Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.970105094816.2293B-100000@fox.ksu.ksu.edu> Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 11:06:55 -0600 From: kerry miller <mailto:astingsh@KSU.EDU> Subject: Re: pushing development- To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Steve, > Are any "change agents"--teachers, therapists, communicators,
> facilitators--unaware that often ignorance is bliss, and that change is often
> (always?) pain?
>
> Often the language we use, our metaphors, mask the pain from the "change
> agents" as well those who are changing: we call it "development", not
> "destruction," for example.
I think it goes deeper than that, right down to the neural realignments that constitute learning, and the classic S-R character of life. But I think a survey of ed/devt lit keyed to 'pain' would be fascinating in its brevity.
>
> <<If change agents had just
> a modicum of orientation to this, they could work to communicate some of
> the ambiguity of development. >>
>
> How should that work? Do we tell the leaders of the community that if we
> teach them to read they will inevitably read things which will begin to
> undermine the solidarity of the community? That they will develop new wants
> that will led to new ways that will further undo the old ways?
>
> Can you really communicate to the illiterate how the individual and group
> consciousness will be changed by literacy before the change occurs, so that
> they are properly warned as to the consequences of literacy, ad can choose
> whether to go forward or remain unlettered?
>
What you communicate depends on where you stand. Can you tell me how my consciousness is changed by literacy? I dont think so, but you can *show* me how *your* consciousness changes by *your* literacy. It's no coincidence that the development efforts which have had the most success (esp if measured by the fewest unexpected side-effects) are those where the agents 'walk the talk,' over a span of years; and conversely, hthe worst record is where experts have bustled in to 'teach' and bustled out again. But, interestingly enough, the latter is all too typical of the literacy-changed consciousness: once the 'answer' can be written down, we tend to forget that the search process is as (if not more) important than the achievement - and, as I said, that (learning to hear) the question is definitely more important than the fact that we know what the answer is.So what is the 'proper warning' as to the consequences of anyhting? It is surely not an announcment that "I have the answers" but that you, as a fellow human being, are prepared (= confident, trusting, open) to _share_ *your* process of dealing with change, as _part of_ the group consciousness if you like. (The queasiness such a phrase engenders in many may be a fair indication that they aren't too certain sure that they deal with change very well themselves...)
> <<Then at the very least, when
> disillusionment sets in, we have more defense than, "But it wasn't
> supposed to happen that way">>
>
> For me these words have a powerful insight.
>
> Perhaps we must tell ourselves first, and all of the development community:
>
> It is supposed to happen that way.
>
> There is no other way.
>
I think you're getting ahead of yourself ;-) I take you to mean there is no other way than pain - but then, what news is that that we should say so? Do you think a thousand year old subsistence culture hasnt figured this out? Can our 'telling' be anything but a confession of our own (cultural) naivete? But if it is news to us, then what *have* we been telling everybody up to now, if not a kind of snake-oil pitch that 'development' is a magically painless cure for what ails them? That we *do* know what we're doing when we extract the ore and whittle the timber and crank out Coke (and coke) by the million ton and dispossess 30% of the population, and it's all fine and painless? I would say its high time we learned to stand up and say to everybody, No we don't know what we're doing, we've only been at it a hundred years and there are a lot of bugs to be painfully worked out, and *we need your help*.
> No matter how hard you try to respect and preserve the local culture, your
> very presence alters the culture you work in irrevocably, and the skills and
> technology you bring, no matter how modest, how intermediate, how appropriate
> will set off a chain reaction that you can not control.
>
Again, I think you've confused two levels of thinking (shall we call them the literate and the illiterate? ;-) - if *you*, individually and respectfully, live in and among a local culture, do you honestly think you 'set off' something that a) cannot be controlled, b) needs to be controlled, and or c) needs to be controlled by you? Then, respectfully, I think you didnt live there long enough to recognize that 'culture' is nothing more or less than the set of ways people develop to address ('compensate for') such individualistic effects. (in other words, you didnt suffer enough...) The literate level, of course, uses the generalized and impersonalized 'you' that stands outside and looks (*down*) and analyses the 'cultural' effects of wearing shoes, or immunization or literacy programs, or privatizing water resources which had been communal before PVC pipe was introduced. It does not take account of the personal pleasure (e.g. of affordable shoes), or dignity, or desperation, or responsibility or any other such off-topic nonsense. In this perspective, a phrase like "trying hard to respect and preserve" *seems* to make sense - but of course it doesn't mean a thing. (Try to explain it to an illiterate...)> (Perhaps the training of anthropoligists, for example, should include
> knowledge of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, so that they learn that
> their very presence with cameras and recorders changes the local culture in
> ways that that they can not control.)
>
> The only way to avoid personal responsibility for participating in cultural
> destruction is to stay out of the development business.
>
The only way to take personal responsibility for cultural growth is to recognize you are in the development business, wherever you are.Sincerely kerry