Hearts and Minds – A Collaboration - Centre For Peaceful Solutions

Maria Arpa

4 October 2017

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness Moments

I recently read a very interesting article by Bilal Hafeez that referenced what Harvard Educationalist Howard Gardner, calls the “Five Minds For the Future.”

Gardner talks about a different way of thinking for the modern post-industrial world. I was intrigued by the article but what struck me was that there was no mention of the heart connection. There is much emphasis on the intellectual process of communicating, and why not? It’s familiar, it’s comfortable and it’s logical. Sadly these days, heart communication is dismissed as less important than rationalisation but our ancient educators and philosophers understood the magnitude of the power of the heart.

Gardner’s five ideas are listed below:

The Disciplinary Mind – identifies what I consider to be structured, conventional learning like science, maths, world affairs etc.

The Synthesising Mind – is the ability to select and integrate ideas from different disciplines, particularly in a world where we are overloaded with information.

The Creating Mind – means outside the box, involves uncovering, enquiring and clarifying new ideas, problems and phenomena.

The Respectful Mind brings with it an awareness of, and appreciation for, differences among human beings and human groups.

The Ethical Mind – talks about the fulfilment of one’s responsibilities as a member of society yet without including empathy and love then the ethical mind can be served by a shallow sense of duty.

I propose the following additions as a contribution to being holistic which go beyond thinking and into feeling and intuiting. In this way, I use intuition and feeling as part of my compass and convert these sensations into language so that I can describe them instead of calling it thinking.

Heart Feeling – This is the power that gives weight, substance and common connection to all of the others and without it, the rest are just intellectualisations.