John Courtneidge
NB - the diagrams here have not travelled well through copying: please e-mail me for a PDF - I'll try to have the PDF logged at www.intererstfreemoney.org in the papers' section John Courtneidge 27 January 2014
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Initial version
26 January 2010, updated 30 June 2010
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The
Psychology of Denial
– and Suggested
Co-operative Routes to Sustainable Well-ness
At the end of the
2009 Yearly Meeting of Quakers in Canada, our Friend, Bill Curry,
asked me what I knew about ‘the psychology of denial’.
Readers of my
writing will know that the Fair World Project touches on all matters
(it is a form of ‘Wholosophy’ - as described below) and that, by
training, education and choice I am a research and teaching chemist.
In this divided world –
at the end of the ‘first phase of the enlightenment’ – it might
be considered that a chemist should stick to chemistry and a
psychologist to psychology.
But, in this new
world – at the start of the ‘second phase of the enlightenment’
– we are (all!) in the process of understanding (‘standing
under’ – in awe) the relationships that hold ‘the all as one’:
moreover, since chemistry is the science of relationships, then
perhaps an immersion in the findings of chemistry is no bad place to
start looking at the whole.
Denial seems to be
one response to ‘knowing’ (since it seems unrealistic to deny
that which one has not known (however brief that knowledge might be).
From
not-knowing-ness . . . to knowing-ness . . . to wholeness
In the following
diagram, I’ve tried to sketch some steps from a state of
‘not-knowing-ness’, through a state of ‘knowing-ness’ and on
to some responses to that state of knowledge (and later in this
essay, I try to map particular variants on ways to knowing).
One-ness/Whole-ness
(‘All
in one, one in all’)
*
States of Knowing
/ States of
Response
Solidarity
Peace
of mind
Charity
*
Not-knowing-ness
Justice
*
Knowingness
Antagonism
Indifference
Denial
This diagram
has developed, in large part, from my experience of working with
community and faith groups in order to sustainably eradicate poverty
and create economic (and ecological) equality.
That work (particularly as a member of
‘Shoelace Collective’ – www.shoelace.ca
– an east-end Toronto activity centred at the Woodbine Heights’
Baptist Church in East York) consistently aims to ‘move the flag
out’ along the charity—justice—solidarity continuum to a state
of wholeness as part of the commonwealth/creation.
In the course of this (through the
books of York University professor, Dennis Raphael), I encountered
(and have extended) the following diagram:
From
denial to wholeness
The ‘Quadrant of
Denial’ or ‘Quadrant of Acceptance’ is the north-western
quadrant in this diagram: people who live in poverty (that is –
always have ‘more month than money’) can never be in conscious
denial as to their condition (however well they live within that
condition of scarcity). However, by accepting the presence of
poverty - and ‘doing the best they can’ - they are effectively
living a in a state of unconscious (or at least not-conscious)
denial: behaving, in that denial, to deny that such existence can –
and must - get better.
So, I suggest, for
people dominated by the authoritarian, reactionary tendency (a
tendency which, although within all of us, is relentlessly in-forced
by the propaganda machinery of each generations dominant/dominating
‘elites’), a state of ‘cognitive dissonance’ is created –
whereby ‘that which is believed’ is at variance with ‘that
which is known’.
Likewise, a dominant
authoritarian progressivist (rationalist, ‘green’) or
reactionary experientialist (hedonist/artisanal ‘orange’) will be
indifferent levels of denial – that a non-authoritarian,
progressive alternative – in the south-eastern ‘blue’ quadrant
is achievable. (The personality ‘True Color’ descriptors –
gold, green, orange and blue – have a relationship, it seems, to
the mix of neurotransmitters found in our brains – see below:
Indeed, these
differing personality theories seem to have some relationship to four
neurotransmitters in brain bio-chemistry. Thus, at
www.chemistry.com/datingadvice/DestinedToDate
, Kimberly Dawn Neumann explains how anthropologist
Helen Fisher points towards some current research which maps the four
personality types to four neurotransmitters and personality labels
(eg Driving, Gold, The Builder, (Serotonin)).
