Why We Must All Be Scholar-Practitioners

Towards a Global Renaissance of the Science and Practice of Human Awakening

By Joe Loizzo

Have you ever wondered why the trend in modern science, scholarship, and practical expertise seems inexorably headed in one direction—towards more and more narrow specialization? I have. Since I was a teen, for some odd reason, this trend has felt so wrong to me that, in hindsight, much of my adult life and work have been dedicated to answering that question and reversing the trend. Here’s some of what I’ve learned and done on my journey thus far to bring the pieces of our humanity back together again.

Why We Invented Cultural Fragmentation and How It Is Killing Us

The modern fragmentation of knowledge and expertise, along with the rationale driving it, have become so pervasive in our culture over the last five centuries that we naively believe they simply reflect how much more we know and can do than our forebears. While most of us in the West learned to trace the drive towards “precise” knowledge and skills to the Greeks and Romans, historically our fragmenting approach is not only a recent trend but also a radical departure from the consensus shared by the ancient learning traditions that gave rise to our global civilizations. Socrates, Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Mohammed and Confucius each founded traditions of human awakening and self-mastery which were not fragmenting but integral in their approach. The common aim of these ancient traditions was not formulaic knowledge and technical expertise as ends in themselves, but the cultivation of a specific way of being human, characterized by the integration of self-transcendent wisdom, mind/body mastery, and compassionate ethics.

“[H]istorically our fragmenting approach is not only a recent trend but also a radical departure from the consensus shared by the ancient learning traditions… not formulaic knowledge and technical expertise as ends in themselves, but the cultivation of a specific way of being human, characterized by the integration of self-transcendent wisdom, mind/body mastery, and compassionate ethics.”