SOME KEY IDEAS REGARDING DEVELOPMENT

Some years ago, verging on fifty, Samuel P. Huntington wrote a fairly influential book, Political Order in Changing Societies (POCS).[1]  In that book, he offered an analysis of what factors affected the aims and goals of lesser developed countries (LDCs).  With the conflicts in southeast Asia of that time (the sixties), there seemed to be a bit of interest over the challenges LDCs faced – challenges that still exist today. 

Communist attempts to spread their influence among those nations probably spurred a lot of interest here in the US.  With the fall of communism, at least that communism that emanated from the Soviet Union and a more virulent Red China, concern in the US has waned a bit.  But it is felt here that what Huntington wrote about those countries, does seem to have relevance today.  It gives one not only understanding of what can or should happen to LDCs, but perhaps what is happening or should happen in the US.

          This posting and, at least, the next posting will review Huntington’s book and draw from it what might give one understandings over current American realities and their significance.  At first, the review will describe that book’s content as it dealt with the LDCs’ issues.  Overall, POCS is a systems analysis of what Huntington saw was the most pressing problem LDCs faced; i.e., their ability to govern.

          His study assumes that any analysis of an LDC should be contained within the boundaries of that LDC.  It should also question that nation’s political system’s ability to meet the social/political/economic requisites necessary to stave off decay, that could eventually lead to systems failure.  In other words, for LDCs that are in the midst of developing, their efforts are on a time clock; can they accomplish sufficient development before their system fails bringing its efforts to a crashing end?  It turns out, development unleashes disruptive forces.

And what are they aiming to develop?  That would be becoming a society with a self-sustaining economic system, sufficient equalization of economic distribution, and sufficiently democratization of political processes.  In other words, how much like the Western democracies of North America and Europe can they imitate or resemble. 

So far, a more current reading of this study suggests two criticisms one can lodge against the book:  one, it “unwisely” limits its view to only internal factors – perhaps paying an unjustified blind eye to the manipulation external elites and powerful nations have on the politics of LDCs – and using capitalist nations of the West to be the model for these nations to follow – irrespective of their varied cultures, geographic conditions, or historical narratives.  But with that in mind, one should move on.

What Huntington seemed to be after was his hope that subsequent emperical studies of LDCs would identify those factors that lead to political conditions in which polities can govern.  In that, he made a further assumption:  development or (another proWestern term) modernization creates new social forces within societies and, in turn, they cause disruptive influences which makes necessary adaptations hard to accomplish.  It was Huntington’s observation that success in adaptation, at that time, was rare.  Instead, one could expect, in those nations, instability.

So much so, that Huntington saw stability as the essential prerequisite to development or modernization.  Stability was his measure of a polity’s ability to govern, and, therefore, he held it as his major focus – his major dependent variable or condition.  He seemed to be warning:  get this wrong and all else is a waste of time; development will not happen. 

Yet, both on the part of developed nations who are playing a role in LDC development and indigenous parties involved in that process tend to be insensitive to or not sensitive enough to the implications of Huntington’s advice.  These players, Huntington judged, were missing the mark for they were not addressing the essential requisites and that neglect landed up only furthering disruption.

He identified a complex social fabric.  Events that on the surface seem prudent and positive, prove not to be; while, events that intuitively seem dysfunctional, turn out to be essential.  For example, what usually is disruptive, violence, at times proves unavoidable and useful.  Where economic development, seen as an independent goal, can be of obvious use, but at the same time proves to be disruptive.  And then there is corruption – at times, believe it or not, a potential substitute for revolution or rebellion – is almost synonymous with instability.  Complexities abound.

The central argument posed by Huntington was that relatively high modernization (development) progressions, which can be measured by rates of social mobilization and economic development, but is accompanied with relatively slow pace in the development of political institutions leads to political instability.  To digest what Huntington meant, one needs a clear understanding of his major ideas.

An understanding of modernization or overall development calls one to appreciate what its essential attribute is:  social mobilization.  The term, social mobilization, refers to a process.  That process is felt or observed when traditional economic, social, and psychological commitments no longer hold, forcing people to attach themselves to new values, attitudes, and most importantly to higher economic expectations. 

