Freire's Pedagogy: 1. On Becoming Fully Human

In this post, we begin to explore a theme which logically follows from our consideration of strategic nonviolent resistance, as outlined in the series of posts I wrote on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  Freedom from oppression is the goal of a liberation struggle based on strategic nonviolent resistance.  This liberation struggle cannot be successful if it is waged only by isolated individuals.  It must be waged by people in collective, interdependent relationship - that is, by people who have chosen to organize.  The question then becomes how to persuade people to organize.  

The answer to this question has been explored by various people from various angles.  Marshall Ganz has developed the story of self/story of us/story of now framework as a means of activizing people.  This method relies on crafting an organizing call that resonates with the values of the people one is trying to organize.  On the other hand, Jack DuVall has pointed out the necessity of appealing to the reason of the people one is trying to organize, so that they may know exactly what is the substance of the cause they are being asked to join.  According to DuVall, it is this appeal to reason which leads to passionate commitment among those who are organized for the cause of liberation, as they see a cause which reflects their deeply-held values.

These viewpoints provide valuable instruction, yet they may not adequately explain why it is so often so hard to rouse oppressed people to liberating action.  I believe that this explanation is provided in large part by Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  Freire's book begins to explore why oppressed peoples so often act for a long time in ways that do not reflect a desire for freedom, but rather for its opposite, and what foundational work must be done to begin to liberate people in their minds so that they can begin to liberate themselves in actuality.  Thus today's post begins the exploration of Freire's Pedagogy, starting appropriately with Chapter 1.

So we begin with a foundational question, namely, what is the purpose of freedom.  Freire answers this by stating that "the people's vocation" is to become more fully human.  I would put it as this: that our calling is to fulfill our ontogeny (that is, the reason why we were created as human beings) to the greatest extent possible.  However, the reality of living in a fallen world is that some people don't believe they can reach their full human potential unless they steal from others the ability to fulfill their human potential.  

(A present-day case of this theft is the move by Russia to send 100,000 troops to the Russia-Ukraine border in order to invade Ukraine.  Why has Putin done this?  Because he's gotten it stuck into his evil head that he can't fulfill his ontogeny (or Russia's) unless he seizes the entire world as his possession.  Ukraine was the intended first morsel of his feast - but the brave Ukranians have not allowed themselves to be swallowed so easily, so it's taken Putin over seven years to try to swallow them.  Putin (and his familiar spirit Aleksandr Dugin) assign pretentious possessive names to the regions of the rest of the world - terms like "the near abroad" and the "far abroad," by which they really mean "our near abroad" and "our far abroad."  Putin and his fellow travelers believe that unless Russian "influence" has unrestrained reach throughout the world, his identity will suffer an intolerable insult.  Russian "influence" in this case amounts to sadism as defined by Freire.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Message to Putin: Yo, dude - the rest of the world doesn't want to be Russian!  I'd like to say a few choice words to that thieving little man in his bunker - but I must restrain myself...)

Freire states that while humanization is the people's vocation, that humanization is stolen from the people by those who oppress.  This theft constitutes dehumanization - dehumanization of those who are victims of this theft, because it is a distortion of their humanity.  This theft also dehumanizes the thieves, turning them into something less than human - for they must be less than human in order to mistreat their fellow human beings the way they do.  The oppressor becomes so dehumanized by his oppression that he cannot free himself from it.  Only the oppressed have the power to free both themselves and their oppressors.  Freire sounds a hopeful note, however, in the following statement: "Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so."  

However, at first, many members of the oppressed population do not see freedom as a new collective possibility, nor do they recognize the healthy new identity of freedom which they are being called to express.  Instead, the experience of the oppressive environment in which they live conditions them to internalize the oppressor, so that they mistakenly come to believe that becoming more fully human means to become like the oppressor.  Thus we have people among oppressed communities of color whose disease is so far beyond mere "Uncle Tom-ism" that they inhabit the land of Stockholm Syndrome - people like Larry Elder, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Clarence Thomas.    We also see those who seek to become "courtiers" to the oppressors by becoming part of the apparatus of the oppressor's "false generosity" - a generosity which actually is designed to cement the oppressor's control over the oppressed society.  As members of the oppressor's organs of false generosity, they seek to become brokers and middlemen between the oppressors and the oppressed.  In these and in other ways, some members of the oppressed look for hierarchal ladders to climb so that they can become big shots.  To quote Freire again, "But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or 'sub-oppressors'...Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors.  This is their model of humanity."  

Freire also says that "The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom."  This fear of freedom deserves further exploration, but that exploration will have to wait until the next post of this series.  However, those who want to see an example of the conditioning of the oppressed by an oppressive environment and their consequent fear of freedom can refer to a post by Cynthia Kunsman on her blog Under Much Grace.  The title of the post is "The First Step Towards Understanding Jill and Jessa Duggar’s Fox Interview: Second Generation Adults in Cultic/High Demand Religion", and it deals with the effects of high-demand, highly authoritarian religious cultic groups on children of adult parents who become involved in such groups.