Why is the Multiversity Platform in Loyola Extension Services (LES)? 

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The Loyola Extension Services, which operates under the Loyola College of Social Sciences (LCSS), does so as not only an outreach or public service effort for an inclusive Common Good but also as a ‘social lab’ and ‘incubator’ of innovative educational/academic/‘learningful’/public action initiatives. LES is not constrained by any university affiliation challenges and therefore has considerable autonomy to embrace innovative initiatives and projects in order to develop and nurture them for the benefit of all. Against this background, it is at present developing a pluri-sectoral, multi-layered, multi-project, inter-connected and integrative ‘multiversity platform’. This will be called the LES/LCSS Multiversity Platform. (The 'multiversity platform' is the integrative operational feature of the LES Multiversity.)

 

What are Some of the Characteristic Features of LES Multiversity?

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(a)Recasting of education: alternative educational pathways (glocal and contextual)
(b)Connecting with traditional educational wisdom
(c) Taking knowledge production activities back to the grassroots, to the people, to the local 
(d) Rethinking and re-claiming ‘the teacher’ and ‘expertise’
(e) Rethinking eco-social complexity and going beyond disciplinary silos
(f) Developing critical pedagogy (reading and responding to the ‘sign of the times’):

 

• deschooling, 

• decolonisation 

• conscientisation 

• counter-hegemony

• political economy

• reading the signs/science of the times

• critical mindfulness 

• totality and cosmological imagination 

• indigeneity 

• femininity

• reflective-meditative-spiritual practices

• dialogicality

 

(g) Engaging inter or trans-disciplinarity, inter-trans-faith, and critical civic engagement
(h) Promoting public knowledge i.e. from ‘knowledge-inaction’ to ‘knowledge in-action’
(i) Ushering in efforts to nurture an era of wisdom from an era of knowledge

These features of LES Multiversity will inform and influence the orientation of the platform and all its classroom, public engagements, field and research activities.

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What are the 'Guiding Approaches' or 'Foundational Methodologies' of the LES Multiversity ?

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• Trans-formative Learning

• Trans-disciplinarity / Transdisciplinary Mode of Being

• Critical, Compassionate Civic Engagement

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What Is The Heart of the Multiversity?

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The foundation of the multiversity is loving ‘Other-Centeredness’ i.e uncompromising compassion -- private/personal and public. It is firmly based in the belief that we need to be radically honest, humbly dialogue-oriented, uncompromisingly inclusive and actively animated by  love and compassion (to consistently and courageously reach out to the eco-social Other in need). The LES Multiversity firmly believes in the inclusive social teachings and wisdom of all faith traditions and humanistic social philosophies -- It is specifically animated by gospel virtues and values, the foundational virtues and values of all religious/spiritual/mystical traditions that humanity lives by as well as the nurturing, inclusive eco-social philosophies that guide many of us. The multiversity will operate to recognise the dignity of the human person and human communities, the care for our common cosmic home as well as compassionate and preferential treatment of the poor.

 

Why Do We Need Such a Multiversity?

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There is an urgent need today, to start with, to find plausible reasons to engage with private and public compassion actively. It is necessary and urgent  for all of us to look at ourselves and the world deeply, acknowledge  and accept the reality that we are increasingly ‘living’ in a violent, broken world. It is  the direct result of humanity’s own mindless choices, decisions, lifestyles and blind faith in a ‘cancerous’, heartless, growth-based development model that nations as well as many global institutions religiously follow and promote. In spite of our massive global material growth and affluence over the years, we hardly live in a peaceful, inclusive and compassionate world. The global reality is that we are living in an oppressively unequal world where, for individual or structural (‘retail or wholesale’) reasons, there is a growing distribution of sites (particular in the developing world) of pain and suffering, disaster and death. There is also an ever-increasing ‘deficit’ of empathy, dialogue and compassion.  We are really in the midst of not only a material but also a moral and spiritual crises. Such a context of crises needs an approach that is far beyond the limiting university framework.Hence the multiversity framework. We need to address the eco-socio-emergencies urgently for it threatens the viability and sustainable flourishing of all life on Earth. The LES Multiversity initiative is a small but significant attempt to add strength the growing global movement for a compassionate world.

 

What are the Concerns and Focus Areas of the Multiversity?

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The multiversity platform will consist of the following inter-connected and integrated areas of concerns and focus:

(1) Critical Theories and Methodologies (to create theoretical, methodological and dialogue spaces for new humanities and compassion studies, research and action)
(2) Roots Education (to ground education and learning on the foundation of virtues-values-meanings, with a focus on compassion and to take urgent steps to address ‘functionalisation of education’ i.e acutely market-centric education)
(3) Outreach/Public Engagements (to reach out to those at risk, those who need help and to ensure that we compassionately institutionalise the preferential treatment of the poor and place human dignity on our agenda)
(4) Learning Events (to promote compassion and related areas  to larger local and global communities through learning journeys, courses, residential programmes, and special lectures)
(5) Resources (to institutionalise a dynamic info-structure by acquiring as well as producing resources to support compassion and compassion-related activities)
(6) Platform Building (to build networks and partnerships to encourage friendships and mutual support groups in order to  strengthen compassion cultures)