In other words, it is large scale transformative change at a national level.  Readers of this blog, hopefully, can appreciate, from past postings, how difficult that is to accomplish at the level of an organization, much less a nation.  Yet, Huntington claimed that that needs to occur for a nation to modernize.

As for the other ideas:  Huntington saw the idea of higher economic development as mainly a nation being able to produce higher quantities of material output, usually manufactured goods.  LDCs usually already produce high quantities of agricultural goods and/or minerals.  The problem is:  the land used for those activities are owned by the elite few who tend to be very rich and as such have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. 

Political institutions are organizations and procedures which routinize political behavior into accepted forms.  People accept these forms and they are usually referred to as political norms.  An example of this could be when two cars happen to run into each other, the police come out, ask questions, perhaps take pictures, make sure everyone is alright, and so on.  That is what is expected in, say, the US; a policeman taking a bribe from the luxury car driver is not expected and defies a political norm, as well as a law.  Laws, in turn, are expected to be upheld.  These are not universal norms; in many, if not most nations, elite privileges are the norm.

Where corruption is common, priveliege is expected to go to those who own or control desired assets – money, land, property, power (both legitimate and illegitimate forms), etc.  The point is:  to establish stability – i.e., high levels of expectations and their realization – a nation needs well-ensconced political institutions that are counted on to counter disstabilizing events and conditions.

And that leads to the last of these ideas, political instability.  It can be characterized by violence, social group conflicts, corruption, and bureaucratic inefficiency.  It also leads to the tie-in to current political concerns in the US.  No, America is not an LDC.  It is a developed country – some might consider it the most developed.  But can Huntington’s concerns cast any light on what is happening in the politics of America today?  This blog will pursue this question in the upcoming postings.

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[1] Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1968).

THE MEANING OF “UNALIENABLE”

This posting picks-up on a theme – Jefferson’s belief in a moral sense – that was described and explained in the last posting.  If not read, to make fuller sense of what follows, the reader should look it up.  In this posting, it develops a notion:  people seek to be moral in order to induce a pleasure; being good feels good.  That last posting investigates this claim and lands up accepting it, but in a nuanced way. 

But the point here insists that Thomas Jefferson believed it and that belief plays an important role in his use of the term, “unalienable,” in the Declaration of Independence.  As the last posting ends:  “Turns out, how most students are led to understand this term is not exactly right.”

One of the factors reviewed in the last posting was reason.  That account described reason as the human faculty that serves to aim moral thought and action.  It calculates.  It provides the “means” for what a moral “drive” might determine an “end” should be.  But as with describing or understanding the moral sense, many competing desires, many murky facts, many possible rationalizations can be felt or thought of.

Reason might point a person – using Jefferson’s language – toward being vicious (it might not), but the moral sense always points that same person toward being virtuous.  That sense can be ill served by reason, but its unwavering aim – hence making it a drive – is to be good toward others. 

Of course, this and other drives are subject to forces, such as cultural forces, within a given social landscape.  And this includes how events and the particulars of those events are defined or otherwise understood.  All of this can be complicated, but it does provide a useful context for related issues. 

And with the above as context, one can address the notion of rights, a related issue.  Often in this blog, this writer has pointed out that the natural rights view of rights has to do with having the social and legal prerogative to do what one wishes to do.  Yes, this is constrained by others having the same legal standing, but this sense of rights opens a vast array of options for individuals to pursue. 

With the use of the term, “unalienable,” in the Declaration of Independence, one senses a very liberal take on an unfettered life, unfettered and only subject to one’s self-restraints in most cases.  But the above context hints at a different feel for this quality.  And one aspect of this reason to reflect, is that the whole Lockean notion of rights – the natural rights view – was a relatively new idea in the late 1700s, at least on these shores. 

There had not been much philosophic, theoretical, or political reflection what exactly this meant.  According to Gary Wills, earlier use of the term, “right,” was reserved to mean “right order.”  The sense was that “its earlier use was as a power exercised in the name of the state.”[1]  And ideally – presumably – that was to advance the interest of the nation or other jurisdiction (like a fiefdom, a city, a parish, etc.). 

The ruler had the necessary powers to so rule – in accordance with those jurisdictional interests – and he/she administered it or alienate it to the subjects.  That is, he/she gave the power or benefit to those ruled.  To alienate meant to give away, to make alien from the giver – usually for a given reason.

