Global Journal of Science Frontier Research, H: Environment & Earth Science, Volume 22 Issue 5

instant. Yet, there is much misinformation afloat – fake facts. Can our gifted and educated young, using rationality, modern science, and technology foster a wave of mass social action? Can they overcome parochial interests, misinformation, and conventional arrangements? Many youth think they can. How can the academy help? c) Higher Education The conventional view to problem solving and education, according to some authors, has been ‘conventionalized” and “normalized” – disciplined (and hybridized). Problems, however, cannot be understood or addressed using convention or one or a mix of disciplines or hybrid disciplines alone. A combined functional and conventional approach (taken together the integrative approach) permits us to better assay a problem (using problem orientation) by interrogating the content and context (social process), and exploring options (via decision process), all the while we are aware of our standpoint (values, knowledge, skills). Further, the academy could engage with deep knowledge and skill that the academy now generates and transmits. Some authors argue that the academy should be featuring personal experiences of nature as a transcendent other. And, that we should learn to see nature as an inherent, intrinsic value. Further, we should develop a moral sensitivity. This amounts to a kind of attentiveness and ethic. 52 My case in this paper is to support science, in fact we need more of it in our integrated problem solving, yet we must learn to use science in a fully integrative, contextual, and problem-oriented way. The distinction between conventional and functional perspectives and problem solving that I use comes from anthropology, psychology, and sociology, and professional policy analytic understanding of human interactions. A functional approach can in fact confront convention in problem solving. Presenting the functional value-added approach to otherwise conventional problem solvers can open up much insight and many opportunities for improvement. The academy can be the chief agent in doing so. VIII. C onclusion One big problem we face seems to be “convention,” thoughtless or not. We are immersed in the all-knowing, averaged-off, common sense of the anonymous “they” – what everybody knows and understands – convention. This paper included contemporary, wide-ranging literature to introduce and illustrate challenges we face across social and political organization situations, and especially in the academic arena. Convention likely has deep existential, psychological origins and thus is are not easily recognized as such or successfully addressed either in our individual or collective lives. We are loath to recognize or engage these because doing so reveals our precarious situation and our anxieties. In fact, we have generated hugely successful defense mechanisms – personal and cultural – to avoid confronting them. Thus, convention dominates our thinking and actions. These blinding mechanisms are little discussed today for reasons of fear, ego maintenance, individual and collective coping in our uncertain and complex world, and because institutionalized rewards favor those that maintain the status quo. These block a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world and what to do about problems. Addressing the problem of convention might allow us to thrive and live in a free, sustainable way with each other and the material and living environment on which we totally depend. We create problems and at the same time are the solution to them. The basic concepts and operations in the integrated problem orientation, the social and decision process, and basic premises, are tools for critical thinking and can help us address problems. With some effort a person can expect to understand the concepts – including how they have been used. A functional problem solver looks for connections, relationships, and systems prosperities in social and decision processes. Often, this view makes connections that are frequently overlooked by those who uncritically and unreflectively use conventional, ordinary ways of understanding, talking and doing. Functional understanding depends explicitly and systematically on a comprehensive mode, map, or image of the social process to guide attention to the value significance of details. The integrated problem solver sees the same events and process as other people that are limited to convention, but has an added capacity to develop a richer, more complete, and more useful understanding of the meaning of things. The conventional approach assigns ordinary meaning to concrete circumstances, whereas the functional analysis looks for special meaning depending on the contents. Good problem solving integrates what is rational, authorized under law, and justified under basic premises. Personally, as a member of the academy and interested in critical scholarship grounded in long experience and pragmatism, I hope this article can lead to improved integrative and cooperative problem solving. This paper points to promising integrative concepts and operations, and integrative education in the academy and in the field over multiple fronts. In the end, can we as a species vitalize and act toward our dreams (global goals of realizing a commonwealth of dignity in healthy environments) for humanity taking pragmatic actions? © 2022 Global Journals 1 Global Journal of Science Frontier Research Volume XXII Issue V Year 2022 10 ( H ) Version I An Inquiry into “Convention”as a Problem and what we Might do About it?