Shinto, situated cognition, and monism

25 September 2013

An upfront disclosure: I am agnostic. By that I mean that I am indifferent to whether gods might or not exist, whether there might be something after what we know as life, and other concepts that are typically attributed to the realm of religion. An important distinction, I am not an atheist, meaning that I don't deny the existence of gods. I am simply indifferent: Whether they might or not exist is simply not a concern of mine. But in being agnostic I have a deep respect for the power religion has on human beings and how deeply it affects literally all of us, whether you might follow any religion, be atheist or an agnostic.

With that disclosure out of the way, one of the most interesting concepts I've found in religious movements is the idea of integration with the whole universe. I was first introduced to the concept during a period in which I practiced Aikido for a year or so. Every class had a practice of the martial art as a physical exercise, but also short lectures on the importance of being integrated with the universe in order to execute the Aikido movements. Briefly, one of the main concepts behind Aikido is that you don't fight against somebody, but you instead let the energy of your opponents be directed against them. In order to do this, as my Aikido instructor always said, when the energy comes to you, you simply dissipate it by letting it go through.

How effective Aikido is as a martial art for street fighting is beyond the point of this post, but the point I want to make is that the concept of being integrated with the universe and participating in an overarching energy flow seem to have gotten to Aikido from Shinto. The concept is actually spread to a number of areas that have no connection to either Shinto or Aikido, a very recent example being Parkour, where people get through city barriers such as eight feet walls not by attacking them but actually moving in harmony with them.

Perhaps what is common to Aikido, Shinto and Parkour is the idea of Monism, or the concept that there is a unity that is inherent to all things. Where learning comes into the scene, I think, is with the concepts of using situated cognition permeate the learning process. I have covered some of these concepts in a previous post, but one example would be that learning is not about simply absorbing concepts, but it is instead about interacting with your environment to produce some kind of outcome. For example, rather than just learning a programming language, students will also learn how to properly ask other programmers for help or how to search for the latest tools that might help beyond what they learned during the course. In another situation, rather than simply learning about, say, racial disparities, one would take a course as an opportunity to be coached while actively working with a community to address sources of disparity.

The point in all of this is that the distinction between the concepts underlying religion, the sciences, humanities and likely anything humans touch is very subtle. Perhaps this is why I think that those strongly arguing in favor of a certain religion or against all religions are probably mistaken. Just look around and you will see religious concepts permeating all we do, learning included.

by Ricardo Pietrobon

About Me

My name is Ricardo Pietrobon and I am interested in big data and situated cognition applied to immersive distance education.