Jefferson gives his readers a hint at his meaning by not using the term, property, in his list of unalienable rights.  He writes “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” not “… and property.”  They are unalienable not because the fear is a state might deprive a person of these “rights,” but that the individual cannot give them away. 

A person’s life, liberty (to do good), and happiness are part of his/her nature.  The individual has a sense for morality, a sense that that is not subject to being alienable.  Therefore, they are unalienable.  In all this, according to Wills, Jefferson was highly influenced by Francis Hutcheson and this latter writer explains this distinction, between rights over one’s person and the right to pursue the moral sense.  Wills writes:

Rights arises in, and because of, society; it is a power over others so long as benevolence or innocence are directing the powers.  The test is public good.

          Hutcheson then divides rights into perfect and imperfect.  The perfect, as essential to the public good, can be defended even with private force.  The first example he gives is the right to life.  The basis of the societal bond is benevolence, and no society can undermine its own fundamental value.  Yet security in the possession of life is not only the basis for all goods one can bestow on others; it is, more important, the necessary precondition for doing good – no man can be benevolent unless he is first alive…

          He asserts the right of liberty on similar grounds:  “As nature has implanted in each man a desire of his own happiness and many tender affections toward others in some nearer relations of life, and granted to each one some understanding and active powers, with a natural right exercise them for the purpose of these natural affections, it is plain each one has a natural right to exert his powers, according to his own judgment and inclination, for these purposes, in all such industry, labor, or amusements as are not hurtful to others in their persons or goods, while no more public interests necessarily require his labors or require that his actions should be under the direction of others.  This right we call natural liberty.”[2]

Sorry for the overly, philosophic language; here is this writer’s understanding:  Liberty seems key, but the meaning of it takes on an unaccustomed turn.  The term, natural liberty, today has been coopted by natural rights advocates, a la an altered Lockean view, by his current devotees. 

Under that more recent sense, unalienable refers to the state not being legally or legitimately able to take away rights.  But that according to Jefferson, is impossible, as impossible as negating any other part of one’s nature.  Hence, a better term today for a Jeffersonian sense of liberty is federal liberty – a liberty that advances a citizenry able and willing to be federated among its membership.

In securing rights, therefore, governments do not have the option of taking them away, but they can interfere with their exercise.  They can make it harder to exercise, they can distort them, they can minimize them, but they are unalienable; i.e., they cannot be taken away or given up, they are part of everyone’s nature and is as likely to be taken away as taking away one’s sense of humor.

And, in turn, this sense of liberty, while it is unalienable, introduces duties.  Yes, one can pursue self-interest, but the duty is not to arrange such interests to be contrary to the common good.  Because, as with humor, one’s pleasure in benevolence or doing good toward others is also part of that nature.

Instead, to varying degrees, the duty is to advance the common good.  Rights are not, according to Hutcheson, to be treated as a form of property; they are instead to be seen in their correlative relations to duties.  Or, duties are seeing rights from another perspective.

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[1] Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1978/2018), 213.

[2] Ibid., 216-217.  Emphasis in the original.

JEFFERSON’S SENSE OF A MORAL SENSE

Can this writer not succumb to the temptation to state:  “I’m baaack.”  He obviously cannot.  With this posting, this blog ends the respite its writer enjoyed.  To provide some sort of context, this is, by the writer’s counting, the 801^st posting of this blog.  So, here goes another 400 entries before the next rest; at least that’s the plan. 

To begin, a question is offered, one that civics teachers should consider:  Is one a good person because it makes sense to be good – goodness leads to being liked, gaining cooperation, enjoying heart-enriching company, etc. – or because it is part of one’s nature?  Thomas Reid wrote the following:

Man was destined for society.  His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object.  He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this.  This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality, and not the kalon, truth, etc., as fanciful writers have imagined.  The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm.  It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree.  It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.  This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this; even a less one than what we call common sense.  State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor.  The former will decide it as well and often better than the latter because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.[1]

Reid, in other words, argues that people have, beyond a moral reason, a moral sense.  Being moral is just part of being human.

          But is this not just another way a person seeks pleasure, which a la John Locke is universal?  Writers like Reid make the observation that when a person does something good to others, it feels good; it’s pleasurable.  So, as Locke might have said, this seeking goodness is just another expression of the pleasure drive; a drive people are born to pursue. 