Moreover, there are
practical political and social implications in this knowledge –
since, while each of us has a mix of the four named neurochemicals in
our brains, the mix varies by country and demographic (it would seem
since the ‘centre of gravity’ of related/consequential values is
country specific – see the related work of Michael Adams and the
group at Environics) and we seem to be capable of change in respect
of the neurochemicals’ mix. This is a clear example of the
relational nature of chemistry! (And, if any reader has more on these
inter-related topics, I’m keen to connect!)
(Ordinately – of
central importance – poverty* is no state into which future
generations should be brought. Poverty is not only a violence
experienced by ‘the poor’, but is felt by all – God and future
generations included: it is something that we are all called to
eradicate: see the poster for ‘The Golden Rule, below’: and see
the materials gathered at the Scarboro Missions web-site
http://www.scarboromissions.ca/Golden_rule/index.php
*And for a deeper
analysis – which accurately places poverty as one part of a
continuum of economic and ecological dis-harmony – see the evidence
collected by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their recent book,
‘The Spirit Level’, and explained at www.equailitytrust.org.uk)
Wholosophy
and Co-operative Socialism
In a recent series
of CCPA Monitor articles (and now available from the CCPA as a
‘Reader on Co-operative Socialism’), the/a sustainable,
not-hierarchical and nonviolent alternative has been outlined, using
the term ‘Co-operative Socialism’.
At base, the call for
co-operative socialism is based on two propositions:
- That if it is possible to live well, why should we choose to live badly?
- That none of us are individuals, all of us are neighbours.
To take the second,
first: I find that a helpful overview of where we are at the end of
the ‘first phase of the enlightenment’ is the interlocking
circles (‘Venn’) diagram shown below.
Wholosophy:
All
in One – One in All
The
Search for Right Relationships:
-
The Implications of Immanence
- Sustainability
- Panentheism
- Immanence
- Quakerism
- Anabaptism
- Thermodynamics
- Colligative Properties
- Wave/particle duality
- Avogadro’s Hypothesis
- Gaian Economics
- Co-operative economics
- The economics of love and friendship
- Subsidiarity
- Physical chemistry
- Theories of chemical bonding
- Gibbs’Free Energy
- Interaction
- Solidarity
- Usury
- The Social Implications of Chemical Knowledge and Understanding
- The Enlightenment Part I; Bentham
- Peace
- Community
- Co-operation
- Citizens’ Income
- The search for Right Relationships
- The Enlightenment Part II
- Simplicity
- Wholosophy/
Wholology
[The terms
‘wholosophy’ and ‘wholology’ are presently emergent – much
of which (in London, England at least – see Janos Abel’s article
in an old copy of ‘Rainbow Ark’) is nowhere near the web: yet.
Janos is a proponent of ‘System Theories’ of Stafford Beer and
others – a ‘proto-wholosophy’ perhaps.
Through
web-searching, the site http://wholologist.wordpress.com/about/
has the following suggestion: “The concept of “Wholology” is
aiming to understanding something in its entirety, realizing the
inter-connectedness and complexity of systems. The thing that you
least expect to affect something/someone is probably the thing
that affects it the most.”
Which, I like.]
As this Venn diagram
suggests, simplicity is the sweet-spot at the centre – a sweet-spot
described by the actions of ‘sustainability, solidarity and
subsidiarity’ (the latter being the notion that democratic
decision-making be best-made at the most local level appropriate) –
and, hence, the co-operative socialist notion of global commonweal
being the result of a global commonwealth of national and
sub-national, local commonwealths – all explicitly showing fidelity
to the ICA Statement on the Co-operative Identity (for which
Statement, see, www.ica.coop
).
Now, the
system-fault called ‘capitalism’ is money-driven, but,
deeper-rooted in our fears.
