Educational Strategies to Develop our Society

Moral strategies develop civilized role patterns, and educational strategies civilize individual minds. Moral strategies improve social conditions and assume that individual personalities will move their own peculiarities to the background. Educational strategies appeal to individuals and assume that social conditions will follow suit. Education may transcend academic learning, stimulate personal experience, offer new insights (eye-openers) and show examples. I see three educational strategies that are useful for developing civilization: example strategies, eye-opening or awareness strategies, and deconditioning strategies.

The eye-opening strategy is by far the most popular, because it tries to convert by words. The example strategy works with deeds, a quite different game. Example is the most basic strategy. Even other mammals use it.

A pure example strategy may be to organize cooperatives or communes as illuminating examples for the outside world. Example strategy could also be used outside of these alternative working and living communes. A personnel department that wishes to stimulate cooperation, personal growth, and the quality of leadership in the organization can try to make its own department into a shining example. Likewise, top management sets an important example if it avoids the trap of do-as-I-say-but-don’t-do-as-I-do.

For the eye-opening strategy, language is indispensable. Religions use both example strategy and eye-opening strategy to make converts. Evangelization, literally meaning: spreading the gospel, spreading the ‘good message’, uses preachers, and preachers use words. What the use of words wins in efficiency over the use of deeds, it often loses in validity.

The most effective strategy involves words and deeds going together, right words accompanying right deeds. But example strategy remains basic, because deeds and facts are more basic than words. Therefore, mission is more effective than evangelization, because mission offers facts, although usually only indirectly related to the doctrine it wants to spread. When facts are cited only to induce people to hear words, unbalance is present. Deeds will be exploited, even prostituted, to serve the words. It is easy to feel sympathy and respect for religions such as the Salvation Army that convert mainly by example, or the Quakers who convert almost exclusively by example. This sympathy and respect may be present despite what we think of a religion’s belief or style.

Though writing is hard work, the relationship between words and deeds is a dangerous subject for a writer, so I had better move on to the next subject.

Awareness strategies often use verbal violence. With awareness strategies, people are almost compelled to discover how something works and what they ought to want. Such strategies assume that if people deviate from, say, Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, they deviate only because they yet lack awareness of their own needs. The assumption is that people would like nothing better than to realize themselves, but they are still ignorant of that fact, and therefore they should be made conscious.

Awareness strategy is often relevant, and often not. Many people who have just become aware, are then especially aware of the necessity to make other people aware, too. However, if anything is difficult and burdening, becoming aware is. One consequence, for example, is a realization of impotence. Becoming aware may be so upsetting that preferably it is channeled within a stringent ideological framework. Ideology makes us aware of answers, not of questions.

Becoming aware without practical consequences is a favorite intellectual and emotional infection. It leads to evangelization, the repetitive, stuck-in-a-rut kind of awakening. We have become aware of what makes people and society tick and of what should be done. What we do next is to make other people aware of this insight. We become convinced that if only enough people become aware, then everything will change. In this respect, social movements resemble chain letters. To involve other people in liberating experiences is an addictive surrogate for factual transformation. Movements like Transcendental Meditation solve this problem by believing that if only one percent of people have come around, then society already will change automatically.

Enthusiasts of a new order of things often believe that their gospel will spread over society like wildfire. Luckily, things go differently. When a movement becomes large, it acquires different priorities, different interpretations, different schools, applications to specific areas, combinations with other approaches. There will be conferences, training centers and associations. Tensions grow between the crystallization of an establishment and the urge to return to the simple, original, personal source of inspiration. Tensions grow also between orthodoxy and revisionism. Splits, compromises and new doctrines abound, and the original innovation dissolves in the general turmoil of society, leaving many or just a few fossil institutions.

Even with successful movements, often very little remains that is recognizable, precisely because success leads to absorption into society. Things begin to go much more slowly and in a less revolutionary way than enthusiast protagonists initially assume. In the 1920s people pointed to the success of the cooperative movement, convinced that within several decades the whole society would be organized into cooperatives.

Common reactions to inevitable disappointment are impatience, frustration and pessimism. If little progress is made, this lack of progress is due to people’s lack of awareness or to devious conspiracies of the powers that be. This explanation leads to incrowding of early converts. Their difference with the outside world grows, and so does the need for scapegoats. The oasis accuses the desert of barrenness, and invents demons of barrenness.

The usual scapegoats are the conspicuous insiders in society, those who are as fish in the waters of public institutions: businesspeople, magistrates, politicians, religious authorities. Frustrated outsiders paint these insiders in glaring colors of narrow-mindedness and power (apparently regarding themselves as broad-minded and powerless).