Further, this drive, at times, competes with other drives.  Like what?  The drives to secure material comforts, to secure physical pleasures, to satisfy ego-induced feelings, and the like.  These drives seem to vie for a person’s commitment. 

And these drives often lead to immoral behaviors.  After all, moralists of the past have thought of categories of immorality, such as the seven deadly sins.[2]  And the word deadly is used to indicate that placating these associated drives lead to unhappy endings. 

Why?  Because they often rely on doing harm to others.  There are even arguments that when no one else is involved, possibly as with gluttony, and the harm is on oneself, one has a moral obligation to take care of oneself.  This last position does engender some controversy, but such self-harm is seldom not injurious to others. 

Potential harm can be directed toward loving family members or fellow-insured people who, through their premiums, pay extra due to unnecessary self-abuse among the populous.  “No man is an island” and this trope applies most stridently to the effects of immoral behavior.  This can get complicated.

Be that as it may, Thomas Jefferson saw morality as purely a social concern.[3]  This writer, in describing the morality associated with federation theory, has also described morality in this way.  But by so doing, one does need to be careful.  The possibility of affecting others by one’s behavior at times is quite clear and visible, but at other times, not so much. 

One needs to be honest here and not rationalize away with cheap mental gymnastics the responsibility for the harm one does to others.  This can be tricky as the just mentioned example indicate.  Actually, at times, it is quite easy to hurt others when that is not the intent.  If one wants to avoid such incidences, one has the responsibility to think before one acts.

Given this competition between drives, one can still make the claim that to be moral is part of being human.  It is also a factor – an interest – as one calculates one’s situation when it comes time to decide what one will do.  Jefferson saw the moral sense as man’s highest source of happiness:  “the brightest gem with which the human character is studded.”[4]  And, further, if one accepts this designation, this is the basis of equality.

As described in previous postings – when this blog reviewed federation theory’s case for equality – even though people might vary in their levels of talent and other assets, they are equal in their consent.  Jefferson adds some clarification regarding this more general claim.  He sees all are essentially equal because having a moral sense opens a person accountable to him/herself and to others. 

This permits the creation of a polity based on self-governance since the ability to consent, to be accountable, allows the common man, the ploughman as well as the professor, to meet the inherent social obligations such a polity demands.  Or, as this blog has referred to federal liberty:  the freedom to do what one should do.

And what of the faculty of reason?  Well, reason, according to another writer of Jefferson’s time, Francis Hutcheson, functions as a targeting agent; it decides in what direction and in what style a person decides to be moral.  Conditions present moral challenges or events in a variety of situations. 

Mere intuition or emotionally spurred reaction(s) often lead to less than harmless results.  The use of reason helps to minimize such eventualities.  Some call this type of distinction as being the difference between ends and means.  But while reason can play a helpful role – assuming the end goal is to be moral – it can also be used to manipulate the factors involved. 

Mentally, one strongly wants a given end – perhaps one that causes harm or causes more harm than other alternatives – and self-deception takes place or, if not self-deception, the concern is in how resulting behavior might be judged by others, and that person rationalizes by choosing an immoral option. 

Reason is a tool for good or evil; but long-term, reason points to morality.  It is also subject to faulty performance – it errs.  Or it is subject of varying forces like those emanating from the culture with its biases or erroneous bits of “common” knowledge that is not knowledge at all.  They are instead prejudices, that have become accepted without question. 

All of these hinder the function of reason.  They are often inordinately driven by emotions and resulting rationalization can take on a reasoned appearance that everyone needs to be on guard against in order to be truly reasonable.  The use of logos, in appearance, can be false logos.

People dealing with these issues – back in the days of Jefferson and even today – should consider reasoning that directs a person to be altruistic or in any way directs his/her behaviors to assist others should not counter a basic insight Locke points out. 

That is, “man automatically and infallibly pursues pleasure.”[5]  A person might err in his/her calculations, but the aim is always to induce pleasure.  As it turns out, helping, assisting, coming to the aid of others induces pleasurable sensations within the person so acting.  Whether one agrees with that or not, Jefferson seemed to have agreed with it.

The next posting will pick up on this theme and proceed to further develop this notion of pleasure seeking, reason, moral sense and how they affected Jefferson’s use of the term, “inalienable.”  Turns out, how most students are led to understand this term is not exactly right.

