Spirit X
Step into a conversation for our global and digital age. Guided by Nikola Ristic, Spirit X explores the 69 Principles—a spiritual framework that draws wisdom from East, West, North, and South. It weaves together ancient traditions, rational thought, culture, science, and technology into a path toward greater unity, peace, freedom, love, and fulfillment.
In times of crisis, Spirit X is both a vision and a call: reminding us that genuine spirituality is no longer just a personal choice but a cultural and evolutionary necessity. Each episode invites listeners to engage with teachings that aim to nurture inner balance and collective awakening.
May Spirit X inspire the sanity, happiness, and awakening of all.
Spirit X
Why We Need Better Education In A Complex World
What if the cure for a chaotic world isn’t less schooling but better learning? We step off our usual path and wrestle with education’s current crisis, making a clear case that wiser, deeper, more human-centered education is the lever that turns complexity into clarity and fear into curiosity. The argument rests on three pillars: the world’s accelerating complexity, the sheer amount of time children spend in school, and our innate, unbreakable drive to know.
First, we explore the everyday reality of diverse workplaces and communities—multiple cultures, identities, beliefs, and ways of life—and why untrained minds tend to contract under that pressure. Education’s job is to widen our capacity so difference becomes an asset rather than a trigger. Second, we follow the hours: if students spend most of their waking day in school and after-school programs, the quality of that time shapes character, resilience, and social health. Weak schooling doesn’t just fail individuals; it feeds the broader political, economic, and spiritual metacrisis. Third, we reach into philosophy and spirituality. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s insight that Homo sapiens cannot not learn, and the Hindu triad of being, consciousness, and bliss, we argue that learning is our species-level impulse. Good education aligns with our urge to live, to understand, and to find joy in meaning and mastery.
From there, we sketch a practical upgrade: systems thinking to map causes and effects, intercultural fluency to navigate plural worlds, ethical reasoning grounded in real dilemmas, and contemplative practices that steady attention and build compassion. We close with a short reflective exercise—an invitation to trace your own learning lineage, from family and school to life’s toughest lessons—and to feel gratitude for the growth it made possible.
If this conversation resonates, share it with a friend, subscribe for more applied spirituality, and leave a review with one change you’d make to education today. Your ideas help us shape future episodes and push the learning forward.
Hello everyone, welcome to the episode 9 of Spirit X channel. I wanna do something different today. We're usually focused on my book, Spirit X, Spirituality for the Global and Digital Age, and we are exploring modern-day spirituality or what it means to be spiritual in the global and digital and crazy world. But today I wanna take what's called what I call sometimes left or right turn. I want to address some topics that are current to the present-day situation and crisis, and I want to talk a little bit about the importance or the status of education in the present-day world. It's no secret that the world is in turmoil. From my standpoint, we need to upgrade the whole civilization because a lot of fields are actually and disciplines are in crisis, so politically we are in crisis, economically, we are in crisis, uh spiritually, you know, we need to figure things out, and education is no different in that regard. There are some arguments that higher education is a scam, and I kind of pay attention to that. There is no doubt that education is in crisis. The question is just do we need more education or less education? And I want to discuss three things that I think are important from a philosophical standpoint, from a spiritual standpoint. What we do here in this podcast is I would say applied philosophy and applied spirituality from so from that standpoint, here are my three points. In general, I think that education is in crisis. I totally agree about that. But I think we need more education or we need more appropriate education, and here is why. So number one reason would be the following. After 50s, 60s, 70s, the world became very fast and very complex. So when I was teaching philosophy at the university level, which was in the early 2000s, I inspired students to learn philosophy in this way. I tell them the world is complex and that complexity can be beautiful, but if that complexity is not embraced with our minds and with our hearts, the world becomes a complicated place. And we start not liking the world and not liking ourselves. And here is what I mean by that. Let's assume that you're a college graduate, let's say somewhere in Boston, United States, and you get your first job and you go to work for a corporation. And you go to the company, and there are African Americans there, there are white people there, there are Asians there, there are gay people there, there are vegetarians there, there are vegans there, there's trans people there. And unless your mind is educated and wide enough to grasp all of that diversity, you'll be fine. If your mind is not wide enough, you're going to contract and freak out. Like, oh, that person is not eating meat, or that person changed sex, or that person is from who knows where, and I don't know where is that on the map and stuff like that. So you're contracting, and when we contract, we are not in a good state of being. So education is necessary for us to extend our minds to grasp and understand the complexity of the present-day world so that the world is still a friendly place for us. There is one quote on social media which is usually associated with Einstein, it's actually not Einstein, but quote quote quote something like this do you consider the world to be a friendly place or not? So when I was teaching philosophy, when I work with my nonprofit, when I work privately with students and clients, I always make sure that I try to explain to people that no matter what's happening, the world is still a friendly place on an essential level. We go to ups and downs, the world is a place of soul making, but in general it's good to be in human condition and the world is a friendly, good place. So that's why education is important. I would say education makes the world a friendly place by educated, extending our minds, and by making our hearts actually more compassionate. So number one reason why