In Response to: What Will it Take

The primary rule of engagement for all counsellors/therapists is “start where the client is at”.  Unfortunately, this edict seldom, if ever, is operationally defined.  If the counsellor subscribes to the Socratic method of empathic curiosity not knowing the meaning matters very little.  For most, however, it matters a lot.  It matters because if the client is developmentally stagnated, thinks and functions at a child like stage perspective, that client will not understand nor relate to the developmentally advanced interventions of the therapist.  There is a significant failure to communicate. This compounds the challenge of intervention because as a function of developmental stagnation the client relies on the creation of pleasing fantasies; “I don’t have a problem and therefore do not have to engage in this process”.  This the therapist interprets as denial and resistance instead of being a manifestation of developmental stagnation.

A very good reason for determining a new client’s developmental stage perspective at intake.

There is nothing new about this failure to communicate in a way that is comprehendible to the listener.  Since the beginning of recorded history, starting with Thales of Miletus (624BC) continuing with Jesus of Nazareth, Mohammed of Mecca, more recently John Rawles of Harvard and the satirist George Carlen of New York, to name just a few, had this problem.  While their message was more or less the same for the developmentally stagnated masses it was incomprehensible.  Some probably recognized that what was being said was important but lacking the cognitive developmental ability to understand what, they made religious out of the message.  The majority of others simply ignored, dismissed or killed the messenger and their plan out of human misery.  They did not understand the message let alone act on what was being said.

This failure to communicate applies to almost all past and present scholars of the ilk that describe a problem, explain its root cause and based on that explanation offer doable solutions.  For this very reason change has been a constant occurrence.  Progress not so much.  While we continue to kill each other very differently (change) we are still killing each other (the absence of progress).

Operationally (measurable, observable) defined “start where the client is at”, means using the stage perspective language of the client or language that is no more than one stage above that of the client.  Ideas/stage perspectives more than one stage removed from that of the client (or the masses) is simply gibberish for the cognitive developmentally stagnated.

On a good day the masses are stagnated at the tribal stage perspective.  No thinking required.  Just abide by the beliefs and values prescribed and do as you are told.  On most days, however, under duress, the cognitive developmentally stagnated think and behave more primitively.

The developmental stage perspective of the prophets, scholar philosophers, satirists and even a few politicians, of the kind described above, are far more than one stage removed from that of the masses.

For progress to occur, to find our way out of our pervasive human misery therefore, will require the emergence of a massive population with the cognitive developmental ability to finally understand the message being delivered for time immemorial and then act on it.

The broad activation of this cognitive developmental potential has already started.  Hopefully, it will not be too late. The Scandinavians and the Japanese have discovered “what will it take” and are doing.  More importantly they are measurably reaping the benefits of an educational policy that places significant focus on the activation of each and every child’s innate cognitive developmental potential.  The benefits are the gradual emergence of young people with the ability to understand more than a tribal stage perspective and act accordingly.

Hopefully this innovation in the education of children will spread and benefit from the experience based practice wisdom of the Japanese and Scandinavians.

As I write this, I am very much aware that very few will have the curiosity to go to the link and read this.  I am also very much aware that many will abandon reading this after the first or second paragraph, because it is too long, too many big words, too much repetition etc. and etc..  In other words, it is for them incomprehensible.  So, if you got this far, you are at the very least past the tribal stage perspective, have regained your curiosity and understand that action is required from you.  Here is what you need to do:  repost the link to this treatise, comment on it, encourage others to read this and similar writings and most importantly discuss the ideas whenever, and wherever you can.

Hate: An Avoidable Emotion – If Only…

The reaction to the Bellville Synagogue shooting is entirely predictable.  It is similar to all other previous reactions to such events.  Empty, blatantly uniformed rhetoric.  Hate motived violence is condemned and we are promised that it will be legislated out of our lives by punishing the offenders.  Yet the occurrences persist, as they always have, some raising the alarm that their frequency is increasing.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Hate, racism, misogyny etc. and etc. has been with us for time immemorial.  Since there are so many more of us we simply have more incidents of hate motivated violence occurring.  Given this reality, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that there is a pervasive absence of will to seek an explanation and based on it implement remedial and preventive measures.  This apparent absence of will is especially egregious since there is an empirically sound explanation and based on that strategies have been implanted producing very promising results.  

