[Neurons] 2015 "Neurons" Meta Reflections #35

Sun Aug 16 11:38:21 EDT 2015

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections #35

August 17, 2015

Creating Response-Able Persons #2

FERGUSON AGAIN

What's the Real Problem?

This past week was the one-year anniversary of the original shooting of Mike
Brown in Ferguson Missouri which then led to thousands protesting and then
to rioting which involved burning down businesses, looting, stealing, etc.
That was a year ago.  Now it seems to be happening again.  At least this
week there has been more protesting and rioting and more shootings.  So,
what is this all about?  On the surface, the protesters say that it is about
police brutality.  Then there are the criminals among the protesters who use
the protest as a cover for violence.  Yet is it really about police
brutality?

In the past year Eric Holder led a Federal Investigation directed by Obama
and in the end they completely cleared and vindicated the policeman who shot
Mike Brown.  Meanwhile more Black policeman have joined the Ferguson Police
Department, other African Americans have been joined the City Counsel and
other community organizations.  So, given these improvements, what's the
real problem?  What do the protesters really want?  What do the rioters
really want?

In asking this question, I want to go deeper than the surface answers.  Many
people and the media  keep perpetuating the false narrative that Mike Brown
had raised his hands and said "don't shoot."  The evidence however has shown
that to be false.  Brown actually attacked the policeman, grabbed his gun,
caused it to go off.  Then there's the shallow and false answer that young
black men all around the country are being targeted by police everywhere.
To prove that, the pundits collect every incident where a white policeman
shot a young black man and then over-generalize to draw this conclusion of
police racism and brutality. The problem with that narrative is that it
over-generalizes from a few instances by a few individuals assuming it is
all the same.  It is not.

Deeper Questions

Let's go back and ask some deeper questions: 

What is the real problem?  What do all of the participants in these protests
and riots want?  What drives human beings to protest and what motivates
human beings to become violent?

I'll start with the subject of violence.  Obviously violence against persons
and property is a physical response and yet it inevitably occurs within a
psychological context.  So what is that context?  It is powerlessness.  It
is the sense of impotence in feeling that one has the ability to effectively
make one's life better, to change things for the better, to address
perceived injustices, and to unleash one's potentials for being fully one's
best self.  When one feels powerless to effect change and to make things
better-violence becomes the person's only option.

Now the idea that powerlessness lies at the heart of violence is an idea
that numerous people have suggested for a long time.  It is a central theme
in Rollo May's book, Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of
Violence.  The premise is that when people feel powerless then their felt
sense of life is such that they have nothing to loose.  This is what makes
them dangerous.   Rollo May (1975) said that those who act violently in our
society are largely seeking to establish their self-esteem, to defend their
self-image, and to demonstrate that they too are significant.  

"Violence arises not out of superfluity of power, but out of powerlessness."
(May, p. 23) 

"Violence is a symptom.  The disease is variously powerlessness,
insignificance, injustice- in short, a conviction that I am less than human
and I am homeless in the world." (p. 243)

Powerlessness and Violence

It is true that more young black men are arrested, and even killed, than
those of any other group.  Yet that fact alone does not tell us why.  It
does not account for all of the factors that come together to make that so.
What is at the source of all the violence?  How is it that many others can
get caught up in the violence, into the mob mentality, and start to do
senseless acts of destructive violence which pushes their own people and
communities?

Given this, why is there so much of a sense of powerless among young Black
men and in the urban Black communities?  As a psychologist, one thing that
stands out to me is that there are so few pathways for opportunity to the
American Dream for them.  By the time so many of them become adolescents,
the key pathways to opportunity are seemingly gone-education, excellent role
models at home or in the community,  and mentorship in business acumen.

The power to control their lives and manage their future which they could
have is mostly no longer available to them-at least in their perspective.
For the majority of young black men, the culture of home and ethnic race
mocks learning and education, "That's for nerds and whites."  Their school
systems has failed to provide a context of learning, mentoring, and role
modeling.  The Hollywood and Sports Cultures have dangled the idea of "get
rich quick" and "get fame quick" via sports, music, and entertainment.  The
drug culture has provided a context for escaping the pain and anxiety but
carries the price of addiction and then the need for more money for more
drugs.  Then the vicious cycle of all these factors and more leaves young
urban people in a state of feeling powerless to do anything positive about
all of this.

Powerlessness and Personal Significance

Here then is the real problem: by making people powerless in these ways, we
have unintentionally promoted violence.  Often violence is the end result of
repressed anger and rage.   So what are they angry about?  They don't sense
that they have a legitimate way to struggle for a sense of significance.
And, after all, "power and the sense of significance are intertwined." (May,
p. 35).  And because no human being can exist for long without some sense of
his or her own significance, the possibility of violence increases.

