Why Gaia U?

Choosing how to go about your lifelong learning and finding the right support for this adventure requires a process of inquiry that involves both you and the various institutions that come across your radar as possibilities. Both parties are seeking a good, resonant match so that we all gain from the relationship.

How to find that resonance is the key question. From our experience over the last 5 plus years we are able to share with you observations about some of the characteristics of people who thrive with us.

You will have probably already noticed that Gaia University is and continues to develop as " unusual". Our associates are also often someway down the path of becoming spirited un-usualists themselves. That is they are people who neither prefer nor see continued, uncritical conformity with the current, dominant ways of thinking as either useful to themselves (or enjoyable) or helpful in the process of transitioning human cultures towards ecological regeneration and social justice. Interestingly though, they are not simple rejectionists, rebels and complainers. Instead they are inclined to acknowledge their own part in the great human experiment to date and know they are seeking intelligent means to liberate themselves and others from the hegemony and change the story for everyone.

They are likely to have a strong sense that learning and unlearning are critical activities in this liberation process and, if they are not already vigorous, confident, emotionally literate, self-directed and engaged learners who are also capable of designing and delivering effective world-changing action they are intent on developing these capacities as a priority.

Our associates tend to be intrinsically motivated in their work (they value the work for its own sake) rather than relying on extrinsic pressures (doing the work because someone else insists) and yet they seek out and value peer and mentor support from our community of co-creators, mentors and learners. 

Meanwhile some of them may not have done well or relish being in conventional educational settings. This may be because they were subjected to all manner of seemingly irrational 'discipline', thought control, bullying, isolation, prejudice and other oppressive behaviors and attitudes that blunted their genius and their appetite for learning. In some cases they may even think of themselves as challenged and flawed in their capacity for making sense of the world although, in the back of their minds, they really do know that it is impossible to make sense of the irrational cultures that currently rule the world.

Our associates enjoy working towards being collaborative and adaptable fish swimming in myriad small seas and avoid (and seek to dismantle) situations in which they are rendered insignificant by scale and hierarchy. They may be unconcerned if the government, the state, the neighbors, the mayor, their teachers and, sometimes, their family, thinks that they are doing the right thing as they have noticed that the people who are in charge right now are the people who got us into this hole so what do they know about climbing out? They seek to develop new ways of being and doing so that as their relationships deepen, they support those close to them as well as the rest of humanity to also find new approaches.

They like to add endless competencies to their skill-flexes (which may well include highly developed specialist skills) in order to have a broad generalist capability in the world. They agree, at least in spirit, if not in letter with Robert A Heinlein who is reputed to have written "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

If you can recognize yourself in the notes above then you are likely to resonate well with Gaia University. Welcome!