Research Week - Late November 2021

In my most recent post, I mentioned that I am in the process of drafting a critique of Erica Chenoweth's latest book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs To Know.  I also admitted that I have dragged my feet in getting through her book due to the fact that, while much of her book contains valuable insights, there are yet significant portions which present morally questionable advice for those who need to engage in strategic nonviolent resistance.  Writing a worthy critique therefore promises to involve a significant amount of research, a more than fair amount of blood, sweat and tears in writing an accurate rebuttal to some of her statements, and a few dozen hours of my time.  Which is why this past week I again procrastinated.  I'm almost halfway through the book.  (Some day, I'm going to have to finish eating that frog.  Maybe if I tell myself that frog meat tastes like chicken...)

Meanwhile, I've been thinking on and off again about Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and his educational philosophy, as his philosophy has a direct bearing on the question of how to recruit and organize oppressed people into a liberation struggle.  The biggest hurdle an organizer or would-be organizer faces is how to begin to activize people who have been submerged all their lives in oppression.  Freire developed a method of what he called "critical education" or "problem-posing education" in which each participant could function at times as both student and teacher.  The focus of his education effort was adult literacy among poor Brazilian peasants.  But for Freire, the development of literacy always had an end goal that was larger than merely learning to read, namely, to move the peasants to begin to see their situation of oppression not as a fixed element of their fate, but as a problem to be examined and acted upon by the peasants themselves.  His educational methods and strategy were so successful that the CIA-backed Brazilian government "honored" him in 1964 by arresting and imprisoning him for "preaching communism".  The government also "honored" his teaching methods by banning them.

Freire wrote a book titled Pedagogia do Oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed), a book that first caught my attention as a result of an interview of Dr. Soong-Chan Rah which I recorded for The Well Run Dry back in 2017.  After hearing about Freire's book, I decided to get a copy and read it.  Freire's book is short - only 140 pages, not counting the preface - yet it is densely packed with statements that require deep thought.  I read it while commuting to and from work on the light rail train, and my attention was frequently divided between the book, watching to make sure that my bike didn't get jacked, and watching to make sure that I didn't miss my stop.  Therefore I did not retain very much of what I read.  But the concept of conscientizacao (loosely equivalent to consciousness-raising or "critical consciousness") by means of problem-posing education stuck with me, and intrigued me over the past few weeks to such an extent that I bought an audiobook copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed to supplement my print copy.  (Audiobooks are good companions when uprooting blackberries, pruning trees, cleaning the yard, etc.  Just one word of warning: DO NOT buy audiobooks from Audible or Amazon!  They will sell you an audio file that is in a proprietary format and force you to download a proprietary app to listen to it!)

Chapter 3 of the book has always been hard for me to grasp.  In this chapter, Freire describes how to set up what he calls "culture circles" in which participants can collectively examine the "generative themes" which frame the perceptions which oppressed people have of their oppressive situations.  It would have been nice (although practically impossible at the time Freire wrote his book) for readers to have a set of videos showing these culture circles in action.  If a picture had been worth a thousand words, a short video would have been worth much, much more!  As a result of my renewed interest in the book, this weekend I scrounged YouTube to see if I could find any videos which showed such culture circles in action.

I did not quite find what I was looking for.  However, I did find a couple of videos that either came close or were intriguing for reasons of their own.  The video below illustrates the contrast between what Freire calls the "banking concept of education" versus the "problem-posing education"which Freire advocates.  (Although the video seeks to make a serious point, it has a certain goofy humor...)

I think the second video was included in the YouTube search results only because it had "Paulo Freire" in the title.  The video is not a picture of a Freireian culture circle, but of something that seems rather similar, and it takes place at a Brazilian school named after Freire.  (It seems that since Freire's death, the Brazilian government has decided to confer on him the status and recognition that are more appropriate to honor - although Brazilian society remains under the control of oppressors.) 

Although this video does not illustrate a Freireian culture circle, I was intrigued for a few reasons.  First, it is a good present-day example of real, in-the-flesh, boots-on-the-ground community organizing in the age of COVID.  Note that almost everyone in the video is wearing a mask, and the one woman who is not masked is there to serve as a visual prop to illustrate what the presenters are talking about.  This indicates an implicit (and perhaps unspoken) covenant between the participants to respect this public space by acting for the common good.  There are no selfish, reactionary anti-maskers or anti-vaxxers here!  Second, note that the circle is intimate - that is, the total number of participants is manageable enough for people to ask questions and to begin to form relationships with each other if they so choose.  Third, note that a wide range of ages is represented in this group.  Last, note that although the group is not collectively exploring a problem of their lived situation (instead, a few presenters do most of the talking), the group is still confronting a societal problem that needs to be addressed.