Frustrated converts may feel forced to engage in such unworthy activities as power games, assuming that the evil world will later condone their dirty hands! Often these people become political radicals. Such groups can intersperse progressive and human pieces of wisdom with slogans full of cynicism and power politics.

Educational strategies are, at best, based on a partial acceptance of the present state of affairs. Such strategies imply a certain dissociation from the actual social or organizational state of affairs. The image of another, better society begins to appear in the new ways of thinking and examples shown, in the new experiences gained. Some educational strategies are based on dissociation without taking distance or judging normatively. I call these approaches deconditioning strategies. Classic examples of such strategies are Taoism and, partially inspired by Taoism, Zen Buddhism.

Deconditioning strategies liberate, making us participating outsiders who observe participants of the organization or community we are in. We participate, but with inner freedom, both serious and playful, almost aesthetically. Simultaneously within and outside the situation, we find ourselves free of worry.

To what does Zen lead? A Western student who had been training in Kyoto for seven years answered: ‘No parapsychic experiences, as far as I am aware. But you wake up in the morning and the world is so beautiful you can hardly stand it.’ This remark reveals not a cultivation of sentiment, but a getting rid of filters and dampers.

Deconditioning is a lively and personal experience that can be effective as a change strategy, but with obscure and unpredictable consequences. It is perfection, but in terms of Transactional Analysis, it contains more of the Child than of the Adult. Chang-Tzu wrote beautiful poems about the easy, natural perfection of life. Especially recommended for busy people is Active Life.

A deconditioned person brings about changes as does leaven, without care, without doubts, without intentions, contagiously. Zen is a combination of example strategy and awareness strategy, without putting up examples to reach awareness. In contrast to (Confucian) conditioning, (Taoist) deconditioning is a strictly personal process, although other deconditioned people can stimulate it. Apparently this stimulation can even be done methodically, although this approach remains, as evidenced by Zen Buddhism, precarious and paradoxical.

Precision with ease gives a ‘dancing’ impression. Next to Zen in the Art of Archery and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there will be Zen in Social Change. Why not? According to Gary Zukav, even the natural scientists dance.

The main lesson of deconditioning strategies for people who want to improve things is to avoid inflated pretensions. Change without wanting to change too much. Find the natural points of access, the natural leverage points. Be yourself. Stay oriented on society and others, with goodwill, but without intentions. This attitude may create an atmosphere of inner freedom and ease in all social activities - perfect freedom, free perfectionism.

A Zen-Buddhist would suggest: ‘Do not entertain ideals, do not present precepts. Liberate without telling people what is good for them or how the world is or should be. Create breathing space, open air, freedom, vitality, light-footed seriousness. Undefinable, light, without any negative emotions, without fear or hate or jealousy and, above all else, without guilt.’ Such an attitude is wise but innocent, and surely dancing.

From: The Ten Global Challenges: How People Make the World. An Essay on Politics, Civilization and Humanity. Ordering the book 

The 'Confucian Model' of Developing Society

The third type of a moral or civilizational strategy I call the Confucian model. This Confucian model is not a dual model, as is the Brahman model. The Confucian model calls for only one elite, and an informal one at that. This elite is one of gentlemen, and what makes a gentleman is a state of mind, a noble state of mind. In the Brahmanic model, people who have clean hands absolve and guide those who have dirtier hands. A Confucian model places both ruler and ruled in civilized roles.

Confucius tried to improve society by developing and codifying civilized roles and role patterns. The main role is that of the gentleman, Khun-Tzu, the noble man, at home in the world, although he knows that the world is quite barbaric. He is a good host to his fellow humans. His main virtue is Jen: gentleness, humanity. A ‘nobleman’ is someone who cares, someone of ‘good will’, someone who thinks that trying to lead a good life makes a difference. A ‘common man’ in this sense is someone who lacks this conviction or this feeling, even without being of ill will. A ‘common man’ regards all this attention to gentleness and humanity as unimportant or even an illusion.

Confucius suggests to us how we may become noble. He gives precepts for how to behave like a noble person. Some precepts, such as the principle of the golden mean, are similar to the precepts of Aristotle. A noble person is neither cowardly nor rash, neither avaricious nor wasteful. A noble person strikes a balance between two extremes. A Confucian strategy gives responsible people a feasible model that fosters the ennoblement of the community and its citizens.

An excellent introduction to Confucianism is in Huston Smith’s The Religions of Man. One quotation:

‘Goodness, the gentleman, propriety, government by virtue, and the arts of peace - such were the values to which Confucius had given his heart. His entire life was lived under their spell. They then, together, were to comprise the content of deliberate tradition. Held before the individual from birth to death, they would furnish that ‘habitual vision of greatness’ which Whitehead has called the essence of all true education.’

