authority ... truth and power ... across the various levels of existence in which each of us participates ... consciously or unconsciously ... voluntarily or involuntarily
• in order to "reconcile" ourselves [as Creatures]
• with one another [to be in Community]
• with the other entities in the world we inhabit [to be in the Creation] and
• with God [to be in the Creator]
• to educate instead of coerce Is 11:9, John 18:36, Matt 20:20-28
  

Our vision is not new ... but still needs YOU

The task we have set for ourselves is not new to mankind, although it is increasingly foreign to our thoughts in these modern times after 500 years of inwardly turning focus that is preventing us from seeing

• the medieval great chain of being 
• much less Jacob's ladder from earth to heaven on which the two rails that held the ascending and descending rungs in place were duty and reverence — the very aims of EDUCATION we seek to promote.

 We will be discussing this vision and seeking to understand and amend it as needed in the coming year. Please consider any part that you may be willing and able to play in making it more complete.

more soon,
Bob Love

MORE to ponder

Vindication Of Natural Society: Or,  A View Of The Miseries And Evils Arising To Mankind From Every Species Of Artificial Society, Burke

In the state of nature, without question, mankind was subjected to many and great inconveniences. ... [Nevertheless,] man found considerable advantage by [a] union of many persons to form one family. ... This society, founded in natural appetites and instincts, and not in any positive institution, I shall call natural society. ... [Unfortunately,] man therefore judged that he would find his account proportionably in an union of many families into one body politic. And as nature has formed no bond of union to hold them together, he supplied this defect by laws. This is political society. And hence the sources of what are usually called states, civil societies, or governments; into some form of which, more extended or restrained, all mankind have gradually fallen.

 Picturing Power and Education in Nature as HOPE