Re: [pf] SEEING past brainwashing

by Kaleopono

23 December 2000 07:44 UTC

Betsy, we are probably looking at opposite sides of the same coin.  I
especially had in mind the person who thinks "Over my dead body!  Nobody's
going to teach ME anything!"  This sort of person cannot learn from the
non-human teachers you list, either.  I'm not trying to emphasize the role
of the teacher, but rather the role and attitude of the learner.

I agree with you that *some* individuals successfully sort out by themselves
the dynamics and impacts of the systematic social conditioning and
brainwashing.  Most lead ordinary, obscure lives and do not try to attract
attention.  When you consider the entire population and the enormity of the
transformation that is required, I think you will affirm that today's pace
of liberation from brainwashing and social conditioning is insufficient for
the challenge of these times.  It is trying to boil water in a large pot
using a candle!  While the Cultural Creatives subgroup feels the uneasy urge
to seek another direction for their lives, and varying degrees of
experimentation and advocacy are evident among them, few could be accurately
described as free and unconflicted at this moment.  So the exception proves
the rule.  The limited contemporary examples of unassisted liberation
illustrate the power of the purposive calling that undergirds human
existence.  They don't prove that everyone can do it on their own.

As you suggested, experiences can be the "teacher" for one who is adequately
prepared:  open and receptive to the transmission of knowledge from a
source, in whatever way that source disseminates its knowledge.  Experiences
can also be an addictive trap that keep you chasing your tail in a circle to
nowhere.  What a waste (that a human teacher can minimize)!  And the learner
who imposes conditions on how he or she may learn is a fool:  "I want to
know how to drive a car, and because I like boats I want you to instruct me
using that bright, shiny blue one on the lake over there."  The seeker then
may have lots of fun, can spend endless days of distraction while cruising
on the lake, and will probably congratulate himself for learning so much
about the boat's operation (I demand my gold star promptly every day!)...but
in the end still will not be able to drive a car.

For a teacher in any guise to have an effect in the learner, the learner
needs to recognize that she or he does not know and also needs to offer a
humble, open and appreciative acceptance of the teacher's gifts.  Success
depends much more on the attitude of the seeker than on any characteristics
of the teacher.  A teaching can come from any source but if the seeker is
closed, won't accept it and demands something else, instead, no learning
will occur.

Your reference to hierarchy "(Heirarchy, someone else has the answers or at
least the means, we need to spend huge amounts of time and struggle to
become free, etc.)" leading into Paulo Freire, who worked among the
impoverished and exploited poor in South America, causes me to wonder if it
is not the existence of a human teacher per se (that's what Freire himself
was, you'll have to agree) that you find objectionable, but instead
hierarchical relationships between powerful superiors and powerless
subordinates.  I hate these, too.  I think that hierarchical teacher-seeker
dynamics are deadly and do not use or advocate them.  A teacher of the kind
I have in mind will instead be a friend and support, as well as a
knowledgable guide, as Friere himself attempted.  Learning to discriminate
between the two kinds of teacher is an essential early task for any serious
seeker of knowledge.  At every turn there is news of some guru who took his
(and sometimes, her) followers for a ride.  I am sympathetic to your
concerns.

Hopefully learning will occur quickly with little struggle, but often it
does take years and sustained, focused effort to become free of conditioning
and brainwashing.  Not many now finish in their lifetime.  Can both the
quantity and the velocity of liberation be increased very substantially?  I
think it is necessary for the means to be found.  Teaching and skilled
teachers to transmit the teaching throughout the land will be necessary.
Christ sent out disciples.  The evangelical Christian denominations that
exist today try their best.  Many other religious streams do, too.  It's not
enough, and much of it is too ideological for the majority.  A deeply
spiritual but non-sectarian movement that can successfully embrace all of
them would sure help.

In the early 1970s I had my own copy of Freire's book "Pedagogy of the
Oppressed" and found it useful in community organizing efforts that grew out
of earlier Vietnam War protest activity (an informative, rigorous review
relevant to our present discussion of multinational corporate globalization
and its impacts, and what to do about this, is available at
http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_schugurensky/freire/hendriks2.html).
*After* being exposed to particular preparatory experiences, disempowered
and passive people are then often but not always able to be confident in
their own ability to figure out what they must do to improve their living
conditions.  In the communities where I worked, a great deal of
hand-holding, encouragement and validation of small steps was needed to
maintain momentum and avoid easy lapsing into old patterns of thought and
behavior.  The method is a process devised by Freire that tries to move
people out of the brainwashed state into a condition of liberation.  Without
Freire the original teacher, and without others in his line of transmission
who continue to pass on his knowledge, the method of learning and liberation
that you praise would not exist.