If this is the case, then people are looking for something whereby they can
assert themselves and affirm themselves.  This is a basic psychological
principle, namely, we can only develop as a person to the extent that we can
affirm ourselves and assert ourselves.  Take that away, and there will
inevitably be anger and rage.  Recognizing this Rollo May wrote:

"The challenge before us is to find ways that people can achieve
significance and recognition so that destructive violence will not be
necessary." (p. 179)

What then do the protesters want?  What do the rioters want?  Is it not a
structure whereby they can attain a strong sense of personal dignity, value,
and meaningfulness?  This points us back to the problem of the black culture
in which the protesters and rioters live.  While many come out of that
culture just fine, many do not.  Many come out with a set of values that
they learned at home or church- others come out without such.  That's what's
missing-a set of values, personal discipline and responsibility that values
self and resiliently handles the challenges of life.  But with 72% of black
babies born to unwed mothers (and the majority are teenagers at that) they
are set up for poverty and all of the banes of urban life.  The young black
men are set up for lacking a strong responsible male image in the home.

Others are victims of other sub-cultures dominant in the black community
such as the Victim Culture which frames the problem as centuries of slavery,
that they are victims, that they cannot compete on even footing with others,
that they should be entitled to special privileges, etc.  Yet others have
been programmed by the hip-hop culture that seems to think it is cool to
call women bitches and hoes and each other by the N-word and to sing and
dance about violence- assuming that it is just music and entertainment and
it will do no damage.  That's the delusion.

Violence and Interpretation

There's another factor about violence however that we must face: Violence is
not automatic.  Just because a person feels mistreated, unfairly treated, is
frustrated and angry, is even outraged, that alone does not guarantee
violence.  Where there is a violent response by a human being, there is also
a human interpretation.   The reason for this is because we do not just
react as humans, we respond.  We choose our responses (and hence we are
ultimately responsible for our choices and actions).

What does this mean regarding violence?  It means that how you interpret a
situation determines your readiness to strike back in hostility or perhaps
to simply smile and move on.  This means that how you see and interpret the
world about you is crucial to whether you respond in violence or not.  If
one's interpretations are decisive, then where are people getting their
frames by which they create their interpretations of things? 

>From their culture!   That's why the culture of ideas, beliefs,
understandings, etc. - the Hollywood culture, the hip-hop culture, the
victim culture, the school system culture, the family culture, the church
culture, the political culture lies at the heart of the problem.  Here's
another way that we are responsible for the violence in our society.  We are
feeding these ideas which people then use for interpreting which creates
their anger and sense of injustice in the first place.  The real problem
lies in the ways that people are interpreting their perceived sense of
injustice.

Solutions

What's the solution?   Let's go back to the solution Rollo May suggested in
1975.

"The challenge before us is to find ways that people can achieve
significance and recognition so that destructive violence will not be
necessary."

The problem isn't power, power is the solution.  Power is the birthright of
every human being and that's why each person has four fundamental powers of
response (Meta-Reflection #34).  Power provides each of us a source for a
solid sense of self which enables us to like ourselves and feel
interpersonally significant.   Power enables one to have response-power
(response-ability) which lets him know that he or she can make a difference
to improve one's life.

If powerlessness is the problem and source of violence, then the more we
empower people to take charge of their lives, take ownership of their
responsibilities, embrace the power of learning, the more we undercut the
need for violence.  Doing this will actually reduce the sense of injustice.
By taking responsibility for how we interpret things, we will stop
over-generalizing, stop framing ourselves as victims, stop waiting for
someone to rescue us, and start taking creative action.

To undermine powerlessness, we need to reframe the current cultural
interpretation.  Too many people interpret what a person is by what he does
or what she has.  They make self-esteem conditional and dependent.  Do that
and then the lack of knowledge and skills, the incompetence to handle life's
demands create a sense of impotent powerlessness which, in turn, leads to
violence.  Let's change this to your value as a human being is
unconditional-so assert it.  Affirm it.  Don't let a toxic culture tell you
that you're a nothing if you don't have things or can't achieve things.

The interpretation that the injustices of 2015 are equivalent to those of
1960 is another source of anger and violence.  The protests today are very
different from those of the 1960s and are not a continuation of the 1960s
Civil Rights Movement.  Then there was segregation and unjust laws on the
books which disadvantaged the Blacks and privileged the Whites.  But all of
that has changed. Today, where there is racism, it is in a few individuals,
it is no longer in the system.  From time to time, a rouge policeman is
discovered picking on Blacks and today, with everyone having a phone camera
that person is usually identified and dealt with as he should be.

Interpreting things in these inadequate ways and undermining the pathways
that would empower people with a sense of significance, choice,
responsibility, and hope lies at the heart of the problem.  The challenge
today is to change these things.  It is to enable people to gain true and
authentic personal power to take charge of their lives in healthy ways, then
the violence will go away.  What the protesters and even the rioters really
want is what we all want- to be able to actualize ourselves to be fully
alive and human.  This is the self-actualization drive within all people and
is what we in Neuro-Semantics are dedicated to.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

               Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

               Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

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