Those fears are the
result of our needs – the fear that we will be hungry, cold, and
alone, bored, rejected (see the ‘Needs’ essay at
www.interestfreemoney.org
in the papers’ section).
And that, points to
our way ‘back home to the garden’, a sequence of steps suggested
in the diagram, below.
[These correlations
have proved both rewarding and difficult – the mapping used by
David Keirsy seems to twist the two progressive quadrants – just
like twisting a Rubric cube - so that the Blue quadrant is next to
the Gold quadrant and the Green next to the Orange. This has
important political organizing consequences, since, using Keirsey’s
terminology, both the Gold personality and the Blue personality are
both ‘cooperators’ – using the US not-hyphenated form – the
‘Golds’ being ‘concrete cooperators’ and the blues, ‘abstract
cooperators’ – this perhaps explains why the reactionary
authoritarians – the ‘Golds’ – might be termed, as the
Environics analysis does, ‘Anxious Communitarians’. The work of
Ken Wilbur also finds relevance here – see, for example, his book,
‘The Integral Vision’. A further set of proposed correlations
follows:
Jack Falt has a number of collected
resources on the web – including a self-test version of the ‘True
Colors’ test – and the politicalcompass.org we-site is also
worth a visit and self-test.
These diagrams suggest
that we are on a collective journey – and that our experiences,
when accepted rather than denied, can help us see forward.
We humans cannot un-have
experiences. My knees, for example, will always remember that skiing
accident - and my right-hand fingers flare up when I’m stressed,
due to their experience of being burnt, with high-strength hydrogen
peroxide, when I was a research chemist. But we can learn from those
experiences. As has been suggested, as I recall it in a back issue
‘The Friend’, “When knowledge is touched by the divine, it
become wisdom.”
Sustainable
and Permanent Wellness as a result of Economic/Income Equality
So, from the work of Richard Wilkinson
and many colleagues involved in the ‘Social Determinants of Heath’,
it is now apparent that the majority of human-created illnesses –
personal, family, social, environmental, and so on – flow from
economic inequality.
And, in particular – they flow from
the causative illness of income inequality
In a number of presentations over the
past decade (including the 2004 CAOS conference at the University of
Leicester’s Business School, through to the UK Society for
Co-operative studies 2008 conference, ‘New Views of Society:
Robert Owen for the 21stCentury’, at New Lanark Scotland) I
have tried to outline policies that can sustainably and permanently
abolish economic inequality.
In that New Lanark presentation, I
included the following diagram: one that has been developed from a
diagram in David Donnison’s book, ‘Policies for a Just Society’
– that he developed from Kay Carmichael’s ‘Ceremonies of
Innocence (a progression of development which is, itself, an example
of an evolving paradigm – a process that I discuss in an
‘entry-level essay’ entitled, ‘How Rigid Is Your Paradigm’ at
www.interestfreemoney.org
– also in the papers’ section).
This diagram is intended to help us
move from the present state of violence, fear and uncertainty to a
sustainable and permanent global co-operative commonweal of evolving
well-ness and is colour-coded to relate to the
emotional/personality/neurotransmitter states discussed above.
Thus the key step, in this progression
from violence to peace, is that in which the angry individual (and
the angry societies) is that of being ‘Befriended’. In other
words, transformation occurs when angry individuals and angry
societies are engaged - by friends through actions of care and love -
onto the route of awareness (not-denial) and (nonviolent) positive
action.
And, this key step – and the value of
‘Being Befriended’ - brings us to the nub of sustainable and
permanent well-ness – to the ‘Ordinate Importance of Equality’
(as I have entitled a relevant essay).
Now, ‘a state of friendship’ only
exists between individuals when there is equality between those
individuals (and, likewise, when there is equality between and within
societies).
Such equality is profoundly signified,
for example, in the act of hand-shaking between individuals (and
societies!). That is why I’m such a proponent of the hyphen in the
words ‘co-operation’ and ‘co-operative’ – the hand-shake
between equal individuals is represented for me by the hyphen (and is
why I have written an essay ‘Save the hyphen!’ – it’s out
there on the web at ‘co-opnet’).
