Q A (Question Answered - there's only the one)

During my last splurge of Incoming Insight posts, someone sent me a question about the potential benefits of suppression. Discounting the (in my opinion short-sighted) view that there are several benefits for the oppressor, it does leave an interesting question about when and where enforcement of will is appropriate. Superficially, law enforcement "suppresses" criminals, by refusing to allow them to do bad things to other people (and occasionally themselves). Likewise, parents could be said to "suppress" children, by disallowing certain activities - or only permitting them under special circumstances or after certain criteria have been met.

I think, however, there are two distinctions between these examples and the example I gave of cultural suppression. The first is intent: the intent of the suppressor in my examples was to keep themselves in power and the suppressed population...well, suppressed. In the case of my illustration, the intent was the acquisition and maintenance of power--at the expense of the suppressed culture. In the examples above, you have two very different motivations, namely protection (in the case of law enforcement) and protection/education (in the case of parents). I think many cases of abuse of power by these groups is often identified, in no small part, by their intent. If the cop pulls you over because you were speeding, that's keeping people safe, and (while annoying) a general good. If the cop pulls you over to shake you down, however, that's utilizing power to promote the officer at your expense, and that is suppression. Thus, intent has a substantial role in identifying cases of systematic suppression and their possible impact.

Of course, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The fact that you want to protect/help people is only marginally useful as a defense if what you have actually been doing is inflicting various degrees of psychological/social/economic trauma on them. the second difference between suppression and these other examples is proper application of power. Namely, that those who hold power are diligent in analyzing the impact of their actions, and willing and able to change their approach in the event that the results do not match with their intent. (Someone is always going to hold power, by the way - we don't get to actually live in a "balanced" or power-neutral world.)

The area of intent is where you get your "moral monsters" - those who walk over other people or cultures to get what they want. They are the obvious examples of terrible things, and everyone can name at least one Terrible Person who has willfully harmed others to advance themselves. The area of application, however, is where I think the most harm actually gets done. We like to feel good about ourselves, and often make the mistake of believing that because we have good ideas or intentions, that we are helping others. As a friend of mine says, we front-load our help, looking at how our plans should benefit people, without taking a hard look at what those actions are really doing. One example I have heard personal testimony about are the education of Native American tribes. While, ostensibly, the goal was to help the tribes "get up to speed" with Western culture,* the actual effect of much of this education was to separate the tribal culture from their language and heritage, causing substantial fractures in their identity and sense of ability. The government may have thought it was doing good, but the actually effect was really quite terrible.

So to sum up, I do believe that controlling persons or groups is necessary for social order and development, but it has to be done very carefully. With this in mind, allow me to clarify my concept of cultural suppression. Cultural suppression is the control of one culture by another culture in such a way as to suppress the identity and ability of the controlled culture, resulting in fractured identity, loss of perceived ability and worth, and dependence on the suppressing culture. This does not necessarily overlap with other definitions of suppression (suppressing fire, suppression of crime, fire suppression, etc.). Yes, this is a complicated concept, but since when was life actually simple? As noted, our drive for simplistic explanations and actions are part of the reason we see so much damage in our global society today.

Insight Into Identity, Agency, and The Impact of Suppression

In previous posts, I have discussed the difference between direct and indirect identity, the impact it has on our understanding, sense of agency, and associated responsibilities. To sum up: the more directly I understand myself (as opposed to understanding through outside sources), the greater my overall sense of agency, control, and associated responsibility. This is one reason why socially or economically struggling peoples tend to have lower levels of perceived agency and responsibility. What I want to look at today is how the process of suppression (in particular, cultural suppression) contributes to the dissolution of agency, direct identity, and sense of responsibility. At IRI, we have found that this is very widespread (going far beyond even the more obvious manifestations of cultural or personal suppression), and the harm it has caused cannot be understated.

So, let's take a look at an example culture to see how this process works. I will refer to these fictional people as "Targetians" - please note that as far as I know, the Targetians have no direct real-world analogue, though you may see some substantial similarities between them and various cultures you may have encountered. I want to illustrate this phenomenon without getting to personal for anyone who is from such a culture - it can be rough to relive if you have experienced it.

We'll start the Targetians off as a fairly stable, solid, creative culture. They have a strong direct identity, with a strong sense of self-understanding, agency, and responsibility. They have a stable civilization that is comfortably advanced and are generally satisfied with how things are progressing in their society. This is a best-case scenario, as most cultures have some general level of internal dissatisfaction, but this is a fictional example, and the Targetians will serve their purpose by being one of those annoyingly ideal civilizations.

Now the Targetians encounter another civilization we will call the "Largeese." This civilization is substantially larger than the Targetians, with superior economic and military might. They come into the Targetians lands and proceed to set up shop. This, the Largeese decide, requires the Targetians to surrender their territory, resources, and general autonomy to the Largeese. Being bigger, richer, and stronger, it isn't hard for the Largeese to take over. The Targetians are now a second-class people in their own homeland.