Confucius formulated doctrines about right relationships between people, e.g., the right relationship between man and woman. His ideas on this subject are nearer to those of St. Paul than to those of modern feminists, but of course the content of such precepts is bound by time and culture. When Mohammed prescribed four wives as the maximum, he was only improving dramatically on existing conditions. For us here, the content of Confucius’ precepts is not important. Today he might have formulated the right behavior for people ‘living apart together’, the right relations between a homosexual minority and a heterosexual majority, the right approach to illegal immigrants, and so on.

Confucius showed the possibility of practical and efficient social systems and government, systems not based on egotism and exploitation, and being neither crude nor cruel. Aristotle held similar ideas. He compared a statesman who produces an orderly society to a potter who produces a good pot.

A basic consideration of Confucius, again as with Aristotle, is the relationship between rights and duties, between privileged positions and social responsibilities. Here too, Confucius believed that a balance should exist. Confucius strove for a society that would exist somewhere between tyrannical order and anarchistic chaos or, in Schiller’s terms, between Barbarei and Wildheit. Confucius wanted order, but he wanted it to be a human order. His is the saying: ‘A tyrannical regime is worse than a devouring tiger’. Charles Darwin wrote that the Chinese civilization is more of a model than any of the other world civilizations.

A Confucian strategy designs a social architecture of institutions and role patterns and gives these institutions and role patterns cultural or even spiritual significance. It humanizes by making roles and institutions more humane, and making them vessels of self-respect. The traditional sectors of our own society are already familiar with such ideas as ‘good government’, ‘a good housefather’, ‘good seamanship’ and ‘good business practice’. These ideas are part of the Confucian world of responsible, prudent people who consider one another not as individuals, but as good citizens who care about quality and civilization.

Confucian models imply stable relationships. Predictability is both a benefit and a cost in systems that strive for structural harmony. Because the Chinese state became strongly bureaucratic over the centuries, Confucianism became associated with bureaucracy. But the Confucian model is not bureaucratic.

Dutch sailing regulations include the statement that the captain of a ship has to do everything according to good seamanship, even in unregulated situations, even if good seamanship were to contradict these regulations. In the same sense, it is legitimate in war to do some illegitimate things. According to some, the same holds in love - hardly a Confucian activity since the eighteenth century.

The Confucian approach to good government is also relevant for large organizations: a good employee policy, a good organizational structure, systematic attention to quality, and the fostering of self-respect and mutual respect. We find satisfaction in making things go well, in getting things done well. Everyone is saturated with norms and values. The street cleaner, the film director, and the attendant in the ticket window, all have their codes of honor and self-respect. For small organizations and temporary work settings the Confucian approach is less relevant, because particular circumstances, personal peculiarities and personal relations play a larger role.

A Confucian approach to civilization, of course, is not limited to Confucius. I have already mentioned Aristotle. The classic Romans knew humanitas: tenderness, tact, openness for people and for circumstances, a sense of joy and festivity. The Middle Ages maintained the idea of chivalry. In all these cases male values were tempered by female values, without abandoning the male values. The Provençal troubadours were the priests of this new doctrine of knights: strong, reliable, noble men, ‘leaders of men in war and peace’, courting noble women.

Interestingly, medieval lore acknowledges, be it reluctantly, that even base people and scoundrels may be loftily disposed. So we may include Robin Hood and - never forget - Maid Marian, as our role models.

If ever we forget history, future psychologists will explain Richard Lionheart and Eleanor of Aquitania and their ilk as archetypes within the human soul. These psychologists would be only half wrong. Maybe all that would remain of this lore would then be Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, possibly in the guise of Roger Moore.

The humanists of the early sixteenth century rediscovered not only dusty books, but also the spirit within those books - the classical civilization. From the French humanists came the idea of the honnête homme, the honest man, and then the gentilhomme, the gentleman. This man was strong, decisive, not to be fooled around with, robust, able to stand the barbarians around him, while correct, reasonable, caring, and cultured.

In each case, the essence boils down to the same: a friendly, caring, civilized but strong and competent host to others, in an unfriendly, barbaric and dangerous world. Still, the gentleman feels at home in the world, and makes others feel at home as well. In this sense the Confucian world, with all its deference to religion, is more humanistic than religious. It judges religion for what religion does here, how it makes people at home here. Machiavelli would say that a good religion entails good institutions, good institutions entail good habits, and good habits lead to prosperity and success in all things.

From: The Ten Global Challenges: How People Make the World. An Essay on Politics, Civilization and Humanity. Ordering the book