To me this validates my assertion that a teacher is probably necessary to
overcome brainwashing, which seems especially true for the population en
masse...which encompasses all of our concerns about brainwashing, the need
for a progressive social movement, voting patterns and recently, whether a
religious (spiritual) left is needed and whether it can possibly develop in
the United States.  How to exert a positive impact intended to relieve the
suffering of the masses was also the subject of Freire's theory and
practice.  The review linked above states:  '...various critics assert that
the people are victims of cultural invasion [brainwashing] and therefore
"..cannot become leaders in their own right and cannot themselves construct
a theory of liberating action..." [until they are liberated...I'm not alone
in asserting that the teacher is necessary]. Freire does not deny that his
methodology contains social and political purposes which, if misused, are
potentially manipulative [hierarchy rears its head here, too]. Indeed, the
methodology of Freire's pedagogy could easily be co-opted and utilized to
perpetuate systems of domination.'

Freire's methodology has limitations.  Always there is the potential for
demagogery in any teaching situation.  Rather than deny the need for a
teacher, I would emphasize the critical importance of seekers being able to
discriminate between the myriad teachers available.  The genuine seeker
needs the capacity to select the one offering true gold from among the many
who are brokering fool's gold, at whatever price.  With real gold one will
get somewhere.  With fool's gold one will not.

I still will assert that a teacher is necessary.  I also will affirm that
the success of the enterprise is wholly dependent on the attitude of the
seeker, as you described.  I think it is true that most learning is the
result of students' intra- and interpersonal struggles, and the examples
these struggles present for edification of others in the group is an
important, useful part of the teaching-learning process.

Kaleopono


----- Original Message -----
From: "Betsy Barnum" <bbarnum@wavetech.net>
Cc: "Positive Futures" <positive-futures@igc.topica.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 4:52 PM
Subject: Re: [pf] Repost: SEEING past brainwashing


> Kaleopono wrote:
>
> > > Finding a skilled action teacher is probably necessary to disentangle
> > > oneself from this whirlpool.
>
> I have to respectfully disagree, Kaleopono. I don't think a teacher is
required
> at all. If it were so, very, very few people would ever escape from
cultural
> brainwashing, since there are certainly very, very, very few people
capable of
> being a teacher of this sort, and most people wouldn't or couldn't engage
in
> such a relationship. We already know that millions of people (all those
cultural
> creatives) have succeeded in at least cracking the shell of culturally
imposed
> thinking. *I* feel that *I* can "see," as you put it, and I have not been
in a
> disciplined student-teacher relationship such as you describe. In fact,
I'll go
> further and say that I think the idea that people need a human "teacher"
is part
> of the cultural programming we need to break out of! (Heirarchy, someone
else
> has the answers or at least the means, we need to spend huge amounts of
time and
> struggle to become free, etc.)
>
> Paulo Freire developed a very powerful educational method out of teaching
people
> to read--we call it popular education. There is (sometimes, sometimes not)
a
> teacher in a group of people, but most of the learning happens from their
> interactions with each other. This kind of education is empowering because
> people find that they already have a great deal of knowledge and wisdom
> inside--under that cultural programming, their vital, connected, aware
humanness
> is still there. They are then able to determine what they need to know
that
> isn't already within them, and where to get that knowledge. They don't
need
> anyone to tell them, or to give them non-logical puzzles or
personally-adapted
> tasks to shake up their thinking.
>
> There are other ways that reality can break in, too--from spontaneous
> experiences in nature, reading books or articles, solitary meditation, a
single
> conversation with another person, a long slow shift in consciousness. Any
of
> these experiences or practices, or many, many others, can be the "teacher"
that
> helps us see clearly.
>
> Betsy
>
> --
> Betsy Barnum
> bbarnum@wavetech.net
> http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1624
>
> **************************************
> The Constitution was designed to ensure that the majority of
> citizens (without property) would not have a real voice in
> political affairs and it is no coincidence that that is the case
> today. And the Constitution was designed to ensure that real
> political power in this country would always be held by the
> handful of very large property owners and it is no coincidence
> that that is the case today.
>
> --Jerry Fresia, Toward An American Revolution