In this situation, the Targetians agency is, to a large degree, damaged by the Largeese. This loss of agency is at odds with the Targetians direct identity and it's strong expectations of agency. There are a number of responses from the local population. First, there are those who resist the loss of agency. These are the rebels - whether violent insurgents or non-violent protesters, they attempt to regain their agency from the Largeese. Second, there are the traumatized. These Targetians are unable to reconcile their expectations with the imposed loss of agency, and this tension manifests itself in mental instabilities of various kinds (depression, anxiety, delusion, etc.). The third group Gives in and accepts the Largeesian rule. Real life is much more complex, of course, and there is a lot of overlatp between these groups, but this will suffice for our illustration. The main point here is that, over time, this situation changes the Targetian society.

The first group, who rebel, ultimately end up getting knocked down. The Largeese will have nothing to do with such opposition, and simply squashed this group to the best of its ability. Thus, those who have held on to their identity most strongly get removed from the society. The group that experiences cognitive tension will receive help to work through their problems (it turns out the Largeese, while not interested in accommodating rebels, will help those with mental trauma), but since the Largeese control the therapy, this group will ultimately be "helped" by being encouraged to conform to their new social situation. The last group will get by fairly well, but their cognitive habits will change dramatically, and that's where I want to focus here.

Without the rebels, the two remaining groups must adjust their cognitive system to adapt to the change in agency afforded by the Largeese. In this new system, independent thinking and reasoning (A), which might lead back to a direct identity is strongly discouraged. It either creates more rebels, or mental trauma, and so is seen as negative - at first by the Largeese, but eventually it may be seen negatively by the Targetians as well, since such people would be, as a rule, a disruptive force in an otherwise "normal" society.  It isn't that the Targetians that remain LIKE their second-class status, in fact, many strongly resent it, but why dwell on things you can't change? Instead, the focus becomes daily survival and social obedience (i.e. "not rocking the boat"), which emphasizes the B aspect of cognition. In addition, social cohesion and interdependence will probably increase (C) since "the only ones we can count on are each other. Thus, the Targetians move from an ABC cognitive pattern with an associated direct identity, to a BCA cognitive pattern, where their identity comes from their status as a second class people, given to them by the Largeese (an indirect identity).

Now two important things have happened. First, the Targetians have lost their direct identity. Since the Largeese are now the source of their identity, the Targetians will tend to see the Largeese as the ones responsible for the Targetians lives. Thus, responsibility gets shifted tot he Largeese, and the Targetians lose their sense of agency and responsibility, as well as their identity. Second, since A has been deprioritized, the tool which the Targetians would use to rediscover their identity, agency, and responsibility has atrophied significantly.

This suppression by the Largeese, however, can only last for so long, and eventually (after several generations), the Targetians rise up and push the Largeese out of their homeland. Now the Targetians must start the process of rebuilding. Unfortunately, for generations, the critical, analytic, conceptual part of their thinking has been suppressed by both the Largeese, but also by the Targetians themselves. Thus, the toolset needed to recover the Targetians identity and agency is extremely rusty - and rusty tools often break. As a result, the Targetians find, to their dismay, that they are unable to recover their civilization even to the level of their ancestors, and they can't figure out why. After all, they have preserved all the cultural traditions (B) they could, and they understand that they should stick together (C), so why can't they pull things together? Are they really as dumb and ineffective as the Largeese claimed? Are they really failures?

Well, no. The problem is that the Targetians have lost the conceptual/analytical aspect of their thinking to a large enough degree that they don't realize any more what they have lost. Other, more conceptual, outsiders look at them and see a "primitive" or "traditional" people, and assume that because they have been this way for generations, it is simply how their culture works. Not wanting to interfere with the Targetians any more, the outsiders refrain from interacting with them too much. While noble, this means that the aspect of the Targetian culture that is lacking and needs to be restored (A) will be long in coming, since rebuilding an entire history of philosophy, reason, and analysis is much harder than it sounds. Learning programs, by and large, focus on facts and specific operational training (B), not restoring conceptual/analytic faculties (A). In fact, education programs that assume A, but don't focus on teaching it (like many western teaching programs) will probably not only fail, but only serve to reinforce the existing thinking pattern of BCA, since the program assumes A, but uses B to teach. This means that any cultural recovery for the Targetians will be a long, uphill struggle, especially if critical thinking and reasoning (A) is seen as a Largeese cultural trait - in that case, critical thinking may even be demonized, as it is seen as a cultural artifact of the enemy.

