[1] The book, A Perfect Mess: the Hidden Benefits of Disorder: how Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-The-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman argues that to some degree, mess does make form, very usable and positive form.
[2] cognitive dissonance refers to moments where our encounters in the real world seem to prove something we believe unfounded in reality. That makes for an unbalance state of mind, an unease in how we feel, so we try to resolve it to regain the balance we want. We can do that by questioning our belief or by explaining away our direct experience to fit our belief.
[3] In rereading this, I just to note of the word "realization." The ending "ization" means an action or a process, the result of making or acting. Realization me we engage in seeing or making the real. Oddly, I come to a realization about the word "realization."
[4] Here we find a new narrative choice. In order to tell a story that happened to me, I switch from "we" to "I" as the narrational because it happened to me alone. In a way, it becomes a "we" story when I tell it to you. We have shared it.
[5] I encountered this question in a program about education on ABC News (1993), Common Miracles: The American Revolution in Learning.
[6] Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 1983: Logical-mathematical, Spatial, Linguistic, Bodily-kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal Naturalistic, Existential/spiritual
[7] I do not mean to imply or condone such competitions as parts of the learning process, but the analogy works as an illustration of the usual and prevailing system at hand.
[8] I found in my teaching to ask questions about personal conduct and attitudes indirectly by referring to abstract others served as a worthwhile habit. That allowed students, and anyone for that matter, to reflect on their answer freely without making, perhaps, unwanted admissions. It limited if not eliminated any sense of the confrontive. They could always use our discussion for some personal self-reflection if their spirit moved them to do so later on.
[9] All of the following developed as a dialogue, and through dialogue, we made many changes to what the book had to say but still held to the principle it maintained.
[10] The authors offer this observation. They ask us not to blame any caregiver for what that caregiver does or does not do. We can condemn their harmful acts, but we can still understand the caregiver as a person. All caregivers, they write, want to love their child fully, but many have never felt or even seen such a way of life, and they have no idea how to give unconditional positive regard to themselves let alone to their child or children. When you feel inner unhappiness, you unknowingly share that inner unhappiness with others.
[11] Allowing the children and others in our care to suffer from a consequence unnecessarily also feels like a deprivation of unconditional regard. When we can, we may well ameliorate the effects of mistaken (nice word and nice idea inside it) choices while still making the result of that choice a learning experience without a punishing lecture. When Gavin, the son in our care, forgot to bring his lunch to school, Silvia brought it to him. We explained conversationally what all that involved and what would have happened if we couldn't offer that support for some reason that did not include arbitrary withdrawal. He took that to heart and took care to remember in the future. He may not have always succeeded, but he always took responsibility for his actions even when we helped him out with the result. People who take responsibility for their actions, interestingly enough, have a much better chance to act freely.
[12] Smart Love rather brilliantly and simply advises us to look at things from the point of view of the child.
[13] We might also make note of the possessive use of language when speaking about those with whom we have a relationship: my son, my daughter, my wife, my husband and so on. People often introduce this other person first as that possession: "And this is my daughter." They might even forget to offer the name secondarily. When we possess something, when we own something, we feel we control that something. We feel we can do what we want to that thing. A possessive relationship turns the other person into thing we own, and we can treat that thing as we will. In frustration, people abuse the things they own in all kinds of ways, punishing children and others as well, which comes as part of that ownership, that possessiveness. We generally feel little or no compassion for the things we possess.
[14] Frederick Douglass in his autobiography writes about the same sort of phenomenon that occurred in the slave owner. No matter the original intention of a slave owner to remain humane toward the person the slave holder owned, the demands of ownership distorted the emotional self and the perceiving self of the slave owner. The role of master became the identity of the owner, and in that role, the owner acted destructively toward the being he/she owned. In doing that, the owner denied their shared humanity and thus his own full humanity as well.
[15] This phrase originated and has been developed by Riane Eisler in her book The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future (Harper Collins San Francisco, 1987) and other of her books along with other authors.
[16] The word "unconscious" carries with it a good deal Freudian or psychological baggage. We often associate it with things we have repressed, buried thoughts and feelings or incidents about ourselves and our past which need prolonged treatment to uncover and expose to our conscious mind. Here we might better use a word such as "preconscious," something that suggests that the knowledge of this unconscious meaning perspective or thought is unrepressed and available to us if we know to look for it. Our immediate conduct, the choices we make about that conduct make for perfect markers for those unconscious or preconscious thoughts and feelings.