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[1] As quoted in Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1978/2018), 202-203.  The argument here is described and explained by Wills in this cited work.  To bolster this message, there are current writers, albeit a bit nuanced, do seem to agree with Reid. See Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave:  The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, NY:  Penguin Press, 2017.  Of interest are human’s potential to opt anti-cheating reactive behaviors and the role of the frontal cingulate cortex (ACC) in empathic reactions to the misfortunes of others.  Also, Sapolsky writes of the role oxytocin play in humans pairing and bonding, making them more charitable, more sensitive parents or parenting, more prosocial, more concerned with social approval, and more responsive to social approval or reinforcement.  So, the moral sense does seem to have a basis in human biology.

[2] Reminder:  they are envy, gluttony, greed or avarice, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath.

[3] Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

[4] Ibid., 211.

[5] Ibid., 212.

THE INDIVIDUAL WITHIN COMMUNITY

[Note:  This posting will mark the 800^th posting of this blog.  As when this blog hit the 400-posting mark, its writer will begin a break – this time for one or two months.  The blog itself will still be found at this site and its archive feature will be in effect.  The reason for this respite is that the writer wants to finish another writing project.  Hopefully, the readers of this blog will be on the lookout for the blog’s resumption.]

For those readers who have been reading the last few postings of this blog know it is currently reporting on some of the fundamental ideas of phenomenology psychology/philosophy.  In the last posting, it reported on a developmental model presented by the philosopher Hegel.  In that model, humans are described as experiencing, through the years of their lives, a maturing process – a development in three stages.  The reader can scroll down to the last entry to read that description.

          Hegel is mostly noted for offering a historical-dialectic model in which through history, human societies are cast as working themselves through a series of conflicts over various ideations of what the nature of societal/political life is and/or should be.  Through these conflicts the events of the past are “guided” to be what they have been. 

That guidance took form through the antagonism inherit within certain societal qualities or elements such as subject and object of knowledge, nature and mind, self and other, freedom and authority, faith and knowledge, etc.  The aim here is not to explain his complex philosophy, but to provide a context for Hegel’s view on human development – it’s based on contradiction and tension within a person’s consciousness.

To summarize the three potential stages, one can apply the following: 

·        in the first stage a child naively accepts what he/she is told or explained to be real and the child makes moral determinations by relying on authoritative/moral positions of those in authority;

·        in the second stage, a young person – usually of teenage to young adult years – questions authority and strives for, without much sophistication, freedom; and lastly,

·        in the third stage, a mature person comes to terms with authority and other power-holders by understanding his/her freedom is advanced within communal settings.

The word “potential” is used because there is no guarantee that any individual will advance through all three stages – they might not even advance beyond the first stage.  And besides – or because of – the shifts from stage to stage are fraught with contention, conflict, and tension.  This posting aims at sharing Philip Selznick’s view[1] concerning the implications this development has on the health of a commonwealth. 

A commonwealth relies on its populous to be supportive of its basic values, aims and goals, general processes, and institutions.  To the degree that populous engages in personal changes, characterized by conflict – between the individual and society and within themselves – one can readily see this does not tend to help maintain or advance the commonwealth’s health.

          Of course, this is a matter of degree.  A society of any stability can accommodate various levels of such conflicts.  Heck, one can argue these conflicts provide some beneficial elements; e.g., spurring on creativity and motivation.  But to maintain a functional level of such tension, prudence calls for societal processes to establish those institutions to help it handle these conflicts.

This creates roles within a society and in which schools have a part.  And that role can only be successfully met with an understanding of what is taking place within each of their students.  But further, school personnel – those who deal directly with students on an ongoing basis – need to acquire a sophisticated understanding not only of what is happening, but what is needed to happen to advance toward what is healthy for the student and for society. 

Schools, as this blog has argued and provided expert opinion supporting, are not currently meeting this obligation very well.  In part, the educator, as best as he/she can determine, needs to commit to know and understand what constitutes the student’s consciousness.  And the Hegel model helps in devising the questions that educators should ask of what he/she perceives student behavior to be including what those students’ expressed concerns and desires are.