So yeah, this is a terrible situation. Cultural recovery can only occur through internal development, which can only occur through conceptual redevelopment (A), but the tool needed for such redevelopment has been lost and perhaps even demonized because of prior misuse by the suppressing culture. This is what IRI has been working to remedy. Through our programs, we seek to reintroduce A elements of thinking with a minimum of cultural baggage (there cannot be no baggage - it simply isn't possible to think or act without any reference to your native culture). We focus on developing conceptual/analytical tools, and encouraging nationals to engage with and develop their own direct identity. We have found that with a recovery of direct identity, there is a corresponding recovery of agency and responsibility. We do not need to initiate social programs in the places we work - the nationals do that, once they start to recover their identity and the A-aspect of their thinking.

Once the nationals take back the initiative in their development, then we can come in and help - if they need our help (often, they need less help than they previously thought they did - frequently, they don't need any help at all, other than to have a level playing field to develop on). My co-worker Al frequently tells people that "I work for the nationals" - which is, in the case of the work we are now doing in Mozambique, literally true. It is amazing and wonderful to behold - seeing people groups we were told were "lazy" or "ignorant" accomplishing projects and programs themselves that outside organizations have failed to achieve for decades.

This is what I do, and I love doing it.

Insight Into Identity

So when we last left our discussion of cognitive theory, I had given an overview a review of direct and indirect understanding. This model seems to apply to all the ideas we hold. That is, for any idea we can think of, our understanding is either direct, indirect, or some blend of the two. My understanding of computers, for example, is blended - some things I understand directly (basic ideas about computer operation and function), and some I understand indirectly (router functions, networking, and how my computer interacts with my ISP).


Now one particular bit of understanding that is a major component of how we function is our understanding of ourselves - our self-concept, or self-identity. Like any other idea, we can understand ourselves directly or indirectly. Initially, we learn a lot about ourselves indirectly through our parents, friends, and general environment. Over time, however, we usually begin to form our own ideas about ourselves which are to some degree independent of our environment. These new self-concepts are understood directly - they are our ideas about ourselves, we own them, and we determine how they change. For the sake of simplicity, I will call ideas we hold about ourselves directly our direct identity, and ideas about ourselves we get from others our indirect identity.

For most of our lives, we have a blend of direct and indirect identity. We often feel it most keenly in adolescence, when we really start trying to assert a more direct identity over the indirect identity provided by our families and general culture. We never fully gain a completely direct identity, however, and for good reason - we are often wrong about ourselves. I may believe myself to be an eloquent writer or brilliant singer, only to have others contradict my understanding. At that point, I need to assess whether or not I am right about my understanding of myself - perhaps I really don't sing as well as I think I do. On the other hand, maybe those critics are just jealous of my incredible talent. It is sometimes hard to determine which understanding most closely matches up with reality, and we spend much of our lives trying to figure that out.

One aspect of identity that concerns the work we do with IRI is the relationship direct and indirect identity has to control. If you remember from last time, if I have a direct understanding of something, I am in control of that idea - the idea is mine. I can change, modify, and adapt it as I see fit in order to bring it into alignment with everything else I understand about the world (ideally, this brings it into better alignment with reality, but sometimes we get really, really confused). An indirect
understanding, however, leaves control of the idea to whoever is teaching me. I can't do any more with computer repair, for example, than what the IT specialist tells me. The IT specialist has a direct understanding, but my understanding is only indirect. Thus - and this is critical - direct understanding allows me to control an idea, while indirect understanding leaves control in the hands of others. Now, apply this principle to direct and indirect identity, and what do we get?

What we end up with is a direct correlation between direct and indirect identity and personal agency. The degree to which I have a direct identity (I understand myself directly), is the degree to which I have control over my life (barring, of course, aspects of our environment we cannot control - no matter how direct my identity, getting hit by a tornado will end badly for me). To the extent I have an indirect identity, someone else (the entity which gives me my identity) has control over my life. This is, again, exemplified well in adolescence, where teenagers struggle to not only define themselves, but also escape from their parent's control. In short, my sense of identity (direct or indirect) directly impacts my sense of agency, and the associated sense of responsibility. If I have control over something (like myself), I have a responsibility to properly manage that thing. If I do not have control over something, then I am not actually responsible for it.*

Since our goal at IRI is to help people take control of their lives so that they can improve their situation, we are constantly working to bring people from an indirect to a direct identity. This work has led us to some interesting theories about why many cultures are suffering socially and economically right now, where the problem comes from, and how it can be fixed. That's going to be quite a heavy load to cover, however, so it will have to wait for next time.
 
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* As a side note, this is one reason why mismatching authority and responsibility in business is both demoralizing and dangerous. If I am given responsibility without the power to change the situation I am responsible for, I become nothing more than a scapegoat. If I am given power with no responsibility, I become a monster. Neither situation is really beneficial to anyone involved.