[17] Only through the stories told by women, Silvia most deeply, who generously shared their mothering experience could allow for such a description of breast feeding. Otherwise, what do I know?
[18] We might reflect on the words "right" and "wrong." They do not serve a moral purpose here. On this simple level of clarifying discussion, right means that our action worked, wrong that it didn't. In learning and creating, things don't work out all the time. That's the nature of the process. Wrong does not necessarily mean bad. That's why intention has to do with how we deal with either right or wrong. Smart Love asserts that it will always serve us and those entrusted to us to assume a good intention whatever the outcome.
[19] Robert Kane, in his book, Through the Moral Maze, suggests we take our imperative for choosing how to act from the ideas of Immanuel Kant. Kane calls this the "ends principle": treat all other as ends in themselves and never means to our or anyone else's end. We can also extend this to something we can do for others for their own good without consulting them if they think it's their own good, or doing something for an unspoken higher cause or ideal which turns others into means to that end.
[20] I worked with a group of convicted misdemeanor offenders in a life skills diversion program. Part of the program caused us to talk about these very issues. In one class, almost all of the participants declared unequivocally that we had to use physical punishment to make children learn how to behave. They knew because that's how they learned right from wrong (the irony of their claim escaped everyone at the time). I responded by telling them they had given me a great idea. Instead of my working twelve hours with participants, I would charge them the fee, hit them two or three times with a two by four, depending on the severity of the misdemeanor, tell them not to do that again, and send them home. Those participants told me in no uncertain terms how negatively they would feel about that, and the point was soon made.
[21] The extremely high recidivism rate in prisons in the United States would stand as a testament to punishment and fear as failed in teaching much of anything aside from more violence and resentment.
[22] The idea of unconditional positive regard offers us a daunting challenge to fulfill its promise. Under no condition whatsoever do we withdraw our regard. Whatever that person chooses to do, no matter how much we disagree, our unconditional regard stays in place. Given that admonition, we want to think about how we make our disagreement clear and offer real guidance without any withdrawal of regard—not an easy trick, but doable. It's like hating the sin and loving the sinner except that hatred even of the sin will feel like a withdrawal of regard. We can disagree with a choice the person has made, point out why, show the consequences, and maintain o open and unconditional positive regard for the other person. It takes practice, but it can be done. We just have to learn it for the first time and practice it. We might begin such a practice with ourselves. In the end, we might find more natural than not.
[23] The question of guilt may arise here. The need to escape punishment and rejection trump the reflective teaching power of guilt. Guilt means to teach us. Fear prevents such teaching.
[24] Given the lives of many students, they also thought that is what the American justice system means to do. It punishes people so they will feel the threat of such punishment and will not repeat their offences. Others will see the power of that punishment and feel fear, thus deterring them from some offence by fear of such a punishment. Given levels of first time offences and recidivism, that dominator meaning perspective appeared then and appears now badly flawed.
[25] At the end of George Orwell's utopian novel 1984 the protagonist doesn't simply surrender to domination and its symbol, Winston Smith embodies that in the following "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
[26] That has served as a cliché of our time, and it often meant travel, drugs, and excesses of many kinds. It inevitably sent people outward to seek someone else's answer which, in a way re-substantiates the idea of the dominator model. If we can't find our self within our own world, we seek that self and some unconditional positive regard for that self from some other world that will allow us to subordinate in a way we feel brings us out of the insubordination against which we rebel. Subordination is, after all, subordination. None of that thrashing about guarantees anything by way of individuation and autonomy. Besides, we could think that with the endless number of self-storage locations in the United States, we should encounter our self tucked away somewhere in there.
[27] We can call into question the idea that the essential family must function in the dominator model based on the dominator meaning perspective. An essential family does not definably function through domination. Domination free families exist and base themselves on unconditional positive regard. However, when we discuss rebellion, such families do not come up. If a family structure works without domination, the need for rebellion ceases to exist. We can find disagreements in such a family, even rather nosily at times, and those differences of opinion can work themselves out in equitable ways. Whenever no one element of a family dominates in every situation, serves as the arbiter and the final, decisive word in all decisions, the need for rebellion ceases to exist. Such a family structure remains open to the diversity of its members, and accepts the power to contribute and even lead that each member of a family inherently feels and expresses.
