A Crucial Element of Democracy

This is a blog by Robert Gutierrez ...
While often taken for granted, civics education plays a crucial role in a democracy like ours. This Blog is dedicated to enticing its readers into taking an active role in the formulation of the civics curriculum found in their local schools. In order to do this, the Blog is offering a newer way to look at civics education, a newer construct - liberated federalism or federation theory. Daniel Elazar defines federalism as "the mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both." It depends on its citizens acting in certain ways which Elazar calls federalism's processes. Federation theory, as applied to civics curriculum, has a set of aims. They are:
*Teach a view of government as a supra federated institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.
*Teach the philosophical basis of government's role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both levels of individuals and associations of political and social intercourse.
*Convey the need of government to engender levels of support promoting a general sense of obligation and duty toward agreed upon goals and processes aimed at advancing the common betterment.
*Establish and justify a political morality which includes a process to assess whether that morality meets the needs of changing times while holding true to federalist values.
*Emphasize the integrity of the individual both in terms of liberty and equity in which each citizen is a member of a compacted arrangement and whose role is legally, politically, and socially congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
*Find a balance between a respect for national expertise and an encouragement of local, unsophisticated participation in policy decision-making and implementation.
Your input, as to the content of this Blog, is encouraged through this Blog directly or the Blog's email address: gravitascivics@gmail.com .
NOTE: This blog has led to the publication of a book. The title of that book is TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION: IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL CIVICS STANDARDS and it is available through Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions.

Friday, November 13, 2015

"A RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE" OF THE MIND

How does the individual make decisions when confronted with a political challenge?  By political challenge, I am specifically writing about situations in which the individual is either being “asked” to behave in ways he/she would not act otherwise or is “asking” someone else or some other group to act in ways he/she/they would not behave otherwise.  In other words, the individual is being exposed to an exercise in power or attempted power.  Asking can take several forms but in all cases when the change alters how someone does something, power is being exerted. 

The exertion of power, by definition, entails change.  Change always causes an excitement that can be positive (“boy, I’m glad/relieved/looking forward to doing it that way”) or negative (“no way,” “even if you pay me,” “you got the wrong guy”).  Since change is more often than not resisted, looking at this process benefits from assuming the negative reaction.  Change agents, people who are trained to enforce or entice compliance with change policies in an organization, are hired because it is assumed there will be a certain level of resistance to a planned change.  Sometimes those plans are well defined; other times they are only outlines or vague desires for change.  Whatever strategy is chosen to perhaps develop and/or implement change, it is enhanced by having a good understanding of what the subject (the planned-for) thinks and feels during the process of change.  In modern times, it has become more and more unacceptable and unanticipated that any strategy employed will depend solely on coercion; that is, on securing compliance based on an anticipated punishment, at least within legitimate organizational settings.  This further complicates the process, but it promises compliance which will be of higher quality and longer lasting.  It also promises to reduce policing costs; people who act more from internal motivations need less supervision.  But, again, such eventualities demand planners be knowledgeable of what the planned-for is going through, both cognitively and emotionally.

In my efforts to portray what happens mentally to a person confronted with a change challenge, I designed a “process.”  The last four postings have been about this process.  In my presentation, I have tried to follow a logical progression in describing that process.  The problem is, though, that what happens in the mind does not follow a logical progression.  Instead, the process is more like a rumble or tumble, a fight between images and emotions.  What comes out of the process is more like a quantum reaction; yes, there are rules governing the process, but there is a chance – an unpredictable – quality to it.  How we respond as the events of a political confrontation unfold is hard to predict even by the very person being analyzed.  Some individuals are more disciplined, less emotional, and more cerebral than others.  But even for them, if the events lean toward the more extreme in terms of perceived danger or other threats, reactions can be of a more spontaneous variety.  We all can recall times when we allowed our emotions to “take over.”  We probably regret them.  Sometimes we might boastfully claim that we would act that way again.  I believe such claims are often attempts to put the best face forward or what we perceive to be the best.  But whatever is going on, the tenor of our responses toward a particular stimulus in the change process reveals what forces won the rumble.