Such questioning can be directed at specific concerns.  The first is the issue of freedom.  Here, teachers need to understand that true freedom – as opposed to intuitive freedom – can only be obtained by a person being true to themselves.  This further calls for an inner strength that students might find hard to attain and a self-awareness most people try to avoid.  And central to this process is the use of reason.  Only through this questioning and process can one enlarge one’s consciousness – a challenge that lasts a life time.

Hegel did not believe in subjective morality.  There is a right way in his eyes. 

He did not believe people choose ideals or decide for themselves what is right or wrong.  Rather, the moral worth of an event, decision, or practice is known by the contribution it makes to an objective and immanent ideal, derived from human nature and the human condition, whose dimensions are revealed as history unfolds.[2]

This view demands two, what seems to be, opposing approaches.  The first is an objective view of what is happening – what events mark a person’s life.  And the second is an understanding of the historical context within which one is placed.  While times change – and with it the prevailing assumptions, biases, and understandings – one is served and services a functional consciousness by approaching reality with examined preconceptions.  It is a posture of proactive attentiveness; a person views reality with a “fresh look.”

How?  By evaluating the conceptual world – what some might call, one’s theories-in-use – about what is happening.  These conceptualizations often take on a hidden quality as the person opts a posture of “that’s just the way things are.”  In political matters, for example, beliefs structure perceptions; i.e., they form, and, in turn, they dictate what one perceives to strengthen existing and invested-in opinions.  That way of viewing constrains consciousness and hinders maturation.

So, while everyday experiences can be the source of hindrance, it still is the only venue that affords one the opportunity to grow.  Phenomenologists call that one’s lifeworld and it exists both at the personal level and at the societal level.  In each level it is unique.  It is the stuff of which one’s life transpires, it fills the textured settings – the details – of the different elements of one’s experiences.  It provides the “wellsprings” of life.

And through the lifeworld and its uniqueness the conscious landscape is formed in which one’s moral and “spiritual” life can ground itself in what is concrete.

Acceptance of uniqueness brings a realm of freedom – the freedom to be different and to be oneself.  Interdependence, however, creates the enmeshed, embedded, implicated self.  Without awareness of that condition, and responsibility for it, freedom is unguided and spiritually empty.[3]

This take on phenomenology reminds the writer of the work of Thomas Reid and his argument for common sense.  Once one matures beyond a stage, looks back with some chagrin, he/she might view the whole prior years and embarrassingly think, why of course.

[Note:  So long for a while.]

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[1] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1992).

[2] Ibid., 67.  Emphasis added.

[3] Ibid., 69.

STAGES IN HEGEL’S MATURING PROCESS

In the last posting this writer focused on the idea of becoming, per se, and attempted to tie it to the developmental view of phenomenological psychology/philosophy.  This emphasis looks at how individuals go through life experiences and asks whether that person grows and matures by closing the gap between his/her lifeworld (how that person views reality) and what reality is.

          This posting assumes the reader has read that previous posting (if not, he/she is invited to click on http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2018_11_13_archive.html or just keep scrolling down to see the next posting dated November 13^th and give it quick read).  At the end of that posting, a preview of this posting was given in that it promised this entry would share what Philip Selznick[1] had to report regarding this view.  And the specific role Selznick plays is his review of G. W. F. Hegel’s thoughts on human development.

          Apparently, Hegel provided a model describing and explaining the chief dispositions humans experience through their personal, perceptional development.  According to the philosopher there are three major stages.  Upon reading the description of these stages and reflecting upon his own experiences, this writer thinks Hegel’s model makes sense.  It also does not contradict any major developmental theory of which this educator is aware.

          The first stage is one in which the individual has a disposition to accept the external world with little or no interpretation or critical eye.  Selznick uses the word naïve to describe this consciousness.  A youngster has a good reason to be so disposed.  He or she simply does not have the experiences by which to compare what he/she is seeing and feeling during those years. 

In terms of the gap between the subjective self and the objective reality in those years:  “… subject and object are separate; they deal with each other at arm’s length.  From the standpoint of moral development, [for example,] this is a time of uncritical acceptance of parental authority or, as adults, of whatever is demanded by conventional morality.”[2]

What is telling about this quote is that by referring to adults, the model does not guarantee that generally or in each concern, the individual matures and progresses to another stage.  There are “child-like” consciousnesses among the adult population.  Perhaps the reader can identify people in his/her social circles that demonstrate that lack of maturing.

