Day 19: Ancient GPS

Source:

Kingley, T. (2016, March 17). The secrets of the wave pilots. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/magazine/the-secrets-of-the-wave-pilots.html?_r=0

What is Sacred:

This is an article about the wave pilots of the Marshall Islands. Ri-meto is a wave pilot. It may be a dying cultural practice but some western scientist have been trying to record the process to see what the science is behind it. What is not said, but what I was looking for is the idea of ancestral knowledge that is in a practitioner even if there is no one left to teach it.

What seems clear is that our ability to navigate is inextricably tied not just to our ability to remember the past but also to learning, decision-making, imagining and planning for the future.

Being lost — assuming, of course, that you are eventually found — has one obvious benefit: the chance to learn about the wider world and reframe your perspective.

Connection to Current/Future Work:
We are using the idea of non-instrumental navigation as a metaphor for our way finding through our Ed.D program which is like relying on non-written, non-scientific ways to get from one destination to the next through feel and decision-making and imagining and planning for the future, and finally reframing our perspective.

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