if you look at a few hundred years ago, whatever culture you pick, either it is the gurukula, the monastery, the apprenticeship system, or any other older learning system, every single one of them, in some way, focused on formation. and formation is all about slowly shaping a person’s inner operating system. it mainly happens through repetition of few things or surrounding with few things for a prolonged period of time. like repeated exposure. repeated practice. repeated imitation. repeated rewards. repeated stories. repeated environments. repeated standards. so basically, human being is formed through repetition. and that’s part 1. formation. Let’s get to part 2. how are we doing with formation in the modern civilized society? when it comes to the modern society, modern education/schooling/curriculum, modern civilization, and pretty much all the aspects that influence the modern human formation, we barely concentrate on formation unlike how pre-modern systems did things. take a look at this, we got introduced with modern education in around 1700’s where it is mostly is about instruction delivery, trying to transfer knowledge, reverse engineering the outcome we wanted into the curriculums and creating systems around that till the time of graduation in a hope that we’d be livable and are fit to survive in a society on our own. till graduation/till age 20-22, i call that the central formation. and calling what happens after that as secondary formation. central formation is the part where society officially takes responsibility for your formation. and yes, lot of things influence this. parents (with how pampered/strict/liberate that you’d get treated), the school you go to, the daily schedule & environment, the friends you make, the language you speak(style, words, lingo), the teachers, curriculums, activities you get involved into, rules you break, places you could be at, the things you're mandated to do, and on. all of this forms you until you get into the real world. and of course, we also do have quite bunch of other formative things to address the aspect of formation. but still, formation is not actually the core and is the central part that is driving in all the years that we spend in the education system. we also had & have things contributing towards formation in the name of extracurricular activities like elocution, debates, student elections, sports, group projects, presentations, essay writing, assemblies, competitions, clubs, house activities, volunteering, community service, theatre, music, field trips, lab work, student councils, hackathons, case competitions, and all of that. all these somehow contribute towards formation but when it comes to the angle of getting certified or graduated, almost none of these are used in the certification. mostly. but ironically, people love to talk about the extra activities they participated in more than the subjects themselves that the curriculum treated as the core, they mention those extra things in resumes, tell crazy stories to their friends, highlight them in the interviews and most of the times these help in getting jobs than the grades themselves. they help in having a different view towards things, helps moving in the world with a little more confidence and also they in generally help in living a different life. and lately, some institutions realized the importance of formation and things they contribute for a human before actually putting them in the real world, so they started and expanded to have programs like internships, apprenticeships, co-ops, practicums, residencies, field training, industry projects, shadowing, and all that. basically, they are trying to surround the person with the environment with low or zero stakes before that person starts to deal with real shit. so we are somehow at the end of the day are trying to fix it. but it slowly starts to gets darker especially in the real world. because even if school does not fully focus on formation, nature itself does not stop taking its course. in the real world, the things you interact with continue to form you. like your work, friends, habits, entertainment, desires, environment, phone, feed all of these and many more directly effects your formation. so when all of these are forming us, what kind of people are we slowly becoming? and how are all these things effecting us? Part 3. The destruction. there are two parts to this destruction phase. one which happens during the central formation. and second which is happening/happens after central formation which i call secondary formation. during the central formation, when we are in a controlled environment, the destruction is a little silent because this is the part where society officially says, okay, we are taking responsibility for forming this person. but what do we actually measure? mostly marks, exams, attendance, assignments, credits, syllabus completion, graduation, certification, and all of that. and of course, i am not saying all of these are useless. they matter. but the problem is, the most important parts of formation are not exactly measured here. like, how curious is this person? how much courage does this person have? how well can this person listen? how well can this person speak? can this person deal with failure? can this person handle discomfort? can this person take responsibility? can this person work with other people? can this person build taste? can this person judge well? can this person think clearly? can this person live well? can this person lead? all of these are much harder to measure. so the system is giving more importance to the things that are easy to measure, and the deeper things get pushed to the side and that itself is the destruction during central formation. because the kid slowly aligns towards the aspects that are being measured like passing, getting marks, not getting into trouble, finishing the assignment and moving to the next thing. and when this happens for years, the student