In stage two, the person enters a more challenging consciousness.  Here the person strives and experiences a heightened self-consciousness.  These accompanying thoughts and feelings become a critical awareness sensitive to those aspects of life that places limitations on his/her freedoms while the individual is formulating ideas and ideals as to what that person can become in life. 

The restraints are defined as possible obstacles to those goals.  Selznick here uses the word “unhappy” to describe the general emotional state of mind.  And in dealing with these challenges, reason takes a back seat.  As one can probably guess, this second stage is destined to be a phase of life noted for a recurring succession of frustrating experiences. 

With enough of that, reason sneaks back into a person’s calculations and, by so doing, stage three becomes potentially available to the maturing person.  And that epiphany occurs when the individual accepts what needs to be accepted; i.e., a realization that satisfaction must accommodate both the desire for individual freedom but within a communal reality.

This is probably initially seen as necessary compromises but can grow to an understanding that happiness relies on what a community can provide in terms of that person’s emotional needs or wants.  The communal aspect, in a mature person, is not a limiting aspect of life, but a liberating one.  If nothing else, it opens physical and emotional resources previously not available or not recognized.

In terms of the language of phenomenology, in this stage the subject and object are reconciled.  “Reflective persons make peace with their community, and give it new vitality, by formulating and accepting the rational principles that underlie a distinctive tradition.  People can finally feel at home in a world from which they had become estranged.”[3]  The social landscapes that are particularly rich in these opportunities are the family, the work space, circles of friends, and the neighborhood.

So, the individual, through these three stages, have their own form of a dialectic development reflecting the dialectical ideation for which Hegel is famous – most people are introduced to Hegel in that he influenced the thinking of Karl Marx in the development of the political/economic theory, dialectical materialism.  Here, that theory of conflict is conducted within each person’s maturing process, but one must remember, the development within any person can be cut short. 

Adults, as stated above, can be immature and surely there are ample examples of this all around.  An inadequate, civics program probably adds to those numbers.  In the following posting, this blog will get into the implications of this Hegelian model and how maturity or immaturity provides resources or obstacles in the formulation of a healthy commonwealth.

[Note:  With the completion of the next posting, this blog will begin a break – a respite of a month or so – to allow the writer to conclude another writing project.  In the history of this blog, on the 400^th posting, the blog took a break that lasted about six months.  This upcoming break will be much shorter.  Hopefully, the reader will not judge this break too harshly – heck, he/she might yell hallelujah!  This break will begin upon the completion of the 800^th posting of this blog.  The years do go by.]

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[1] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1992).

[2] Ibid., 66.

[3] Ibid.

BECOMING, A MORE NUANCED CONCERN

Former First Lady, Michelle Obama, has written a memoir and it is currently being released.  The title is Becoming.  This title evokes an image; it is an image of a person changing over time.  Hopefully, the change is toward a more productive, self-satisfying definition of who a person is.  In psychology and philosophy this emphasis has been bolstered during the twentieth century.  To some, this view, in a more self-centered version, was used to advance the natural rights view of politics.

The neuroendocrinologist, Robert Sapolsky, makes the flat-out claim that conservatives tend to simplify social realities – at least as compared to liberals.[1]  One way that simplification manifests itself is how baseline conservatives accept a crude behavioralist view of social interactions.  This is part of this oversimplification.  As such, people are viewed, by these conservatives, as simply calculating beings, measuring rewards and punishments and behaving to maximize anticipated rewards and/or limiting anticipated punishments.

And further, those calculations have a limited time dimension; i.e., limited to what is seen as rewarding or punishing in a current time frame.  The natural rights construct, the political perspective in which most conservatives believe, favors this crude behavioralist sense of the self.  Yes, the natural rights’ advocates like the “self” aspect of the image, but not what others, who have opted this self-image, have added.

That is a wholistic sense of the self, a more complex image.  Namely, those who have advanced a phenomenological psychology/philosophy argue a nuanced view.  That view includes that to understand oneself and others, one needs to appreciate the subjective sense of one’s experience – one’s lifeworld – but, at the same time, see that what one perceives, through life, is an objective reality.  Growth or “becoming,” essentially, consists of coming to terms with the gap between one’s lifeworld and the real world.

