Zachary Stein
Zak Stein studied educational neuroscience, human development, and the philosophy of education at Harvard University. He is currently researching the relations between education, human development, and the evolution of civilizations at the Ronin Institute and served as the Co-President and Academic Director of the activist think-tank at the Center for Integral Wisdom, now The Center for World Philosophy and Religion.
~ Adapted from the information on his website
Selected Works (in chronological order)
We, moderns but especially Americans, have a fundamental misunderstanding of cognitive development: we assume that higher-level functioning is always desired and so disparage and neglect fundamental cognitive skills.
In general, we humans are a self-interpreting species for whom the practice of recollecting and redescribing ourselves is a crucial necessity. For us the reconstruction of identity is a continuous process wherein the past is selectively crafted into a history. It is a creative and self-constitutive exercise. We come to know each other and ourselves not by exchanging resumes (mere inventories of events), but by telling our stories. And our stories change as we do; they reflect what actually happened and what we think is worth remembering, they reflect who we were, who we are, and who we would like to become.