is basically being formed in that direction and the irony is the things that actually form a person deeply are called “extracurricular activities”. like debates, sports, student elections, theatre, music, volunteering, clubs, building, leading something, organizing something, taking responsibility and so and in real life, these “extracurricular activities” are the ones that influence the most and shape a person. they shape confidence. they shape taste. they shape courage. they shape discipline. they shape how someone deals with people. they shape how someone handles pressure. they shape how someone sees themselves. they shape how they see the world and deal with it. but still, when it comes to certification, they mostly sit on the side. almost non existent. it’s a weird contradiction cuz the system knows formation matters and that’s why we have these “extracurricular activities” but at the end of the day, the certified stamp still goes to marks, credits, exams, and graduation. so we are caring about formation and giving importance to these extracurricular activities but we are leaving it to void at the end of the day. now getting to the second part of the destruction. which happens & happening at the secondary formation. after school, college, graduation and when pretty much after the system says okay, now you are ready enough to go into the world, formation does not just stop there, it'll just becomes unofficial. there is no syllabus now. there is no teacher, no timetable, no graduation, no extracurricular activities(for most), no curriculum/system giving instructions for a prolonged period of time. but you are still being formed like nature taking it’s course. so your work, friends, phone, feed, habits, entertainment, desires, environment, repeated choices, all of these are continuously form you. and the fucked up part is, most of these things are not trying to form you into a better human being. they have their own incentives. your workplace wants productivity. the platform wants attention. the algorithm wants engagement. the influencer wants reach. the market wants spending. the content machine wants retention and so on. the secondary formation is actually much more dangerous unlike the central formation, it is not even pretending to make you better. it is just serving it’s own purpose irrespective to how you take it. this is where the destruction becomes much more direct. most of the things forming you are not designed around your growth. they are designed around their own incentives. so the question is, if all of these are forming us every single day, what kind of human are we forming into? what happens to a person when our attention is constantly broken? what happens when our taste is trained by slop? what happens when our confidence is built on likes and views? what happens when our moral instincts are trained by some crazy outrage video? what happens when our patience/attention span is fucked by short-form content? what happens when our desires are shaped by influencers who are constantly selling us and showing some crazy lifestyle which they don’t really live like? we are not just consuming content or living a lifestyle but we are becoming a certain kind of person through it. because all of these things are not just passing through us, they are shaping us slowly. they are repeatedly entering our eyes, ears, brain, entering into our habits, our desires, conversations, opinions, jokes, instincts, our whole way of looking at the world. and the problem is not one reel, one meme, one video, one influencer, or one bad habit. the problem is repetition. the repeated slop, repeated distraction, repeated comparison, repeated outrage videos, repeated validation, repeated comfort, repeated escape from difficulty, repeated lowering of standards and so on. slowly, the person starts becoming a certain kind of person. who is, distracted, fragile, reactive, performative, resentful, addicted to comfort, unable to deal with difficulty, unable to sit with a thought, unable to build taste, unable to judge clearly, unable to handle reality without escaping into something and so on. but when this happens to one person, it is personal. and when this happens to a lot of people, it becomes cultural. when this happens across lot of cultures or at scale, it becomes civilizational. and when a civilization is built around all these broken elements, we push the same thing forward. the whole civilization starts to weaken and that reflects. family weakens. education weakens. community weakens. leadership weakens. culture weakens. taste weakens. truth weakens. responsibility weakens. and eventually, that leads to the whole civilization collapse. period. (out of flow: screw suicidal empathy which also plays a major role in the civilization collapse which has been very well put by gad saad in his recent book) so formation happens either way and even if we don’t take it seriously, something else will. like if families don’t take it seriously about their kid, something else will. if schools don’t take it seriously about their curriculum & students, something else will. if communities don’t take it seriously of what they talk & push forward about, something else will. and the most important part, if the individual human itself do not take it seriously, then whatever is repeated around by him will slowly become him. it’s just nature taking it’s course. no rocket science. so to course correct the human formation and push something good forward for the next generation into the right direction, there should be a healthy number of people & organizations contributing towards it. like, talk about it, act towards it, build for it, design around it, model it. reward it, protect it and create environments for it. we gotta make attention valuable again. make thinking valuable again. make discipline normal again. make responsibility admirable again. and 'how' is the question which bugs me and is what we should sit with.