BIG Questions Institute Bi-Weekly Update

March 27, 02024, No. 169 (Read online)

"Dopamine Culture"

Hey,

In our newsletter from a month ago, we shared a reading link to Ted Gioia's post The State of Culture, 2024. Gioia identifies "The Rise of Dopamine Culture” — which caught our attention.

He discusses how new technologies are increasingly rewiring our brains to be in constant search of pleasure at any moment, regardless of how long-lasting it is. That dopamine hit that we get when someone likes our latest LinkedIn or Facebook post, or when we watch that 30-second TikTok video that stirs emotion in us. Tech companies, Gioia argues, are hell-bent on keeping us captive by addicting us to a need for instant gratification.

This isn't a new argument, but what is new is the way he frames the evolution that most of us born before the 1990s have witnessed in a crazy short period of time:

Seeing these dramatic progressions across the cultural terrain hit us. Yes, we are getting old, but "Slow Traditional Culture" doesn't seem that long ago -- does it? A scan of the far right column makes it uncomfortably clear just how much we've succumbed to the programming that the tech companies have been pushing the past couple of decades, and how much everyday life has changed.

The different categories impacted quickly led us to consider the implications for the ways we think about education and schooling.

Which of these three cultures are we currently oriented toward? Do we fight against these shifts or do we instead focus on how to best prepare our students (and ourselves) to put new technologies to good use (and what is “good use”)? What are the more meta-questions that a "Dopamine Culture" poses to the current institution and narratives of education? And how do we develop and maintain an element of "long-term" thinking about the impacts of our actions on the planet at a time when "micro-term" responses seem to be taking over?

It's a lot, but ignoring these questions and others like them is no longer an option.

If the goal is to balance or mitigate the many negative impacts of all of this (again, read his post if you haven't), you might already be banning or limiting smart phone use at school, and we can think of another important move to try right away: getting ourselves and our students outside in nature for some quality, non-tech time each day. All the evidence is showing that even short bouts of quiet time outside have powerful positive impacts on general health and builds our connection to all living things.

A challenge we’ve presented to some of the educators we’re working with is to explore what adding an "Education" row to Gioia's graphic could result in. What answers might you provide in those spaces? Why does it matter? What big questions arise for you?

Onward!

Will and Homa

What We're Reading

A few links to fuel your inquiry:

Landmark study shows that ‘transcendent’ thinking may grow teens’ brains over time by USC Rossier

"What the researchers found is that all teens in the experiment talked at least some about the bigger picture—what lessons they took from a particularly poignant story, or how a story may have changed their perspective on something in their own life or the lives and futures of others. However, they found that while all of the participating teens could think transcendently, some did it far more than others. And that was what made the difference. The more a teen grappled with the bigger picture and tried to learn from the stories, the more that teen increased the coordination between brain networks over the next two years, regardless of their IQ or their socioeconomic status. This brain growth—not how a teen’s brain compared to other teens’ brains but how a teen’s brain compared to their own brain two years earlier—in turn predicted important developmental milestones, like identity development in the late teen years and life satisfaction in young adulthood, about five years later.”

Rethink Wellbeing: Put it at the Core by Jeff Lippman

"But what I have noticed over and over again is that most schools never change what could be their most powerful tool in helping their students flourish: The academic program that rests at the core of the student experience. In fact, many schools have doubled down on so-called "rigor" as they respond to the pressures of the increasingly competitive college admissions landscape. These schools acknowledge that their academic programs are causing student distress, but act as if there is simply nothing that can be done. They ratchet up the tightly wound stress further at the core and then buffer the experience with services and programs that mitigate and cushion the negative effects on students. According to Dennis Shirley and Andy Hargreaves in their excellent article Going All in on Wellbeing:

'The hard truth is that our schools often make our children — and teachers — ill. Then, they introduce scattered initiatives, like health and wellness days, as a kind of carbon offset for the negative energy they generate. Most of these initiatives are silent on the toxic testing agenda or any of the other root causes of anxiety in schools.'"

Have We Reached Peak AI? by Ed Zitron

"I believe a large part of the artificial intelligence boom is hot air, pumped through a combination of executive bullshitting and a compliant media that will gladly write stories imagining what AI can do rather than focus on what it's actually doing. Notorious boss-advocate Chip Cutter of the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece last week about how AI is being integrated in the office, spending most of the article discussing how companies "might" use tech before digressing that every company he spoke to was using these tools experimentally and that they kept making mistakes. In an interview with Salesforce's head of AI Clara Shih, the New York Times failed to get her to say much of anything about what its AI products do, other than how its "Einstein Trust Layer" handles data, to which Shih added that AI would "be transformational for jobs, the way the internet was."

The media has been fooled, in the same way they were fooled by the metaverse, by the specious promises of AI and the executives that champion it. The half-truths and magical thinking have spread far faster due to the fact that AI actually exists, and it's much easier to imagine how it might change our lives, even if the way it might do so is somewhere between improbable and impossible. It's easy to think that tasks like data-entry, or "boring" work can be easily-automated, and when you use ChatGPT, you can almost kind-of-sort-of see how that might happen, even if ChatGPT really can't do these things, all because ChatGPT was, at launch, able to do impressions of things that almost looked useful."

Learn With BQI

New Two-Day Workshop! "Disrupting Sexism and Designing for Equality"

We're thrilled to welcome back Justine Finn for another powerful learning opportunity around "Disrupting Sexism and Designing for Equality: Frameworks and Strategies for Preventing, Responding and Resolving Harassment, Assault and Abuse in Schools" on May 1 and 4. How do we respond to the fact that in many communities worldwide, middle and high-school-aged youth experience the highest rates of rape, harassment, and assault? Get all the details and REGISTER HERE! Seats are limited!

Free Events in our BQI Community!

Join fellow educator-leaders from around the world as we tackle a wide variety of topics in our free webinar series. Here's what's upcoming:

"THINK TANK THURSDAY" on March 28 - our new informal gathering to discuss the deep and uncomfortable yet potentially transformative lines of thinking about our new liminality. (Not for the faint of heart!) This month: "Resist the Machine Apocalypse" RSVP HERE!

Will We Be in Your Neighborhood?

Homa and Will would love to connect at any of the upcoming events they're speaking at:

April 12 - BCSSA Spring Forum in Vancouver, BC (Will - Symposium on Student Agency)

WORK WITH US!

Let BQI help you unlock the opportunities that are rapidly unfolding in education and the wider contexts. Everyone is talking about the challenges and the difficulties that are breaking systems and people. Leadership navigates change with fearless inquiry, futures thinking, imagination, and diverse relationships. That takes new skills, lenses, and dispositions and we are here for it.

We help school communities:

create new strategic plans
articulate or update their school community's definition of learning
revisit their mission, vision, and values
prepare for accreditation
build the capacity of their boards and communities to navigate more effective and inclusive pathways into the future
plan engaging professional development for their staff

Why not think about having us work with your staff, leadership team, or board on some BIG Questions worth pursuing?

We're working to design healthier, more just, more relevant, and more sustainable futures for school communities. Get all the details here.

Onward with hope,

Homa and Will

Big Questions Institute Newsletter

"Dopamine Culture" and Schools