Praxis is the most exciting company in the world (for tons of reasons).
Via a 1 year program (6-month education bootcamp and 6-month apprenticeship), placing young people (ages 17-24) with growing start-ups nationwide, Praxis is empowering young people to take charge of their lives and careers. They’re steering them from the shackles of college debt. The founders are driven, smart, yet fun and playful, and they’re brilliantly instilling the skills and mindset necessary to thrive in the modern, creative economy.
Oh, and they’re the pioneers of world peace.
They won’t claim this on their website. They’re too busy doing the real work to get there. But when you zoom out to the mega-big picture, it’s happening. Here’s how:
The root of world conflict is coercion. Praxis cultivates voluntary interaction.
What is the nature of conflict, of violence, of oppression? It’s coercive. One human or group of humans seeks to control others by forcing them to behave certain ways. How does this psychology prevail? It’s embedded in our culture through top-down, punishment based strategies, common in parenting and schooling.
Praxis transcends that. There’s no teacher at the front of the room, holding you hostage with grades, carrots, and sticks. There is a foundational curriculum, but it’s highly customizable. When engaging in monthly Personal Development Projects, for example, participants are guided and encouraged to relentlessly pursue their curiosity (building tangible skills and professional portfolios in the process). Such a dynamic promotes enthusiasm, intrinsic motivation, and self-drive towards what makes participants truly come alive, not what the authority says they must do.
And the same individualized process occurs when matching participants for business partner apprenticeships. With Praxis guidance, YOU harness your personal agency. YOU chart your own course.
That’s real leadership. That’s real mutual respect.
As a result, Praxis facilitates autonomous, thriving individuals.
In conjunction with intrinsically motivated dynamics, Praxis develops empathetic abilities through cultivating the value-creation mindset, an attitude that success amounts when understanding others’ needs, and executing on those needs.
This all cultivates a strong sense of self. A strong sense of self is a prerequisite for a healthy, non-violent society:
Not self, but the absence of self, is closer to being the root of all evil. Self-alienation impoverishes our capacity for empathy; and in dehumanizing ourselves, we inevitably dehumanize others. In failing to develop an independent and strong ego, to evolve to moral sovereignty, we come capable of unspeakable atrocities, since we do not experience ourselves as responsible for our actions.
— Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self
Then, practically, how will world peace ensue? “Create over Debate,” just like Uber.
Praxis presents a tangible option outside of college, bringing 96% of their graduates a full-time job making $50,000+ a year, with no debt. And they’re just getting started. As they continue to grow, more and more people will see such an option as superior to the standard conveyor-belt narrative of “get good grades, so you can go college.”
I’m not saying colleges or people going to college are violent entities, or that college isn’t valuable for some people. I’m actually not blaming any individual. Rather, the overall, culturally embedded conveyor-belt system, which fosters notions of “do what you’re supposed to do,” and “do what you’re told,” is rooted in the top-down psychology which has produced plenty of scary results like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment.
Would these experiments yield the same results if their participants were self-assertive, independent thinkers and actors, unconcerned with conventionality and social conformity? I think not.
In screening its applicants, Praxis doesn’t care about your GPA, or if you graduated high school. It only cares if you care. So, all of sudden, forcing oneself through the often humdrum high school experience is unnecessary.
With high schools less relevant, middle and elementary schools (again, which are often characterized by top-down obedience models), become less relevant. Because young people and their parents see the success of Praxis participants embarking on their highly successful “off-conveyor belt” pathways, they don’t feel stuck with school as the only option.
In other words, they don’t have to tolerate taxi cabs. Someone just built Uber.
The snowball builds into the future.
Seeing the market success, competitors to Praxis will eventually emerge, creating an increased availability, quality, and customization of career-training experiences. Recognizing the competitive applicant pool of Praxis (or Praxis-like programs), families continue to fuel the home education growth, and further market alternatives to the typical K-12 experience take root. All of this increased competition lowers costs, and over generations, makes individualized-education more and more accessible to numerous demographics across a diverse educational marketplace. With more access, lower costs (plus, remember, families are wealthier without college debt), more people have flexibility to consider such private alternatives.
Alternatives are no longer considered alternative.
(And teachers need not fear their professional obsolescence. As more alternatives spring up in the marketplace, their expertise will very likely still be valued, except now, they get to only teach students who WANT to be there!)
Meanwhile, as high self-esteem Praxis grads enter the world, they create healthy relationships with others, inspiring them to also become happy and healthy. Many go on to have families, nurturing such qualities in their children. Those children grow up in healthy, mutually respecting environments, (and then, enroll in Praxis).
More and more children are absent of unhealthy, coercion based psychology. More and more children grow up to be healthy adults who don’t try to force people to behave, politically or otherwise.
The snowball builds momentum.
(Shifting metaphors…)
Voluntary interaction resonates. Individualized education is abundant. Choice thrives. Mutual respect is nourished.
The green grass of a harmonious world pokes cracks through the concrete of conflict.
The grass grows, then flourishes.
Eventually, the concrete disintegrates.
It may take 500 or 5000 years….
But it has to start somewhere. And CEO Isaac Morehouse plays the long game.
To be clear, I’m not painting a picture of a kum-ba-yah society devoid of problems or challenges. I am describing a society that solves such problems without coercion, without violence. A society with an abundance of healthy, sovereign people who respect other healthy, sovereign people.
Because since childhood, each person in such a society has fertilized a strong sense of self.
It’s a lofty goal.
It’s already begun.
