Hello Selma,
I would like to move towards the
implications that may lie in the assumptions you have set out for our
consideration: e.g. humans are (probably) born with a basic tendency toward
goodness and that arranging things so that their basic needs are met will
produce loving self-directed individuals. (Sounds a bit like
gardening.)
So, when a baby is born, we tell ourselves
a story that this is a good baby, love and care for it and learn how to
enrich its environment (i.e. apply the latest findings in brain research --
which is what the Conservative government of Ontario
is now encouraging through opening 100+ "early
years" centres throughout the province). And so on, through life although,
as we become adults, it becomes a matter of nurturing ourselves and each
other and our own children, and developing a nurturative built
environment.
That, I take it, is where you are going: a
intensive care path but with the effort that is involved gradually
becoming reduced because "synergy" cuts in as the cared-for child
grows and becomes adult -- it becomes less effort to nurture oneself or
others if we and they have been nurtured to become
nurturative persons, as well as less effort to improve a built
environment that is already supportive -- a sort of virtuous circle of
self-actualization.
There are many instances of such an
approach entering now into the policies of Western societies, although
not always for the purpose you seem have in mind. (Some are inadvertent
consequences of budget paring.) Parenting classes, distress
centres, john schools, community sentencing, early retirement allowing
for increased voluntary caring for others, a growing solidarity against
inhumane results of trade practices, progressive taxation, etc. Where there
has been charity we are now seeing investment for development, and, through
interaction with human rights, we are now seeing development not merely as
economic development but as human development, and so on. Like almost
anything else, little is new: it is a mattering of
re-mapping our consciousness to perceive a new pattern in the
events around us. From economic growth for its own sake we are shifting to
economic growth for the sake of human "growth," i.e. growth in education,
health, longevity, civility, ... and finally...consciousness.
So what would you have us do: tell
ourselves a different story (Brad's "narrative") and thus perceive a
different pattern in events, place our bet firmly on the assumption
that infants are born good and water and fertilize them and each other
to the best of our ability toward a loving world in which work is done
voluntarily and, presumably with high innovation and productivity?
I'm pressing your Rogers,
Maslow, Benedict theorizing a bit, (no, more than a bit) but is this
basically where you would take us? In
short, do some kinds of suggestions -- for parents, for schools, for
governments, for ourselves -- lurk in your theorizing?
The line of thought you are pursuing is
interesting, and I don't recall seeing it often on this list, so please say
more. When you link it to the
possibility of willing work, as you do, it goes even further, but I'd like
to get the dynamics of your systemic analysis clear first,
and the suggestions that it might give rise to. Seeing goodness in babies, and nurturing them, a
society that practices nurture can become what it beholds,
a loving nurturative hard-working society?
Regards,
Gail
Selma wrote (quoted by
Keith):
"This is perhaps an oversimplification, but I would suggest that there
are
three basic views of human nature that can be characterized as
positive,
negative and neutral. The positive view, best described by Carl
Rogers and
Abraham Maslow sees humans as born with a basic tendency
toward goodness
(other things being equal which is a huge IF); the
neutral view can be
seen in the work of people like the
behaviorists such as Watson and BF
Skinner and the negative view in the
work of those who subscribe to Freud's
idea that humans are basically
'beastly'.
If one subscribes to the positive view and accepts
Maslow's hierarchy of
needs as a guide, then humans who have had their
basic needs for support
and nurturance of all kinds-physical, emotional,
psychological, spiritual,
aesthetic, intellectual, etc. etc,. will
ultimately desire to love and to
work above everything else."
