Eon (Sep 2022)
A Collective Imaginary and a Proposition for Change
Abstract
This article focuses upon young people’s negative stress and anxiety in an educationsetting through a metamodern lens. The driving question of this project is the recurring issue: given the many factors that stress young people these days, how can we address those stressors? The aim is to shed some light on what educators can do to help young persons who live with anxiety. We also aim to create a short publication of received responses to forward to education authorities worldwide. In discussing the issue, we are drawing upon our personal experiences, creative processes, and recognized research from multicultural practitioners in the disciplines of medicine, education, art, sociology, and philosophy. The focus will not be on theoretical solutions, but on practical, creative ones. Metamodern attitudes propose that past texts can hold ever renewed relevance for the present. Accordingly, this narrative is told in an epistolary format complemented by a questionnaire and contemporary responses to an essay written in the middle of modernity some 80 years ago by New Zealand born kinetic artist Len Lye in collaboration with British writer Robert Graves, “Individual Happiness Now: A Definition of Common Purpose”. Responding to Lye’s essay “in the now of immediate action” calls for a focus upon “timing” our “position” in the world and an ethics of care, as well as endeavours to “stimulate [the] dormant intensity” of the present.
