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.

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

BEYOND SELF

 

This blogger can personally vouch for the truthfulness of what this posting reports.  When he was younger, as a young adult and supported by a culture that prevailed in those years – and he claims is still prominent today – he saw life as a journey to fulfil self-defined aims and goals.  The general direction was to attain success over what personal challenges were currently present on the way to achieving life-long ambitions. 

Some of those ambitions were about personal life – a successful marriage and parenthood – and some about how he advanced in general society – a successful career.  Many would argue that all of this was not determined by this younger person.  It was just what was prevalent among the American population, and he accepted it as what should be or what was normal for a person with his income and family background.  Therefore, little meaningful reflection was involved.

          That general perspective on how most people mature was more or less supported by general psychological and sociological models that enjoyed general followship at that time.  For example, there was Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model that traced how one would be progressively motivated, assuming initial motives or needs were satisfied. 

People start with basic physiological needs and advance, with the satisfaction of interim needs, toward self-actualization.  Loving and belonging were only intermediate needs and for many not totally satisfied, meaning that most would be stymied short of experiencing the ultimate need for self-actualization.[1]  

          This blogger’s expertise is not along these lines; he is not questioning the validity of Maslow’s model.  Take this offering as merely a questioning exercise that suggests a different emphasis – from a self-centered focus to a more communal focus.  Initially, this blogger found Maslow’s model to be powerful.  But he has gone through a basic reevaluation of how one should lead one’s life and although he doesn’t dismiss Maslow’s view, he qualifies it. 

In his former view, this blogger was ensconced in a behavioral – ala B. F. Skinner – view of motivation but has shifted to a more communal bias which highlights federated relationships with those people with whom he interacts.  Those relationships range from family and friends to people he encounters in everyday life.  Overall, he presupposes that those he encounters, at some level, are partners in this thing called social life.

          And he finds, in his readings and research, that the general popular literature has shifted in this direction as well.  More and more writers are opting for the utilization of a more communal language or perspective.  One such writer is the journalist, David Brooks.  In 2019, he came out with a book, The Second Mountain, which presents an other-centered message – one that places in importance the needs one has in establishing and maintaining strong interpersonal relationships, from one-on-one encounters to overall communal living.

Amazon, the bookseller, summarizes this book with the following:  “On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered.  They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want.  They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence.  They surrender to a life of commitment.”[2]  Yes, this depiction does not technically counter Maslow’s ultimate motivation, self-actualization, but perhaps further defines what that means. 

Actually, this blogger thinks this description was what Maslow was arguing since he, Maslow, describes this final motivational stage as being beyond ego.  It is toward who one truly is.  There is the notion that everyone is truly a social being and one can find a lot of professional counseling assuming this aspect of human nature.  If so, self-actualization would presuppose a recognition of this element of needing others and cater to satisfying whatever that element’s requisites are.

Perhaps the entire question boils down to a matter of degree.  How other-centered does one need to be in order to attain one’s happiness or contentment?  Brooks claims that his book is to, first, make the argument that people need to recognize this need, i.e., to serve a cause larger than oneself, and second, to instruct people on how to accomplish this aim.  And here is where his book gets its basic focus.

Brooks writes:

 

Our society suffers from a crisis of connection, a crisis of solidarity.  We live in a culture of hyper-individualism.  There is always a tension between self and society, between the individual and the group.  Over the past sixty years we have swung too far toward the self.  The only out is to rebalance, to build a culture that steers people toward relation, community, and commitment – the things we most deeply yearn for, yet undermine with our hyper-individualistic way of life.[3]

 

And this becomes conscious for a person as that person strives toward relationships not based on concrete rewards, but on satisfaction of some love interest for a vocation, a spouse and/or family members, a philosophy or belief (as with a religion), and/or a community.

          As with most human quests or ambitions, some people are very good – even outstanding – at satisfying these aims.  Most, though, can only achieve adequacy.  What is important is that the effort is made to be communal, collaborative, and cooperative with others who are engaged in striving for their conscious goals; that can include merely making it till tomorrow. 

What everyone can do is to set related goals according to high standards.  Yes, tomorrow is important, but lasting and meaningful relationships over time enrich and fill out a substantial life for oneself.  And, with high standards, if one falls short, Brooks argues, it will be because of one’s talents and abilities, not due to setting impoverished ideals.



[1] For example, Saul Mcleod, “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” Simply Psychology, November 24, 2023, accessed January 13, 2024, URL:  https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html. This site introduces an even higher need, that being “transcendence needs.”  Here, according to this source, “they represent the human desire to connect with higher reality, purpose, or the universe.”  Perhaps this is more in line with communal needs and ambitions.

[2] Amazon advertisement for The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life, accessed January 13, 2024, URL:  https://www.amazon.com/Second-Mountain-David-Brooks/dp/0812993268.

[3] David Brooks, The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY:  Random House), xvi-xvii.  If one goes back sixty years as this quote indicates, one is in the year 1964.  This blog claims that the nation shifted in its basic view of governance and politics to the natural rights view in the late 1940s.  Its palpable influence would take some time to hold sway in how people behaved and that might coincide with the late 1950s to early 1960s.

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