I am still searching for visual examples of Freireian culture circles in action.  What I want is examples of oppressed people and their self-chosen leaders engaging in these circles.  What I am not interested in is circles formed and organized for the "disadvantaged" by so-called "saviors" who are not from among the oppressed.  Nor am I interested merely in the use of Freireian methods or culture circles to help to shore up the rotting structures of American primary education.  Rather, I am interested in the use of problem-posing education as a means of activizing people, as a means of fostering nonviolent revolution.  Maybe I'll have to make my own video.  That should be quite a project...

The Ride Of The Gray Cowboys

At the beginning of this year, as part of the work that pays bills, I found myself checking out a book on digital logic design.  The book was intriguing because it made use of a piece of open-source digital circuit simulation software.  (I always like reading about how to use free tools!)  As I read the preface, I ran across a paragraph titled, "How to Acquire Intuition?"  The paragraph explained why instilling mathematical rigor through proofs is a key part of instilling the mathematical intuition needed to understand digital logic circuits.  As a criticism of the modern way in which many technical subjects are taught, the authors wrote the following sentence: 

All we can say is that this strategy [that is, the non-proof strategy] is in complete disregard of the statement: "When you have to shoot, shoot.  Don't talk"  [Tuco in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly].

Let me assure you that today's post is not about digital circuits!  But I have to admit that the quote intrigued me for reasons that are completely non-technical.  You see, I have never watched The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly - although I have known that this movie and other movies like it helped launch the big-name careers of some hitherto obscure actors, including Clint Eastwood.  So I checked out a few YouTube clips from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and I pondered the career of Mr. Eastwood.

I have seen only a couple of Clint Eastwood movies in my entire life, but I know that he made a big name for himself as an actor by specializing in the portrayal of morally ambiguous leading characters, characters for whom one might root if one was still a kid, but whom one's parents might not allow around their children.  A case in point is his Dirty Harry character - a cop who doesn't quite play by the rules, a cop who makes us wonder whether or not he'll really do the right thing in the end, a cop whose message seems in part to be that the end justifies the means.  Eastwood's "spaghetti Western" roles were similarly morally gray characters, a somewhat jarring contrast to the image of the American cowboy which had been built up in American culture until that time - the absolutely pure and wholesome blond-white-and blue adult male "Boy Scout" in white hat, set in opposition to the utterly evil, black-hatted villain in the western movies and pulp novels of the early to mid-20th century.

Eastwood's characters largely get away with their moral ambiguity in his movies, as things usually seem to work out in their favor by the time of the closing credits.  In other words, the consequences of moral ambiguity are portrayed as positive for the ambiguous character who has the right skills.  Yet there are other storytellers who provide a glimpse into the costs and side effects of such ambiguity.  One such storyteller was the late John le Carre, whose subject matter was the spy as an agent of government and empire.  Like Eastwood's characters, le Carre's characters were intended to poke holes in a romanticized depiction of a certain type of hero - namely, the sort of uber-cool, gadget-laden, macho adventurer-spy typified by James Bond.  Like Eastwood's characters, Bond is morally ambiguous in his means, but in the movies, it's always okay because we are told that the ultimate end is ultimately good.  In le Carre's work, by contrast, the spy is seen as a morally ambiguous agent of a morally questionable empire, and the things which the empire demands of the spy in the course of his job frequently end up destroying his soul.  

Thoughts of le Carre (whose audiobooks I have recently been enjoying) bring me to a central question of tonight's post, namely, what sort of society we create for ourselves when we choose to live by the dictum, "Do not be excessively righteous, and do not be overly wise.  Why should you ruin yourself?  Do not be excessively wicked, and do not be a fool.  Why should you die before your time?" (Ecclesiastes 7:16-17)  In such a society, we may start out with a righteous end, yet find that in our misguided zeal we choose means that are completely incompatible with the end we profess.  Or - and this seems far more likely nowadays - we may find ourselves searching for ends and means which maximize our own personal advantages regardless of the ultimate righteousness of those ends, even though we say otherwise.  This leads to such things as the ambiguity and the sometimes immense suffering that comprises the legacy of Mao Zedong.  Or the fiendish Machiavellian legacy of V.I. Lenin and the horrors which the Bolsheviks unleashed on Russia and Eastern Europe.  Or the regime of the recently ousted former President Trump (although he seems to have heeded the part of Ecclesiastes which said not to be too good and to have disregarded the part that said not to be too evil!).  Or the legacy and ongoing "witness" of the white American Evangelical/Protestant church, which has by now conclusively proven that it has nothing to do with the Lord Jesus Christ because it has no intention of ever doing what He commanded - especially in the Sermon on the Mount.  Rather, this church has shown that it is the spread-legged whore and serving wench of secular earthly economic and political power, a mere means to a materialist end consisting of earthly domination for a certain select group of people.  When we consider American evangelicalism, we see that one consequence of the toleration of moral ambiguity is a society in which people say things merely to try to achieve certain effects in their hearers, rather than saying things in order to communicate truth.  Hence, for instance, the Right's defense of Trump even in the face of Trump's own moral contradictions.

