What is Bildung?
Bildung has many interpretations and has throughout history graced many peoples on the path to self-cultivation – moral, spiritual and religious growth.
Central to the tenet of Bildung is the understanding of the duality of boundaries and burdens, autonomy and group, sophistication and grounding.
Bildung idealizes the future through the lens of emotional maturity and strength in ties to the past.
Bildung today.
I find the digitized world lacks responsibility and pedestalizes autonomy to the extent of corrupting our good nature. We forget we are bound by time and in time are only remembered as a result of our deeds – good as well as bad. It is my belief, even in a society far removed from itself, to exercise a sense of responsibility is to cherish old values no matter the amount of regard we may or may not receive in exchange. To have practiced and never preached, this is what I believe to be our legacy, to live on in the small ways we can within those who come after us, in the same way those before us do within us today.
The goal.
This is my endeavor – to bring to prominence the essential nature we routinely speak of but never experience. It is harmony I am after, I claim in no way to be an arbiter of good and evil, I hope instead to aromatize the flavors of life in doses big and small.
In time, I hope to grow this into a community of practitioners oriented to this way of life.
I will close by offering you a pointed resource, one that inspires and organizes my own journey discovering and rediscovering the Bildung way.
What is Bildung? - european association for the education of adults. Available at: https://eaea.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/What-is-Bildung-pdf-English.pdf