Now, as with so many good things, such
matters are always available for (temporary) co-option by inequality.
So, for example, it is protocol (at
present!) for the Queen of England to only shake hands when she
offers a hand forward. Of such things are fear, insecurity and
inequality made!
Among friends, by contrast, offers are
equally made, considered, accepted and/or alternatives proposed.
While, among un-equals/not-equals, such
actions are the stuff of power (the three forms of power, condign,
compensatory and conditioned – ‘the stick, the carrot and your
telly’, as I wrote about in an editorial in ‘Nonviolent Action’
some years’ ago, based on John Kenneth Galbraith’s discussion, in
his book, ‘The Anatomy of Power’, of these three forms of ‘social
power’ – that, strictly speaking are anti-social power!).
So, the essence of peace is equality –
especially economic/income equality.
To paraphrase and develop Martin Luther
King, Junior’s comment: ‘The presence of inequality any-where, is
the presence of violence every-where’.
In
summary and conclusion
It is clear that happy people have
their needs met (see that entry level essay ‘Our Four Needs: An
explanation of everything’, at
www.interestfreemoney.org
in the papers’ section) – and, so, live permanently and
sustainably, in peace.
By reverse, unmet needs make people
unhappy, unhappy people are susceptible of being violent - due to the
violence that unmet needs are – and that poverty is: remember
Ghandi’s reminder that ‘poverty is the worst form of violence’.
Thus, in a state of economic/income
equality, all needs are met (through maximized sharing of the
abundance of what is), all wants are considered, all dreams weighed
in the balance, and all possibilities subjected to discernment
(discernment being the practice of collective ‘waiting upon God’s
guidance’).
(Note, again, the inventiveness of the
devil – fear – that, nowadays, wants are described as needs –
‘I Need It!’ – and Beveridge’s use of the word ‘want’ in
‘Freedom from Want’, of only sixty years’ ago, has been
corrupted (pejorated) into ‘Incarcerated in Need’.)
Now, happily, we are, at root, emerging
into a time when our (humanity’s) mis-step fifteen thousand years’
ago is at an end.
Then, we at the invention of settled,
Neolithic agriculture – we as humanity in its/our state of
fearfulness/sinfulness and selfishness - created the dividing (and
divisive!) concepts of ‘property’, ‘ownership’,
‘accumulation’ and ‘use for personal, retained, and
accumulated, profit’ were formed, And, as the commonwealth (the
‘Garden of Eden’) was (so) divided, scarcity was invented and,
with that (human!) invention, fear, insecurity, threat and violence
were maximized.
But, by distinct contrast, in this new,
aware era (however and hurrah!), where denial is transformed through
love (cherishment and friendship!) into wholeness (via the steps
outlined above) we have available to us a sustainable era of
wellness.
In other words, we at the start of an
era of all of the good ‘co-’ prefixed words - upon which this
millennium, un-deniably! is set clear course.
Emergent to us, then – now* - is a
sustainable era where growth is not the growth of pollution,
short-termism - and other forms of violence- but is an emergent,
evolving growth of wellness, companionship, collegiality, compassion
and coherence.
{* “Thy will be done on earth, as
it is – emphasised ‘as it is!’ – in heaven.”
Elsewhere – and please ask for it
if you wish - I have described this as ‘The Kingdom of Heaven –
by Tuesday!’ – I am/we are in urgent need of this!]
Appendix:
Ways
of Knowing – Some routes
Finally, the map of
routes from not-knowing-ness to wholeness suggests that there are a
number of routes from a state of not-know to known. Below, I sketch
some possibilities and add an account of both my preferred
learning/teaching style and an organizational map (the ‘Sunflower
Co-operative model’) that might be used in achieving such
wholosophic (horrible word?) learning.
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Heuristic/auto-didactic
route?
Latent =
Not-yet-known
recognized
learnt
practiced
known
understood
Heuristic/didactic
route?
