Tag: critical pedagogy

If you are just joining my blog, please go back to my previous posts (3 posts so far), because I am picking up here, right in the argument I’ve been developing.

Now, where are we? What am I proposing? Here is the way I see it:

• No one can choose to be political, in politics, and a politician; and no one can escape being all three, daily, in our interactions with other human animals and with our nonhuman surroundings.
• There are only two kinds of politicians, mature and immature.
• The fundamental difference is that mature politicians create a culture of liberty and justice for all to survive and thrive peacefully, while immature politicians inadvertently, deceitfully, or arrogantly create a culture of domination, exploitation, and oppression violence.
• The problem is that everybody on earth is born as an immature politician with the potential to remain in a Primal, Naïve, or guided into a Fanatic conscious state, by the inadvertent, deceitful, or arrogant domination, exploitation, and oppression of other frightened immature politicians.
• However, everybody is also born with the potential for learning the courage to be liberated into a Critical conscious mature politician, if there is help from other mature politicians, and there are no biological impairments to the process of conscious state stages of development.
• Natural law rules relations capriciously and amorally, but it also provides the capacity for human animals to create human law that can mitigate the natural law’s harmful impacts. Natural law makes possible and is the ultimate limit on human law ruling relations among human animals and their nonhuman surroundings.

 

Why is it important to establish that human animal biology makes everybody political, in politics, and a politician? I want you to see it in contrast to slogans, sound bites, euphemisms, habits, traditions, hearsay, or spin, and personal “expert” agendas.

Consider the five inalienable human animal biology or biophysics characteristics. Then, consider how this supports the possibility to create a critical mass of Critical conscious politicians.

Everybody uses law to rule relations, negotiating the following five requirements with everybody else as a mature or immature politician:

1. To Establish Vital Frequency Ranges: In order to survive and thrive, all human animals must achieve certain frequency ranges of climate, sustenance, DNA replication, and physical expression, to survive and thrive, as was provided in the womb. Too fast, too slow, too abrupt a change in frequency ranges results in illness or death.

2. To Resolve the Existential Tension: We are at once a Cosmic Orphan, and at the same time part of an aggregate, (as described by anthropologist and educator Loren Eiseley in his essay collection The Star Thrower, 1978) to establish vital frequency ranges to survive and thrive.

3. To Reach a Critical Conscious State Stage of Development: The demand for frequency ranges to survive and thrive peacefully in the womb and after birth is always a daily negotiation using law to rule relations and will be done maturely or immaturely by the conscious state stage of development.

In the Primal Conscious State: At birth, oblivious of self and world, existence may seem magical and our negotiations are limited

In the Naïve Conscious State: Emergence from the Primal with fragile often mythical arguments toward knowledge about negotiating a reality

THEN, EITHER “HELPED” BY FRIGHTENED IMMATURE POLITICIANS

Into a Fanatic Conscious State: Distorted versions of reality through the use of fear of not “getting with the program” prescribed by the immature politician’s control to frequency ranges access

OR, HELPED BY MATURE POLITICIANS’ COURAGE TO BE WITH OTHER HUMANS AND NONHUMAN SURROUNDINGS

Into a Critical Conscious Stat­­e: Authentic courage to be with all other humans and the nonhuman world, by being critical and creative reality in a disposition toward knowledge that is technical, practical, and emancipation, to discover practices and roles needed to negotiate transforming the world together necessary to form a culture of liberty and justice for all to survive and thrive peacefully.

4. To Fulfill a Behavior Biogrammar of Needs: (I am taking the following items directly from anthropologists Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox in The Imperial Animal, 1972) This “behavior biogrammar” has evolved from the Paleolithic era as has the way it is negotiated to be recognized and provisioned for by mature or immature politicians using natural and human law to rule relations.

Space to move about in

A share of the communal kill

Participating in the predatory activity of the whole group

A chance to rise in status through merit

Risk-taking opportunity

Experiencing a chance for exploration and novelty

The means to make deals and alliances

The sense of security derived from close association with the mother

Education geared to the realities of the life cycle

Accurate knowledge of the environment

Experiencing opportunity for bravery and to prove oneself

Acknowledgment of individual worth

A place at the triumph feast

Having children and caring for them, while enjoying the protection and security that accompany this

Recreation and free use of imagination

Support in times of stress and distress

Intensely above all, to contribute with dignity to the common unity of which one is at once a part

5. To Use Natural and Human Law to Rule Relations: The human animal will use law to rule relations justified through Primal, Naïve, or Fanatic immature politician conscious states or the Critical mature politician state. Natural laws of brute force or submission are when we let nature take its course and Human laws in modern time of commerce, religion, science, and democracy are when we use human law to rule relations either for liberty and justice for all to survive and thrive peacefully, or domination, exploitation, and oppression violence. We must always keep in mind that Natural law does not prevent human law being created, but does limit abuse of Nature by excessive human law liberties leading to illness or end of human animals on earth.

 

Okay, this is a place to stop your “temporary suspension of resistance” to my ideas. (Remember, I had asked that of you as my “Special Request,” a couple of blog posts ago, to allow me to lay out my argument.)  Now is the time for us to provide each other with further insights, comments and questions, in the practice of mature politicians.

This way we can begin to put into place intervention strategies for short-term and long-term reflection/action practices that stop, transform, or restrict immature politicians culture of violence in all areas of our daily life.

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Bob Walker