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Holistic Thinking and the Worldviews-Based Learning Framework

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• Emilia de la Sienra 7 , 8  

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

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Critical thinking ; Integrated thinking ; Planetary thinking ; Systemic thinking ; Transdisciplinary thinking

Holistic thinking has been broadly defined as a pattern of thought that usually focuses on the whole rather than the parts . The key motivation behind this thinking style is that understanding the behavior of the whole can’t be achieved by looking separately at the behavior of each of the parts but rather from observing their interactions (Jackson 2006 ; Miller 2009 ).

One of the main challenges inherent to this thinking style is the clear identification of what is a whole and what is a part ; everything around seems to be both wholes and parts at the same time (Jackson 2006 ). An animal may be perceived as a whole integrated by the circulatory, respiratory, and musculoskeletal parts ; simultaneously, the holistic approach would perceive that same animal as a part of a more complex whole like an ecosystem, interacting with other multiple parts, in highly complex ways.

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Emilia de la Sienra

Environmental Education and Training, Mexico City, Mexico

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Center for Neuroscience & Cell Biology, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

Anabela Marisa Azul

Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Passo Fundo University Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Passo Fundo, Brazil

Luciana Brandli

Istinye University, Istanbul, Turkey

Pinar Gökcin Özuyar

International Centre for Thriving, University of Chester, Chester, UK

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Umesh Chandra Pandey

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de la Sienra, E. (2020). Holistic Thinking and the Worldviews-Based Learning Framework. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A., Brandli, L., Özuyar, P., Wall, T. (eds) Quality Education. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69902-8_6-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69902-8_6-1

Received : 14 May 2019

Accepted : 05 September 2019

Published : 26 November 2019

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Print ISBN : 978-3-319-69902-8

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-69902-8

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As Australia screams for action against lethal male violence, this is a culture war for survival

I have survived an abusive relationship, stalking and sexual assault – yet even I was stunned at the revelation of men using smart fridges to threaten women

I n the wake of more, more, more reports of lethal male violence against women in Australia – and the protests demanding actions that have followed them – Michael Salter’s analysis of the problem is refreshingly clear. “Education and public awareness are important but they are not, in themselves, a cure,” the academic wrote last week. “We need a strategic, coordinated, practical approach that integrates many different responses and listens closely to frontline workers and community members.”

Australia’s public conversation about male violence has never been so loud. We’ve arrived at a moment when the community is screaming for action. Even Sky News reports that Australians “want immediate change to combat the domestic violence crisis”.

It’s a long way from 1953’s reader suggestions published in the Adelaide papers: “I’ve found if I take a strap to my wife occasionally, she’s all the better for it. She admits I’ve been a good husband to her.” Back then, papers framed “Can wife beating ever be justified?” as an open question.

That these attitudes remain in the memory of living generations, is, of course, one of the reasons that perpetrators still exist. Research 10 years ago explained that male sex offenders are “more likely to commit sexual violence in communities where sexual violence goes unpunished” and the influence of sexist traditions informs a male rapist’s worldview. Yet decades of public grief, horror and condemnation – as well as feminist activism delivering legal and institutional reform – have upended this traditional majority sanction of male violence and transformed public values. The 30% rise in the rate of Australian women murdered by intimate partners in the last year after three decades of a downwards trend comes, therefore, as a shock.

A bleak national realisation is dawning: while politics does flow downstream from culture, politics still has to solve the problem that culture identifies. Government works most efficiently when reform can be broad-based and structural – and Salter’s point is that the problem is messy and difficult, with unstable patterns, individual cases and no universal solutions. Ending violence against women requires not just sentiment but government, and other institutions, as well every kind of community – from cultural groups to sporting teams to the family – addressing different, variable and changing circumstances and responsibilities.

This week the Albanese government summoned the national cabinet to announce a $925m investment in counter-violence strategies. These include support payments for women fleeing violent relationships, increased funding for services to help those women and resources for action against deepfake pornography and other kinds of online abuse. The prime minister is not making the impossible promise that the policy suite is an immediate end to violence, but “a further step forward”.

The package is couched in terms of pilots and trials and monitoring because what will and won’t work is up against a community of perpetrators relentless in their cruel creativity. The challenges are complex when everything from urban planning to superannuation to care relationship settings can pose risks to women’s safety. I have survived a violent relationship, harassment, stalking and a hospitalisation from sexual assault … yet even I was stunned at the revelation of men using smart fridges to threaten women . Effective responses meet conflicts and contradictions. Note, for example, demands from anti-violence campaigners to revoke reforms to bail laws in Victoria … that were introduced to redress harms imposed by them on Indigenous communities, young people and people with disabilities.

The frustration of handing the policy response over to politicians is, perhaps, that it feels like an admission of powerlessness. But while government pilots start and public resources shift, there remain open fronts for cultural action that we may finally be ready to face.

Incest and other family violence survivors will remind you that the family home remains the most dangerous place for women and children , while 51% of children from abusive homes are abused as adults. In a world that still insists to women and girls that romantic partnership and family should dominate their aspirations and trajectories, the narrative we can, should, must lead is for genuinely empowering alternatives; economic interdependence, sisterhood, friendship, community – especially in the context of a resurgent western far right so active in promoting tradwives and reproductive unfreedom.

Not as culture war for culture war’s sake – but for survival.

Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist

In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org

• Violence against women and girls
• Rape and sexual assault
• Domestic violence
• Crime - Australia
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Horse Racing’s Loudest Critic Is Favored in Its Biggest Race

The brash owner Mike Repole will take a break from tweaking horse racing’s powers when his colt Fierceness runs in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday.

Mike Repole’s horse Fierceness, training at Churchill Downs, is the morning-line favorite for the Kentucky Derby. Credit... Jon Cherry for The New York Times

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By Joe Drape

Reporting from Louisville, Ky., and Lexington, Ky.

• May 3, 2024

In the world according to Mike Repole, everyone involved in horse racing is a dummy. Except him, Mike from Queens or the Commish, as some of his followers on X call him.

Stuart S. Janney III, chairman of the nonprofit Jockey Club, is clueless and tone deaf and has run the sport into the ground, Repole says. Churchill Downs Inc., which hosts the Kentucky Derby, is cheap: The $5 million purse for America’s most famous race should be much more, and the racetrack treats Repole and other owners badly.

Forget about John Stewart, a new owner bringing fresh energy and big money into the game. He is “arrogant, free spending” and such a rube that he has an “$8 haircut.”

All the above, and many others, are among Repole’s frequent targets on social media and various podcasts. Repole, a prominent horse owner who made his fortune in the beverage industry, says he is merely trying to disrupt an industry (often punctuated with profane Bronx cheers) that he likens to the Titanic heading inevitably into a looming iceberg.

“You want real or you want fake??? You want loud or you want quiet??? You want intensity or you want passive??? You want better or you want worse??? Love me or Hate me,” Repole posted on X in January, summarizing his credo for remaking the racehorse business.

On Saturday, however, Repole will hit the mute button long enough to watch his horse Fierceness compete in the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby. The colt is the reigning 2-year-old champion and morning-line Derby favorite and perhaps Repole’s best chance to win a race that has utterly vexed him.

Officially, horses that he has owned are 0 for 7 in the Derby. Repole, however, insists his record is worse than that: Last year, his colt Forte, also the morning-line favorite, was scratched by regulatory veterinarians who determined that he was not fit enough to compete. In 2011, Repole’s colt Uncle Mo was a late scratch after coming down with a gastrointestinal infection.

“I’m 0 for 9, even though I’ve only run seven times,” Repole told BloodHorse magazine . “To me, when you scratch the morning-line favorite for the Derby, it’s a loss.”

Though Repole, 55, spoke to reporters at Churchill Downs this week, he declined to speak to The New York Times , citing its coverage last year of Forte’s positive test in New York for meloxicam, a potent nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug used to manage pain and swelling. New York regulators disqualified Forte from the Hopeful Stakes, which he won before the positive test, and withheld the $165,000 first-place check. Repole appealed, and the case is working its way through the state court system.

Repole grew up in Middle Village, Queens, and spent ample time on the rail at Aqueduct, the bluest collar of racetracks. He got into the beverage business, building first Vitaminwater and then BodyArmor sports drinks into brands attractive enough for Coca-Cola to buy them for nearly $10 billion.

In January, Repole announced that he was merging his sneaker and apparel company, Nobull, with TB12, the health and nutrition company owned by Tom Brady. A few weeks later, Repole, a graduate of St. John’s University, promised Coach Rick Pitino’s men’s basketball program seven figures next season to help attract the nation’s best players to New York.

“Mike is clearly a genius in many ways,” said Shannon Arvin, the chief executive at Keeneland, a racetrack and auction company based in Lexington, Ky. “He’s been very successful.”

Repole has spent more than $300 million buying horses, much of it at Keeneland. He has won dozens of the sport’s most prestigious stakes races — including the Belmont Stakes on Long Island and the Travers in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He has also made his frustration with the sport loud and clear, likening it to a “board game with no instructions.”

Since declaring himself commissioner, however, Repole has gotten more personal in his criticism. He railed against honoring the Jockey Club’s Janney with an Eclipse Award of Merit — for lifetime achievement in the sport — on the same night that Fierceness and other horses were crowned champions at horse racing’s equivalent of the Oscars.

Then he gave an unflattering review from the audience of Janney’s acceptance speech.

The Jockey Club’s main duty is keeping the breed registry. It also funds research, lobbying and marketing efforts and was at the forefront of efforts to create the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, or HISA, the federal agency that now regulates the sport.

“We never heard from him when we went through that process, which took more than five or six years to get done,” Janney said of Repole. “My view is you get things done and let people look at them and decide how they feel about it, but just talking about it doesn’t get things done.”

Stewart, who has a private equity firm and has a colt named Just a Touch in the Derby, has participated in contentious give-and-takes with Repole on social media. He believes his fellow owner has good ideas. Repole says he wants to unite owners, trainers and racetracks to take on sport’s longstanding challenges, such as postcareer care for horses and breeding practices. The problem, Stewart says, is in his delivery.

“He’s trying to act like the Elon Musk or Donald Trump of horse racing,” Stewart said. “The sport has enough problems, and we don’t need that.”

Win or lose on Saturday, Repole will continue to try to impose his will on the sport of horse racing. His worldview perhaps was best demonstrated at a recent press gaggle in the barn area of Churchill Downs. Taking a FaceTime call from his daughter, Gioia, he brandished his phone for all to see and asked her about school.

“The A students work for the C students,” he told his daughter. “Remember I told you that.”

Joe Drape is a Times reporter writing about how the intersection of money, power and sports impacts our culture. More about Joe Drape

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