Conscious State Stages – part one

Personal or public policy, law, and practices are formed from human conscious state stages of mature or immature development. Let me suggest what this means, again relying on Paulo Freire .

All humans at birth are biologically in a Primal conscious state stage, oblivious to self and any nonhuman surroundings. With the help of other humans or on our own, we begin to transform into a Naïve conscious state stage with fragile arguments about cause and effect. Before birth, we had lived in the microclimate of the womb and, I should add, usually with very little effort on our part, with some exceptions. It was very copacetic; although, it was getting a little cramped toward the end or our stay when suddenly all hell broke loose, and we were born. More about that in the next episode.

Back to the Naïve conscious state stage. This is a tricky stage of development. The “fragile arguments” leave us vulnerable to influence by mature or immature politicians such as teachers, parents, elected/appointed/career officials, clergy, employers, peers or siblings, and any other human culture role having influence on our interpretation we might make as our “reality”. The mature politician practices being critical and creative, posing all cause and effect interpretations with us as a problem, in a disposition toward knowledge that is technical, practical, and emancipation (Juergen Habermas), in order that we will discover how to transform the reality together. While the immature politician practices by dehumanizing us, by “helping” us to adapt to a sectarian knowledge about cause and effect, so we will “get with their prescribed program”.

The mature politician helps transform our conscious state of development from the Naïve to the Critical conscious state, converting any fear about relating with other humans and the nonhuman surroundings. Together with the mature politician, we can gain a mutually discovered understanding, toward the risks and benefits of an authentic culture of liberty and justice for all to survive and thrive peacefully. – By contrast, the immature politician “helps” us through domination, exploitation, and oppressive violence, to transform our Naïve conscious state into the Fanatic conscious state of ourselves and into a distorted version of the culture of liberty and justice for all to survive and thrive peacefully.

I know this is a skeleton of conscious state stages of development. But try to think of examples of your daily relations with other human animals and the nonhuman surroundings in these terms.

With my next post (in a day or two), let’s consider, in brief format, the five interrelated biological imperatives that make you political, in politics, and a politician.

Bob Walker