Historically, most if not all prophets have had more than less the same message:  you do not have to live like this, a better life is available to you in the here and now.  More recently the lovable cartoon character Pogo, created by the satirist Walt Kelly, started the explanation with this brilliant insight:  “We have met the enemy and he is us”.

If its not aliens or mythological Greek gods causing our pervasive misery the logical question becomes what is it that we are doing to our selves, as Pogo concluded.  The empirically sound evidence is that since time immemorial we, the people, have allowed a very few to create environmental conditions that obstruct the activation of the cognitive developmental potential with which we are all born. Since time immemorial we humans have lived under siege like conditions.  Currently, there are some one hundred and thirty armed conflicts raging globally.  In Ontario our health care and educational sectors are under attack, homelessness/drug abuse is rampant and most of us are barely able to get by financially.  These have always been and continue to be conditions that obstruct the activation of our innate cognitive developmental potential.

In constant survival mode the human strategy is to seek tribal membership and/or remain stagnant at the tribal stage developmental perspective.  The price of membership is easy, simple and requires no thinking.  All that is required is to abide by the tribes’ prescribed beliefs, values and ways of behaving.  This mostly involves hate for the other, wanting what the other has and doing whatever it takes to get it.  Under siege conditions we are too busy surviving to see or understand what is happening let alone do something about it.

Even well intentioned, well schooled and scholarly people fail to recognize that their messages to save the environment and convince people to act differently are distorted by prescribed tribal ideologies.  While change is constant, progress in ameliorating human misery is minimal at best.

What motivated the Scandinavians to include in their elementary and secondary school curriculum the deliberate activation of all students’  cognitive developmental potential is an intriguing curiosity.  Clearly, they are not afraid of their children growing up to be tolerant of the different other, responsible, critical thinking and problem solving real adults.  While this initiative is still very much a work in progress they are already starting to reap the benefits.  Reportedly they are considered to be the most egalitarian global nations and they are not yet finished disrupting the establishment’s status quo.

Adolescents struggling during their tribal stage of development are barely barrable.  The chronically stagnated are at best difficult and at their worst predictably nasty self-righteous violent people at the slightest provocation.  Since the work required to accomplish that which we must (grow out of our tribal stage perspective) will take several generations to complete, yesterday would have been the best day to start doing it.

 

Alexander T. Polgar

Author who writes about this kind of stuff.

It is time to bring the wild west mentality of capitalism under control

Lately, much has been said, written and protested about the potential evils lurking in the depths of artificial intelligence and its life source data centers.  Those opposed and leery of it clearly know very little about change throughout history.  Although change has always been an inevitable constant, nevertheless almost always the first reaction to it has been opposition.  The reactionaries act as thoroughly unaware that once a proverbial genie is out of the bottle it cannot be stuffed back into it.  Moreover, most reactionaries act thoroughly unaware that there is a vast difference between change and progress.  Change is constant, progress not so much.  To illustrate this important distinction, consider that we have vastly changed how we kill each other.  The weapons are exponentially more sophisticated each year than they were the year before. The fact that we are still killing each other in some 130 current armed conflicts globally is evidence that change in the weapons have no progress component to them. The change benefits only the few in control of the military industrial complex, we the people not at all.

Artificial intelligence and the data centers that feed them represent a genie out of the bottle change that is going to make a very small group of tech bros, we all know who they are, much richer than they already are.  How it will benefit us, the consumers remains to be seen. Does anyone, who reflects for just a second, believe this genie can be stuffed back into the bottle?  Such stuffing would be an unprecedented historical event.

To the credit of a precious few aware of the distinction between change and progress there is in our behaviour repertoire initiatives to regulate or otherwise control change and extricate from it progress.  While so far not very well, nevertheless such initiatives are in our historical repertoire.  This makes regulating change a far more doable albeit challenging objective than stuffing that proverbial genie back into the bottle.

So, protestors everywhere against artificial intelligence and its life source data centres, focus your energies on demanding real, sustained and transparent oversight of this change with so far little, if any, evidence that it includes progress from which all of humanity will benefit.  If there are people with the skills to create technological change, there also must be people with the skills to gleam from it progress through seriously sustained regulatory measures.

The difficult but doable objective is to find ways by which to compel our elected representatives to do what they are elected to do.  Not stuff genies back into bottles but to regulate, create relevant oversights with which to extract beneficial progress out of change. Change that greatly benefits only the few tech bros should no longer be acceptable.  Progress, that benefits most, if not all, of us, should be the new sheriff in town.