education is actually necessary today is because the world is complex, and if we don't educate ourselves and if we don't educate people, we are just going to be at odds with each other. Number two reason is more practical and social. So just notice how much time children spend in schools. Or just notice how much time, if you are an adult, you spend of your lifetime in the school. So I have a non-profit spirit without boundaries, and last few years I was uh we were a part of an after school program in the middle school, and after school program was from 1.30 to 5, and before that the school was from 8.30 to 1.30. So the children, young students who do after school, they are in the school from 8.30 to 5.30, they go home, and I remember I talked to them when they go to bed, and they go to bed between 9 and 11. So they are in the school from 8:30 to 5:30, they come home at 6, they have a dinner, they hang out a little bit, and they go to bed. So they spend more time in schools than with their parents or families. And that's the reality for the vast, vast, vast majority of the for on the children of the children globally. So we better make sure that those hours they spend in school are high quality Brian something disappeared.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'll edit that. Yeah, yeah, no problem. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_02:Um so this number two reason is really the key because our our world is structured that way that we spend a tremendous amount of time in schools, then it's an imperative that that time in in schools is actually high quality time for all the children in the world. So if we weaken the education, we are weakening our individuals, we are weakening our societies, and we are just adding to the to this crisis and actually feeding this metacrisis we are in. So that was the reason number two. And reason number three is really philosophical and spiritual, and it took me a long time to realize that, and it was a big realization. Uh, human beings are wired to learn. We are wired to know. Our essential nature as humans is actually to want to know. There's a car accident around the corner, I want to know what happened. Essentially, I want to know what happened, I want to help, etc. If there is a new information coming, I want to digest it because there is something deep in my nature that is wired for learning and knowing. I'm a philosopher, I always try to understand new trends in philosophy. And recently I was reading a book by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. He's one uh uh 100 years old, he's one of the oldest and most important uh living philosophers, and there was one sentence in the book that really blew my mind, and he said that sentence goes Homo sapiens cannot not to know, or Homo sapiens cannot not to learn, meaning that the very essence of our species, Homo sapiens, is to learn and to progress to that learning, and if you see Homo sapiens in ourselves nowadays, is because of learning, because of education, we are at a much, much, much better place. So the essential nature of human beings is actually to learn, to know, and to educate, and present-day world has to resemble that. Another way to understand learning and knowing and education philosophically, spiritually, comes from another huge tradition that impacted my life, which is Hinduism. And in Hinduism, ultimate reality is hard to put into words because it's beyond language, but they usually describe three basic qualities of ultimate reality or God or reality as such or source or whatever, and those three qualities are being, consciousness, and bliss. And each human being resembles those three qualities in a kind of limited way. So we are wired to being. I never met a person who says, I don't wanna be. Think about it. We appreciate existence, we appreciate life. If there is a problem, we want to continue life, so we are wired to being. They're also wired to knowing, that's the consciousness part, and that's what Habermas captured beautifully. We we wanna know, uh that's one of our basic wants or needs, and we cannot not to know and not to learn. And finally, being consciousness, bliss. Bliss is the bliss of being, but uh echo of that bliss of being in we are wired to be happy. I never met a person who says, I want to be unhappy. I'm going to choose unhappiness versus uh as opposed to happiness. So being consciousness, bliss or knowing, being and and happiness. Um we are talking here about education and stuff like that, and my point here is that uh education is something and learning and knowing is something inherent to us, and what we need educationally is the upgrade of our educational system to kind of capture the complexities and challenges and beauties of the present-day world. So we don't need less education. Education is not a scam, education is just not in crisis, and if we are smart enough, we'll have a global educational system that actually uh educates and produces great individuals, and due to that fact we are going to uh get out of this uh the uncomfortable crisis. And in each uh uh video or audio uh of mine, we we try to do something experiential. We usually do meditation or visualization. This topic is kind of peculiar, and and here is the practice for today. Uh just reflect with me calmly and with gratitude all the ways you benefited from your education in your life. If you're in your twenties, just look back at your childhood and educational process, if you're in your sixties, there's lots to look back. So I invite you to reflect upon what you learn from your parents, what you learn from your family, what you learn in school, what you learn at university if you attended, and most importantly what you learn from life. There are beautiful lessons, there are tough lessons from life, but there are lessons nevertheless. And I just want you to acknowledge and be grateful for the fact that your educational process uh made you the individual you are today. I also want you to acknowledge and to be grateful for the fact that learning and education never ends. So it doesn't stop with you getting a degree, it doesn't stop with you becoming a parent, it doesn't stop with you uh getting a job and stuff like that. We are wired to know our inherent nature is actually to learn, and we progress through that learning, and that's actually a fantastic thing about our species, Homo sapiens. So my point is pretty clear. I agree, education is is um in crisis, we need an upgrade, and the upgrade of education is going to help us getting out of this uncomfortable global situation we are in. And uh thank you for your attention. Let me know what you think in the comments, and I will see you in the next video. Thank you so much.
