Connectedness Through Material Progress

Looking at the human achievements that ringed in the industrial world, some might discount the technological, scientific, and economic innovation by pointing out a perceived lack of spiritual progress to go along with it. It is often said that we have become overly materialistic, such that the Great Enrichment is largely negligible. Our material comforts are acknowledged, while the absence of human unity is bemoaned.

It is thus worth pointing out, as Montessori herself had already done by 1949 in her San Remo Lectures, that over centuries, the world has shrunken not only for travelers but also in regard to production, resulting in heavy interdependence of humans on one another. Think about it: while conducting your daily affairs – getting dressed, cooking food, waking up in a place of shelter, whether it be a house or an apartment – how many things that sustain you were the product of your direct labor?

From clothing to food, from automobiles to the roof over our heads; the parts that cover our essential needs have been produced by people all over the globe, often not speaking our language, not accustomed to our particular culture. Yet, we are tied together in a growing net of interconnectedness.

Predating Montessori by roughly a century, social reformer Frederick Douglass made similar arguments, illustrating that this drive toward interconnectedness has been an enduring process. Douglass writes in the context of the Industrial Revolution, and refers to wind, steam, and lightning that were harnessed for transportation, engines, and electricity—the drivers of the modern age. He saw the potential for international trade to enable greater freedom by breaking down previously impenetrable borders, within which autocratic rulers could freely reign. Douglass was optimistic about the resulting spread of knowledge that would make it increasingly hard for tyrannic leaders to isolate themselves and their people. And indeed, compared to Douglass’s day, we now have very few regimes that can fully and sustainably suppress their citizens while blocking any contact with the outside world – North Korea being a rare exception (though upholding this isolation requires an enormous army that all but exists to control its own population.)

Regarding the changes in human connectedness in his own day, Douglass writes:

Importantly, this production-based move toward unity, as emphasized by Douglass in the context of ideas, and by Montessori, in the context of consumption, has occurred with no mention of us sacrificing anything to advance towards this form of connectedness. Humanity has grown closer through the Great Enrichment and is the better off for it. To elevate culture and advance civilization, one must have time to devote to intellectual and artistic pursuits in the first place. With the increase in economic collaboration throughout the past centuries, this option is now available to a greater number of people than ever before.

For Montessori, paying the industrial world its proper due was a matter of shifting our mental framing: we are united as never before; borders for both travel and trade continue to fall. Our error is a lack is in assigning proper significance to this fact and the positive ideas it entails:

Montessori aims for a drastically different sense of unity. Her vision realistically entails the need for a new kind of empathy: an abstract awareness and appreciation for humanity’s interconnectedness. This new conception differs from the “direct” connectedness that people were accustomed to throughout most of history, when social circles were generally small enough that each person could personally be known in the village or the tribe. But with the complex networks of supply chains that exist nowadays, tracing the origins of even as simple an item as a pencil becomes an elaborate undertaking, and the same can be said for the chain of people producing it—they are, and will remain, people we will never meet.

What is required for this sense of human unity is a paradigm shift towards acknowledging the beauty human collaboration. And not only collaboration in our own time: we can also acknowledge the collaboration of our ancestors throughout the centuries, thus enthralling children who learn to see themselves as a node in a vast network of individual efforts that collectively make up a stunning whole. Through learning about the many people before us who labored to bring about our present situation, children might also come to see themselves as a link between the past and the present.

This framework shift depends on a curriculum that values the great story of human progress and development. A curriculum that teaches the story of the human passage from tribe, to group, to nation; the blending of different ethnic groups in political organisms, as well as territorial expansion; the conquests of progress, and the interdependence of needs and interests. In fact, Montessori thought that children are especially suited to grow up with this new framing, which would give them the opportunity “to reflect on the beauty of labor carried out by others, whereby the common effort enriches the life of all.”[6]

One cannot help but wonder what society may look like if children learned to see the world around them with newfound awe for our modern marvels; from an increasingly interconnected, longitudinal perspective – an awareness of the long arc of past progress, as well as mindfulness for posterity.

Importantly, we must realize that new tools beget new problems, and our betterment has not come about without overcoming tremendous setbacks. But, a newfound appreciation for those past scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and institution-builders who overcame major challenges of their day and (at times, unintentionally) contributed to humanity’s flourishing, can inspire a new, industrially literate generation to not only cherish those efforts while looking back but pay progress forward as well.

[1] Montessori, M. (1956). The Human Tendencies.

[2] Montessori, M (1949). The San Remo Lectures.

[3] Douglass, Frederick (1854). What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

[4] Montessori, M (1949). The San Remo Lectures.

[5] Montessori, M. (1956). The Human Tendencies.

[6] Montessori, M (1949). The San Remo Lectures.

[7] Montessori, M (1949). The San Remo Lectures.