School of ideas

11:47 pm. 27.08.2019

A voice of crickets.

A song “City of Stars”.

A hug with my roommate.

A picture of the autumn in Hanoi.

A piece of reading on human brain and architecture.

A scan through the author of “The road less travelled”.

A sense of missing my family, my friends, my crush.

A smile with my classmates.

A hug with my Ajarn.

A school of thoughts.

27th of Aug was the last day I stayed in Thailand 2 years ago and I never thought I would be studying here for the next 4 years. I have got on so well with the life here to the extent that I feel I have been staying here for so long already. I am having an assignment in the Critical Thinking Course that requires us to present about the concept of Agenticity. The concept infers the tendency of human beings to believe in some abstract invisible agents which could control the universe, namely ghost, aliens, soul,…At first, I was very confused by the definition and some examples pertaining to this conspiracy theory, then I realized spiritual belief is also part of this mentality. Or to put it frankly, our faith in spiritual growth or love could be considered as “Agenticity”!? Whatever it could be, at least it is cool that I could relate the theory in class to my real life.

Today seems to be a long day with the full lecture on Civic Engagement but it was not long at all. I only asked my Ajarn for the readings’ information the day before, then she got back to me with very caring email “the main approach to facilitate our learning journey is experiential learning and project-based learning thus we are not required to read many materials but we are recommended to read further after some lessons so that we could understand them better.” The email can’t be clearer, and more responding. Let see what I have gathered today!

1. Be aware of timing_and know what to say.

I would say I enjoyed the entire learning day so much with twice of mediation and interactive discussions with my friends and ajarn Pannin! We were given 2 tasks for homework that were brought up into the “world café” table today to share ideas and grab some new thoughts. For the “Exploring Thammasat” assignment, individuals need to express what are the most surprising issue in the community and why there is such problem being ongoing. With the intention to let us go through others’ findings and get more contextual understanding, the task stimulates our ability to think through and make thoughtful decision as well as be on time.

In the first part of the world café, each of us must summarize our clipping news to the group, chosen as one of the most compelling issues in Thailand or in the world. The sharing tests our memory and understanding of the articles, some of my groupmates didn’t even read them all, I found my article boring initially, either, yet I forced myself to go through it, otherwise I wouldn’t know what I am going to talk about then. People might not get the idea of my summary but inside myself there would not be any feeling of guilty for not taking the responsibility in the first place. And furthermore, the articulation on the things is always difficult and requires practice, too. Sometimes, it’s fun to turn things upside down to see how much we could imagine but I am not favored of debating to end up solving nothing.

Once the ambassadors and hosts’ performances are done, representatives of groups will give a 1-minute presentation explaining our beautiful hand-written plus doodling paper. We have different concerns but we are all having some awareness about the existing issues around our life from the water crisis, road dead, suicide, fire forest, to the big events like investment on nuclear power, AI products or human rights violation, etc. I started my talk by saying people are getting more ambition in the current “superficial world” which contributed to my run-out-of-time speech eventually.

Here are the 2 points I have now: Firstly, there is a balance in the mindset, instead of inequality in this world actually, among those who are striving for peace and justice, and the rest who are on the other side, and not excluding the neutral group who don’t give a * on any problem for many reasons. Maybe their acts are right for their belief system, and our own thoughts resonate with our course of action, the more we are trying to stop them who started their life differently from ours, the more they are becoming more aggressive towards the nature and the humanity? Therefore, what is right or wrong remains a question to me, rules or scientific evidence are permanently relative though. Secondly, I need more practice in delivering the presentation in 1 minute to express the points coherently and on time! Seek the level of turning the practice into unconscious mind, go give more practice!

2. Be grounded to be connected and be loved.

There was no point in class directly about love but it’s just my own relating to how the class was designed and how my Ajarn responded to many of our childish behaviors. Some confessed we are mature and responsible enough to be the “hero” to control the noise. I love the way Ajarn Pannin listened to us and suggested the most peaceful solutions to make a deal! No one was offended, no judgement but mutual respect is always put as priority in class. We began the afternoon by catching up with some projects’ sharing from our seniors, accordingly, we all get ourselves better-mentally prepared for the upcoming social project on the community, and for the fieldtrips. I like the advice that said we should not draw big things at the start but let start from small things and from the community around in this campus. This is true!

The idea then in the break popped up is that whether the Civic Engagement concept in particular and Social Entrepreneurship concept in general are taught in other faculties in Thammasat Uni because I see the important and practical impacts of these areas for any individual living in this current network society. Besides the academic knowledge and the in-depth research on complex theories, what could be applied into the reality? What could be the companion for us later on to adapt ourselves to the disruptive “incidents”? What is the basic need of a human to survive and to live a life with a purpose? Oh yeah, what goes first according to the Maslow’s Hierarchy of need is the need of Self-actualization. What to do to meet that need?

The thing is to set ourselves on the ground first before dreaming of doing anything big by learning the concept of global citizenship. A global citizenship, it can be a common sense now since my first time to know about it was 3 years ago already but I would like to say it again for the super relevance to the real life at the moment, should include the cultivation of awareness of self and society. Knowing ourselves is to know the next steps to actualize the sense of joy, and knowing the world is to see there are stuff to do and there are values to learn and create.

A call for action: Let spread the ideology of civic engagement and social entrepreneurship further & deeper to TU community, other communities, and particularly my country- Vietnam needs this implementation!

The remaining part of the class is the group discussions Sustainable Development Goals. I never picked some “big goals” like partnerships or institutions other than goals concerning education, environment, poverty or some tangible goals which I am more familiar with, and today my group worked on clarifying why Goal 16 is important. Goal 16 is called “Peace, Justice, strong institutions” that puts an emphasis on the sense of law system and global governance in order to address such chaotic situations as criminality, human right violation, and insecurity,etc also to maintain the stability and peace for the globe. There is no doubt that these regulating parties have the power to set up boundaries to control unethical acts, individuals seemingly don’t have enough strong voice to make world-changing waves. One slogan as the conclusion of the pitch of my team I came up with is “No law, no peace”, this is funny but correct!

A quote of the day:

We are mature and responsible enough to respect others. Let’s be the heroes together!

- Ajarn Pannin -

#curiosity

#enjoyment

#schoolofideas