15 Jun 2008 @ 23:07, by Glistening Deepwater
For society as a whole to be in a fit state to manifest a balanced ego that serves only an integrative function and does not get out of hand and become dysfunctional, the individuals within it need to posses clear, rational thinking processes.
The following theory and techniques provide profound insight into the situation we humans find ourselves in and describes what we can do to help each other become liberated, rational thinking, functional beings, able to manifest a sane society.
There are groups all over the planet applying these techniques successfully to their particular issues and empowering each other to become leaders in the field of human liberation.
This is something that each and every single one of us can do towards creating a civilization that supports life rather than diminishes it.
Re-evaluation Co-counselling.
RC home page
The following is quoted from the theory of re-evaluation co-counselling:
“Re-evaluation Counselling is a process whereby people of all ages and of all backgrounds can learn how to exchange effective help with each other in order to free themselves from the effects of past distress experiences. Re-evaluation Counselling theory provides a model of what a human being can be like in the area of his/her interaction with other human beings and his/her environment.
The theory assumes that everyone is born with tremendous intellectual potential, natural zest, and lovingness, but that these qualities have become blocked and obscured in adults as the result of accumulated distress experiences (fear, hurt, loss, pain, anger, embarrassment, etc.) which begin early in our lives.
Any young person would recover from such distress spontaneously by use of the natural process of emotional discharge (crying, trembling, raging, laughing, etc.). However, this natural process is usually interfered with by well-meaning people ("Don't cry," "Be a big boy," etc.) who erroneously equate the emotional discharge (the healing of the hurt) with the hurt itself.
When adequate emotional discharge can take place, the person is freed from the rigid pattern of behaviour and feeling left by the hurt. The basic loving, cooperative, intelligent, and zestful nature is then free to operate. Such a person will tend to be more effective in looking out for his or her own interests and the interests of others, and will be more capable of acting successfully against injustice.
In recovering and using the natural discharge process, two people take turns counselling and being counselled. The one acting as the counsellor listens, draws the other out and permits, encourages, and assists emotional discharge. The one acting as client talks and discharges and re-evaluates. With experience and increased confidence and trust in each other, the process works better and better.”
“Re-evaluation Counselling is a process for freeing humans and society as a whole from distress patterns so that we may resume fully-intelligent functioning. Re-evaluation Counselling is practised in pairs, by people listening to each other and assisting each other to release painful emotions. Because no money is exchanged between people who counsel one another in these pairs, Re-evaluation Counselling can be used by any individual, regardless of his or her economic circumstances.
Re-evaluation Counselling (also known as RC or Co-Counselling) views all human beings as inherently intelligent, cooperative, and good. We assume it is natural for a human to have good relations with all other humans, to think well, to act wisely and successfully, and to enjoy life. In this view, every human being acts and cooperates well except where patterns of emotional distress interfere.
Then irrational behaviour, negative feelings, and failure to cooperate or communicate replace the inherent human behaviour. These "distress patterns" are the residue of physical or emotional hurts, many of them dating back to childhood, from which we have never fully recovered. We re-enact them when something in the current environment reminds us of the earlier times of distress. The residual effects of past distress experiences could have been thrown off quickly and permanently, at the time we were hurt, through the natural channels of emotional discharge (for example, crying, laughing, and trembling).
After emotional discharge, a person's mind is able to think more clearly and re-evaluate what happened in the distressing incident. Instead, some of the social conditioning against emotional discharge carried by our cultures and rigidly inflicted upon us when we were children ("Don't cry," "Be a big boy," and so on) has interfered with, and prevented, recovery from our hurts, leading to an increasing accumulation of distresses and tensions. By the time we are adults, this has severely limited our original abilities to achieve good relationships with others, to succeed, and to enjoy life.
It also interferes with our collective progress towards a society that supports all humans to thrive in cooperative, respectful relationships. In Re-evaluation Counselling we regain the natural ability to heal from hurt. The prime requirement for this is a listener and counsellor who is sincerely interested, who will remain relaxed in the face of our tensions, and who understands how the process of emotional discharge operates.
Many of our accumulated distresses result from societally-imposed hurts that we call oppression (racism is one example). Every adult in every present society has been conditioned, through the imposition of distress patterns, into functioning in both oppressed and oppressor roles. (For example, the same person can both be oppressed by racism and be in the oppressor role with regard to sexism.)