Latent =
Not-yet-known
(re-)introduced
learnt
practiced
known
understood
Didactic
route?
Latent =
Not-yet-known
(re-)taught
learnt
practiced
known
understood
Relearning?
Forgotten =
Was-known
recognized
again/reintroduced/retaught/remembered
re-learnt
practiced
remembered
understood
Assisted-Experiential-‘Nuffield’-Heuristic/Assisted-auto-didactic
route?
Latent =
Not-yet-known
introductory experience
experienced
discussed
recognized
learnt
practiced
known
understood
Which, unpacked, becomes:
Latent = Not-yet-known
- introductory experience
- experienced discussed recognized
learnt
practiced
known
understood
John
Courtneidge, Statement of Teaching Philosophy
1) Wherever possible, I stress
experience before explanation:
As a school teacher, I was an
enthusiastic proponent of the Nuffield approach.
2) Wherever possible, I encourage
co-operative activity as a necessary complement to individual
enlightenment:
Even when performing class
demonstrations, my aim was the development of a shared paradigm:
‘co-operative co-learning, through practical experience’.
The concept of paradigm - rather than
creed, dogma or belief - underlies the experiential foundation of the
Enlightenment.
For chemists to be full participants in
this subject (and in the wider world) I am deeply conscious of the
need for teaching and experience (of chemistry and other academic
disciplines) to evolve into ‘the second phase’ of the
Enlightenment - the ‘Age of Relationship’.
Indicative of this evolving
co-operative learning approach, I attach two pages from ‘Science
Teaching Reconsidered; A Handbook’ (National Research Council,
National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1997), which illustrate two
approaches to integrating co-operative learning methods: one in a
laboratory context; the other lecture hall based.
While these methods might be unfamiliar
to many teachers at the tertiary level, they have become far more
familiar at Elementary and High School levels – and, indeed in the
management and training programs of many businesses.
As an active peace-worker, co-operator,
and Quaker, I have extensive experience of practical application of
the co-operative principles and values, and expect that these
attributes will be of considerable value in this work
3) Chemistry occupies an intriguing
intellectual space and, thus, an intriguing intellectual
responsibility:
Since chemistry straddles both the
concrete/abstract domains and the qualitative/quantitative domains, I
consider that chemistry has a key role in helping develop humanity’s
capacities for whole-system thinking. Indeed, I consider that one
cannot be ‘fully human’ without an appreciation of the present
state of chemical knowledge and understanding.
Accordingly, if humanity is to
successfully negotiate the transition from an ecocidal present to one
that is ecologically and socially responsible, then it can be
reasonably suggested that enhancing reasoning skills (among others)
is key.
I consider this, evolving, phase of
(chemical) education being an enhanced development of ‘The Fourth
R’ - reasoning.
And, moreover, I expect that this
teaching philosophy will be fully transferable to the Business and
Society course-content.
4) Finally, I point out that, as
both a trained teacher and social advocate, I have extensive
experience in co-designing, and co-creating, successful new policy
and process outcomes:
Accordingly, I enclose details of
one of my recent activities: helping create a ‘Sunflower
Co-operative Model’ (which was originally created for an NGO in
England, ‘Les Amis du Monde Diplomatique’).
Such a co-operative model could
well be applicable, say, to enhanced global collegiality.
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Extract: Page 18 SCIENCE TEACHING
RECONSIDERED: A HANDBOOK
Cooperative Learning in the Laboratory
Students in two laboratory sections of a chemistry course for non-science majors worked in groups of three on two experiments about acids, bases, and buffers. The experiments were devised using a modified “jigsaw” technique, in which each student in a group is assigned a particular part of a lesson or unit and is responsible for helping the other members of the group learn that material. The week prior to the laboratory, students were given lists of objectives and preparatory work that were divided into three parts. Students decided how to divide the responsibility for the preparatory and laboratory tasks, but were informed that the scores from their post- laboratory exams would be averaged, and that ail members of a group would receive the same grade. Two control sections of the same laboratory were conducted in a traditional manner, with students working independently.