This blog addressed this sense of “becoming” before.  Here is what a prior posting reported:

With descriptions of behavioral and cognitive psychologies presented over the last three postings, this posting will present, in a rudimentary fashion, a “psychology” that not all in [that] discipline recognize as a psychology.  That would be the humanist/phenomenology psychology.  Yet despite this reluctance by fellow educational psychologists, it has had an observable influence on many teachers and curriculum developers. 

Some have called it the “third force” – another way to visualize psychological factors that affect how and what a person learns.  It is criticized as being a “soft relative” of the more “scientific” approaches to educational psychology.  The practitioners who engage in this approach’s research do not depend on sophisticated experimental designs to gather their data, but on testimonials and interviews. 

The information, gathered by these qualitative techniques, ventures into personal accounts of what the “I” experiences are in learning and/or in handling other challenges.  Those who adhere to this psychology place great importance on self-definition – how we view ourselves.  They see this introspective determination as highly influential in how one will function in life, generally, and in the classroom, more specifically. 

This is true both for students and teachers and even administrators.  And this self-awareness, or lack of it, is not a quality that is abstracted out of one’s psyche, but instead a quality that takes in the whole person and the whole environment in which that person is situated. 

Perceptions become central:  does the person perceive him/herself as a learner, a scoundrel, a lover, a hater, a leader, a follower, an actor, or a dropout?  These are various self-inflicted titles that then evolve into illustrative behavior that manifests their meanings.  An actor will act and a self-perceived dropout will, more than likely, be a dropout in real life. 

This describes the phenomenological aspect of this psychology.  And these perceptions are not of a temporal nature, but instead define the whole person – a summary of who the person is through his/her own eyes.  The longer and more established these perceptions exist, the harder they are to dislodge.

Therefore, an educator, in order to be successful, needs to be conscious of this reality, be able to plan for it and, in a humanistic way, account for it as the educator interacts with the student.  The aim, of course, is to encourage and enable a person to perceive him/herself in ways that are rewarding to the person, not debilitating or self-destructive in any way or to any degree.

With this approach, the emphasis is not on how one responds to this or that stimulus or how the brain’s structure processes information.  The emphasis is on the Gestaltic aim to see and understand the total interaction between the individual and his/her environment – less analysis and more synthesis is this psychology’s orientation. 

This view is particularly sensitive to the interpersonal relations that mark a person’s space.  In this, humanistic psychology leads teachers and curriculum developers to be more attuned to communication qualities such as connotations, symbolism, and configurations of interactions among subjects of a given “field” (a field being those aspects of a space that provides any effect on an interaction).

Learning, therefore, is viewed as complex.  There are mental processes that take in what a field has to offer; the elements have to be analyzed in order to identify any problem(s); the mind has to discriminate and tease out what is important from what is not, and it has to see and understand the consequential relationships among the people and things present or potentially present.

Curriculum is not seen as a set plan, but an evolving concern which is better designated by the verb, currere, than the noun, curriculum.  This is the central ideal of reconceptualism which is usually associated with more recent expressions of reconstructionist philosophy.  [This aspect highlights the “becoming” sense emphasized above.]

And by referring to the people and things present, the concern is not only with the physical proximity to the situation in question, but also includes those elements that can have an influence from afar.  All of this is a dynamic reality which calls on the person to accommodate to the changes that are constantly taking place. 

Nothing is set in stone, making all perceived knowledge or beliefs unreliable and subject to questioning and critique.  [The subjective meeting the objective.]  But what is maintained, throughout the instructional interchange, is framing the teaching effort toward addressing the whole, the whole person and the whole environment. 

Truth is not only in the detail, but also in the entirety of the situation, not just in external elements (rewards and/or punishments) or in internal mental elements (the structural processes of the mind and brain), but in the whole interactive reality.[2]

With that reminder, this posting will leave it at that and promise that the next posting will pick up this topic and report what Philip Selznick, with the help of Georg Wilhem Fredrich Hegel, add to this view of self and becoming.

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[1] Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave:  The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, NY:  Penguin Press, 2017).

[2] “The Whole Is Greater Than Its Parts,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics – a blog, September 6, 2016, accessed November 12, 2018, http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2016_09_06_archive.html .  The rendering of this prior posting has been further edited.