Oppression is neither inevitable nor inherent in human beings. It arises and operates only on the basis of distress patterns. No human being would agree to submit to oppression unless a distress pattern of such submission had been previously installed while the human being was hurting. No human being would ever agree to, or participate in, oppressing another human being unless a distress pattern had been previously installed. Once these patterns are in place, we are susceptible to acting irrationally and oppressively toward others, including people in our own group, and even toward ourselves. (For example, when racism has hurt people to the point where they unknowingly internalize it, they may demean and mistreat themselves and their own people.)”
Oppression.
”One of the principal means used by class societies to maintain their oppression and exploitation of people has been to secure the cooperation of different groups of people in oppressing each other. This has been done by installing and maintaining attitudes of racism, prejudice, discrimination, sexism, and the oppression of young people between the different sections of the oppressed population. Oppression exists universally in present societies. Every person in our societies is locked into both oppressed and oppressor roles.
The basic mechanism for keeping any person in an oppressed condition is the installation upon the person of a distress pattern or recording by hurting him or her in an oppressive and invalidating way. This leads to one or both of two results when the distress pattern is restimulated. The first result is to be forced again into the role the person filled in the original hurt experience. In this case the person is pushed to "accept" or "agree" to be oppressed, to accept the invalidating feelings, to be defeated in the attempt to remain human.
The slave "agrees" to be a slave, the serf picks up his hoe and bows his head, the wage-worker feels inferior and "lucky to have a job." The second result occurs when, in an attempt to escape the role described in the first result above, the victim of the restimulation seeks relief by "occupying" a different role in the restimulated distress recording, the role of the oppressor. In this case the male victim may turn the abuse and invalidation originally turned on him on a woman (the basis of sexism), or a white victim may turn it upon a black person or another non-white person (the basis of racism), etc., etc.
Oppression only operates, and can only operate, through distress patterns. No person would ever agree to or submit to being oppressed unless a pattern of oppression had first been installed, in the first place by being oppressed as a young person. The oppressor, the person who functions as an oppressor, has always first been oppressed and then manipulated into the other end of the oppression pattern.
The person who functions as an oppressor does so always and only because he or she has first been oppressed, and the pattern of oppression thus installed and has then been manipulated into the other end of the pattern in order to function as an oppressor. If we can help the person acting out an oppressor role in a pattern to discharge that pattern or manipulate the person out of it, that person will gladly cease functioning as an oppressor and will become an ally.
An oppressive society actively reinforces both of the results described above with false "theories," propaganda, discriminatory treatment of all kinds, religious pronouncements, secret societies, etc., etc. Control of communication, mis-education, lies, false propaganda, habits, culture, and religion are reinforced by force in the form of laws, courts, police, prisons, armies, etc. In this way each group's attempts to resist oppression are discouraged and their confidence sapped, and each group is mobilized to cooperate in the invalidation and defeat of every other group.
Most damage done by oppression is done by its internalized form, in which the victims continue to oppress themselves, oppress each other within the group of the oppressed, and, as a group, attempt to oppress other groups and the members of these other groups who are oppressed in a similar way to the way their group is oppressed. The person outside a particular oppression can be powerfully effective against the internalized form of the oppression.”
Liberation .
“To attain complete liberation two processes are both necessary: (1) effective organized social action and struggle, and (2) discharge and re-evaluation to free each individual from his or her individual distress patterns.
To be successful, any oppressed group seeking liberation must move in two directions:
1.It must consistently strive for unity within its own group around a clear-cut program of goals and actions.
2.2. It must consistently seek unity and mutual support with every other oppressed group, no matter how difficult this task may seem at first.
People need separate discussions within each particular liberation group before they can hope to communicate well to, or unite with, the other groups. They must have a time to get themselves together in the safety of their similarities, their commonalties, or their homogeneity. People having the same backgrounds need to first discuss and agree on what they want the other groups to hear from them. Once that is accomplished, they can come together and listen to each other with respect and achieve the real unity that they would otherwise seek too quickly or too simplistically.
People cannot be organized successfully for liberation around programs of distress or painful emotion. To appeal to their fear, guilt, shame, is to paralyse them by restimulation in the long run. They must be organized by appealing to reason, logic, and confidence. All programs and policies should be rational. The tone of communication should always be one of confidence in the inevitability of success.”
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