All four groups of students were part of the same lecture class, and there were no significant differences in age, gender balance, or previous number of chemistry classes. Although the control sections had an overall GPA higher than the cooperative learning sections (2.77 versus 2.30), the students in the cooperative sections had higher overall scores on the post-lab tests. The authors conclude that use of cooperative learning in the laboratory has a positive effect on student achievement.
Smith et al, 1991.
Professor: Eric Mazur
Enrolment: Approximately 250 students
In 1989, I read an article in the American Journal of Physics that contained a test to assess understanding of Newtonian mechanics. I gave the test to my students at Harvard and was shocked by the results—the students had merely memorized equations and problem-solving procedures and were unable to answer basic questions, indicating a substantial lack of understanding of the material. I began to rethink how I was teaching and realized that students were deriving little benefit from my lectures, even though they generally gave me high marks as a lecturer. So I decided to stop preaching and instead of teaching by telling, I switched to teaching by questioning using a teaching technique I have named peer instruction.”
My students now read the material before class. To get them to do the reading, I begin each class with a short reading quiz. The lecture periods are then broken down into a series of digestible snippets of 10 to 15 minutes. Rather than regurgitating the text, I concentrate on the basic concepts and every 10 or 15 minutes I project a “ConcepTest’ on the screen. Those short conceptual questions generally require qualitative rather than quantitative answers. The students get one minute to think and choose an answer. They are also expected to record their confidence in their answer. After they record their answers, I ask the students to turn to their neighbors and to convince them of their logic. Chaos erupts as students engage in lively and usually uninhibited discussions of the question. I run up and down the aisles to participate in some of the discussions - to find out how students explain the correct answer in their own words and to find out what mistakes they make.
After one or two minutes, I call time and ask students to record a revised answer and a revised confidence level. A show of hands then quickly reveals the percentage of correct answers. After the discussion, the number of correct answers and the confidence level typically rise dramatically. If l am not satisfied, I repeat the cycle with another question on the same subject. When the results indicate mastery of the concept, I move onto the next subject.
I have been lecturing like this now for more than tour years. During this time the students have taught me how best to teach them. As for the students, nothing clarifies their ideas as much as explaining them to others. As one student said in a recent interview, “There is this ah-hah! kind of feeling. It’s not that someone just told me; l actually figured it out. And because I can figure it out now, that means I can figure it out on the exam. And I can figure it out for the rest of my life.”
‘Sunflower
Co-operative’ Group Working Structure
This is a suggested non-hierarchical
corporate working structure: incorporating co-operative values and
principles, and aimed at preventing both ‘within-corporate’ and
‘outwith-corporate’ anti-social and anti-ecologic violence, and
achieving the group’s self-identified aims and objectives.
= Group contact reporter
(Note: each group contains
variable numbers of working group members – not shown here, to
avoid ‘chart clutter’
(At least) Note-taker and two
co-facilitators in ‘Secretarial/ Committee Support Group as
members of the Liaison Ring
5
6
7
8
1
2
4
3
Portfolio Work Groups (eg 1- 8 as
illustrated below)
Group Liaison Ring (ie Approximately
‘Overview Committee/ Portfolio Group’)
For suggested group
portfolio identities (1-8 in schematic above),
task lists, corporate
working values and principles, see following pages.
Example
of Suggested Group Portfolio Identities
-
(as, in this case, created for ‘Les Amis du Le Monde Diplomatique’
in the UK)
The work-group list below is a
suggested, illustrative allocation, organised into work-group
portfolios.
1: Membership Support Group
2: Café Group
3: Outreach Group (Web, Kiosk, etc)
4: Secretarial / Committee Facilitation
/ Group Ring Liaison Support / Treasury Group
5: Paris and International FLMD
Networking Group
6-8: Ad-hoc Project Work Groups, as
needed/identified
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