In short, if Clint Eastwood's characters are the sort of people whom good parents don't let near their children, then morally ambiguous societies are the sorts of places in which good parents don't let their children play - because someone is bound to get hurt in such places.  When such societies do arise (for "it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come"), then it becomes necessary for decent people to resist such societies and the masters who run them.  This has been the motivation for the series of posts I have written on strategic nonviolent resistance during the Trump presidency, and especially during the last eighteen months.  And if one goes through some of the literature on strategic nonviolent resistance that was written and published before the middle of the last decade, one sees that a righteous cause is a necessary ingredient of successful resistance.  It is not by itself a sufficient ingredient - for a righteous cause still needs good strategy - but without a righteous cause, what reason do people have to join a struggle?  Especially when joining a particular struggle may result in the loss of life, liberty and property?

Consider some of the things Gene Sharp said in his book How Nonviolent Struggle Works: 

• Cowardice and nonviolent struggle do not mix
• Cowards seek to avoid the conflict and flee from danger, while the nonviolent resister faces the conflict and risks the dangers involved
• Bravery in this technique of struggle is not only moral valor but a practical requirement
• Civil resisters ought to have confidence in the justice and force of their cause, principles, and means of action (Emphasis added)

Note that last point.  In other words, righteous ends must use righteous means.  Another writer, Jack DuVall, made the same point in a series of paragraphs titled, "Power from Ends" contained in an essay titled, "Civil Resistance And The Language of Power."  To quote DuVall, "For civil resistance to work, it has to shred the legitimacy of power-holders to whom it is opposed and model a higher legitimacy based on representing the real aspirations of the people.  But the fastest way to forsake that advantage is to resort to means that are not seen as legitimate."  (Emphasis added.)  This, for instance, is why Gene Sharp in his writings rejected both violence, sabotage, and the destruction of the opponent's property as appropriate means of struggle.

Contrast such moral clarity with more recent attempts during the last five or six years by so-called "civil resistance scholars" to "gray-wash" the theory and practice of strategic nonviolent resistance.  I am thinking particularly of a book I bought within the last few months titled, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs To Know by Erica Chenoweth.  (I told you all in an earlier post that I was reading a book for which I might write a critique soon.  A delay of two months isn't exactly "soon," but I've been dragging my feet somewhat - partly because I've been busy, and partly because some parts of Chenoweth's new book make me choke.  More on that in another post.)  I had guardedly high hopes for the book when I first heard about it, but I had already begun to prepare myself for the possibility that Chenoweth might have become among the morally compromised "scholars" who now seem to inhabit the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.  It's a good thing I did prepare myself.  For on page 57 of her book, she seeks to legitimize those who want to include property destruction in the arsenal of what she calls "civil resistance", saying, "When it is disciplined and discriminating, and sends a clear message, property destruction can be considered a nonviolent method of sabotage..."  And she goes on to cite the Boston Tea Party as an example of the wise use of sabotage in a nonviolent struggle.  However, I'd like to suggest that perhaps the backfire among loyalists which resulted from this act has been overlooked.  And on page 79, she suggests that sometimes a movement can achieve strength only by partnering with allies who may not be willing to remain nonviolent, saying that "...questions of justice and political effectiveness are often in tension.  Most scholars of civil resistance stay agnostic on this question by leaving aside moral questions altogether and focusing on strategy, not morality..."  Similarly, chapter 3 of her book appears at first reading to be a moral minefield for a reader such as myself, as she paints those voices who advocate for allowing limited movement violence as people who are engaged in an honest debate over the effectiveness of tactics.

But it seems to me that the evaluation of civil resistance tactics and strategy solely on the basis of their supposed "effectiveness" can lead to a trap if we ignore the righteousness or unrighteousness of the strategy and tactics in question.  (It can also lead resisters to adopt means, methods, and ends that are both immoral and violent.)  For by ignoring questions of morality or righteousness, we ultimately ignore the Scriptural maxim that "...whatever a man sows, this he will also reap."  Such a maxim is easy to forget precisely because we humans tend to look at trends from time scales that are too short.  By way of analogy, for those who are handy with math, consider a parabolic function whose vertex is positive and nonzero, yet whose vertex is a maximum and not a minimum.  Over a short enough interval of the independent variable, the function looks like it will rise forever.  But over a long enough interval, we see that the function value eventually crashes back to zero before becoming forever negative.  Such are the ultimate results of moral graywashing - sooner or later, you lose.