Here, I want to borrow the ideas of Thomas A. Harris.  He published a book[1] in the late 1960s that became somewhat of an occult bible.  I’m OK, You’re OK is a book that presents a simplified version of psychiatric forces that come into play as a person matures and interacts with others.  I use it here not as a source of powerful psychiatric theory or protocol, but more as a source of language.  Harris’s “parent”-“adult”-“child” terms fit nicely with the last phase of decision-making; that is, when the person actually determines what behavior he/she will execute in the moment of interaction with others.  The important element I am concerned with is whether the interaction – the communication – will continue or be cut off; will an interaction be productive toward desired change or be counterproductive or neutral?  In this, the tenor one adopts at this moment will have a determining effect on which of these possibilities will occur.  In my next posting, I will look at the environment in which interactions take place, but for now, let us just say that our individual under analysis is interacting with others.  Others, be it one person or a group, have their own processes going on, their own rumbles.  The tenor our individual chooses, be it a parent tenor, an adult tenor, or a child tenor, will confront the tenor of others.  In this dynamic, Harris points out what will happen, generically, if any one of the different possibilities takes place; that is, for example, if a person who chooses a parent tenor confronts another person with a parent tenor.  But before going through these possibilities, let us look at what each of them means.

A parent tenor is one in which the person comes across as communicating an unquestionable bit of information or ideal.  A common example would be:  “always look both ways before crossing a street.”  Most often, the communication is in the form of a command or of some law, factoid, or postulate.  It is said with a tone of authority.  The desired effect of such a tenor is that the receiver of the communication should accept it as truth or prudence without questioning its validity or veracity.

An adult tenor is one in which the person comes across as communicating a reasoned, reflected, perhaps calculating bit of information, suggestion, question, or some other considered message the sender sees as relevant to the topic under discussion.  Often the message contains a qualifier as “in my opinion…,” “studies show…,” “perhaps, the best thing to do is …”  It is assumed, when using this tenor, that while the communicator might enjoy some authority in the exchange, he/she is open to discussion, questioning, negotiating, or some other further conversation.

A child tenor is one in which the communicator expresses mostly impulsive reactions.  Here, the message has a spontaneous quality and tends to be more extreme in its emotional content.  Positive messages are more positive (“I just love that”; “this is the greatest time I’ve ever had”, etc.).  On the other hand, negative messages are more negative (“I just hate you”, “this is the worst time I’ve ever had”, etc.).  While the communication might sound rebellious against authority, the implied relation is that the communicator is taking on a supplicant role – it assumes another has authority in the interaction.

Now let’s look at the different combinations:

If a person in a confrontation uses a parent tenor with someone also taking a parent tenor, this is what Harris indicates is a parallel interaction and parallel interactions tend to continue – they feed on themselves.  Unless both agree, the authoritative pronouncements from both are at odds and no solution can be derived from the interaction.  This is counterproductive.

If a person in a confrontation uses an adult tenor with someone who also takes an adult tenor, this is considered a parallel interaction and will continue.  This takes place until both come to an agreement and a solution to the confrontation is achieved.  This is productive.

If a person in a confrontation uses a child tenor with someone who also takes a child tenor, this is considered a parallel interaction and will continue.  Well, it continues until exhaustion or boredom or utter disgust convinces one or both parties to call it quits.  Here we have an “oh, yeah…” reaction in which what follows is one-upmanship.  If the initial communication is positive, expect an even more effusive compliment in return; however, if the initial communication is negative, expect a higher level of antagonism in return.  This is counterproductive.

There is one more parallel possibility:  parent-child interaction in which one person takes on an authoritative posture and the other a child demeanor.  “Do so and so” says the parent; “make me” says the child.  Again, as a parallel interaction, it continues unproductively unless the “parent” can administer a punishment or threat of punishment severe enough to induce reluctant compliance on the part of the “child.”  Again, this will most likely prove to be inefficient and possibly unsuccessful, especially as the authoritative posture wears off.

Those interactions that are non-continuing are those involving an adult tenor with either a parent or child tenor.  Here, hopefully, the adult can reason with the parent or child and get that other tenor to change to an adult tenor also.  If so, the interaction becomes productive, leading to a solution that might be the product of being convinced or both parties hitting upon a negotiated solution.

Harris illustrates the language of an interaction being parallel or not by his lining up the three tenors vertically and mirroring that arrangement by another set of the three.  Using the initials of the three, P-A-C, if you have a parent interacting with another parent, two arrows of communication result which are parallel.  This works out for each combination unless an adult interacts with a parent or child, in which case the arrows intersect and are not parallel.

This is not meant as a highly sophisticated model, but as representation anyone can apply in analyzing what is happening when two or more parties interact in a political confrontation.  For a teacher who is part of an internal change team within a school, it is a simple enough model to use when actively trying to collaborate with colleagues to develop or implement a change.



[1] Harris, T. A.  (1969).  I’m OK, You’re OK.  New York, NY:  Harper and Row.

No comments:

Post a Comment