[28] One student of mine was hoping for medical care from the disability system. He said that if that didn't happen because he was refused, he would execute a plan he had for going through the exercise of robbing a bank. He would go through the motions of a note and all that, but he would make sure no one felt at risk. He would wait quietly for the police to come and get him. He even said that he would bring enough donuts for the officers to enjoy a snack while they went through their motions of arrest as he went through his motions of theft before they took him away. This too is rebellion by way of subversion.
[29] The practice of state terrorism be it by crucifixion, torture, or indiscriminate bombing means to nullify the ability of the individual to make such a statement. Jesus surrenders to the cross as rebellion and subversion even as suicide bombers blow themselves to pieces as a form of rebellion and subversion. That's why Orwell constructs Room 101 in 1984. In that room the object of torture will face "the worst thing in the world" for that individual, so the subversion and rebellion cease.
[30] Viktor Frankl suggested that the Statue of Liberty on the East coasts should find balance on the West coast with a Statue of Responsibility.
[31] Stanley Milgram tells us that the agentic person comes to see her/himself as an instrument to an authority and is fully obedient to that authority.
[32] Gavin, our son, refused to talk about any subject he learned at school or hear any additional information about such subjects. He said that if he learned something that was not what the test wanted as an answer, he would do badly on the test no matter what he knew or how valid his thoughts and ideas were.
[33] Children learn that form of attention from our, often unwitting, conduct as parental figures. In my case, when I first spent time alone with Gavin, I found it generally pleasant because he entertained himself very well even in his pre-language stage of development. He would play happily for some time, and I would busy myself with something else even while keeping him in sound and sight. At some point he would make a noise or do something that displeased me for whatever reasons, and I went to him to express my displeasure. He would look confused at such times, and I felt the need to think about what happened between us. I knew I was teaching him at such moments, and I needed to question the nature and content of that teaching. It became clear that from Gavin's point of view, when he thought things went well, and I said nothing, he got little if any attention. When he did something I did not feel comfortable with, he got my attention even if it came at a cost. I changed my attitude and my choice to make sure I expressed positive attention and regard for him at all times when such attention would feel positive and meaningful. Many students expressed the lack of such positive attention in terms of what they had seen or experienced in their lives.
[34] We could see this phrase as better expressing a more realistic need by calling it the "Locus of balance."
[35] No one suggested I could run people over if I had a mind. Students recognized that certain vehicular conduct would take me out of the category of "traffic tickets." Their recognition of that fact also rather made the point about actions being controlled through threat and fear.
[36] As it happened in our classes, this begins a tangential discussion which relates deeply to the purpose of the class and this writing. Why did my students and others in general, feel fear when they went to an interview, an occasion they could feel was an opportunity to celebrate their professional and personal selves?
[37] I use the phrase "negatively critical" to preserve the use of the word critical or criticism as a possibly positive expression. My students, as well as most people, respond to the words "critical" and "criticism" as if they have only negative manifestations. As a critic of a work, I can offer my criticism of that work in a completely positive light. Mostly, however, we all forget that. When we criticize, we make a judgment of the merits of something or someone else. What did my students and others (including me) think of their professional and personal merits, I wondered, to respond to that word in that way?
[38] There may be some parental figures who act out of some sort of neurological disorder, but that act comes from the disorder not the person. They may also act out of the damage done to them which may trace back multiple generations. As I write here, I seek to keep otherness out of the discussion and keep compassion in. This idea also comes from Smart Love which seeks to liberate us from negative responses to positive knowledge.
[39] We have discussed the learned aspect of turning into those who cared for us. The meaning perspective discussion includes all parental figures at the moment of intention turning into action.
[40] Most people understand this as a biblical phrase which gives it more relevance for many. It doesn't directly. Samuel Butler used it in 1662. It takes its basis from the biblical phrase found in Proverbs 13:24: "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chastened him betimes."
[41] This does not go to say the some meaning perspectives don't have some substance about them. We may hold such a meaning perspective which will serve us well after we question it. Our critical reflection will make that perspective more meaningful because of our awareness of it.
[42] Martin Buber establishes the intimate a loving nature of the I/Thou relationship in his book I/Thou which I discuss in greater detail later in the book: I/Thou, I/IT, the Other and having—October 30, 2011
[43] Frankl suggests that we, "Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time." Most of us don't have to make up such past lessons; we earned them. If we learn from them, we can make new choices in the future.
[44] The difference between judg