Making educational
research toward the development of creative flexibility in future generations
means looking for a way to give young people the appropriate stimuli which
develop the creativeness they already possess, and the appropriate spaces
and means to realize it.
A similar approach to the problem which could appear obvious or even futuristic
in a sense, becomes reductive if we do not also take into account the
possibility of a "quantitative" increase of creative potential, apart
from the qualitative increase already existing in our society. Indeed,
an increase in the percentage of creative individuals means a larger number
of people able to face the ever increasing and more complex evolutionary
demands of the future.
In today's society there are individuals who possess a rigid, dependent and conservative personality, such as those we might call "fundamentalists", which is opposite to others who contrastingly possess an autonomous flexible and creative personality. There seems, however to be a certain prevalence of the first category over the second. The "quantitative" increase in creative flexibility therefore means the shifting of individual educative formation toward the development of psychological independence, autonomy and critical thinking, so as to develop mind characters which are more appropriate to creativeness and an attitude to change in future generations.
It is also
true that these characteristics of human personality admit a genetic origin:
their development seems to depend in good measure on the cultural habits
which regulate the communication relationships, above all when these operate
through a mechanism or background of environmental pressure at the age
when the young individual begins to self-frame her brain connections on
which her personality depends; that is, through her earliest family education.
These cultural factors dobtless require the attention of whoever is concerned
with educational communication.
Wanting to offer a contribution in this sense, I want to call collective attention to the causative relation between the use of language for (in)formative communication and the formation of personality, and, most of all, I want to explain the educative function of what I call "negative language". The function of "negative language" has been aptly summarized by Jan Slakow, for which I warmly thank her, as follows:
The way parents use language with their children has a definite impact on how the children will develop. In particular, if we wish our children to develop their capacity for Critical Thinking, Self-reliance and Flexibility, we should learn to use what is called "negative language".
The concept of "negative language" must be considered in opposition to the "No-contradiction Principle" (or "positive language"). According to the "No-contradiction Principle", if one parent tells a child something, the other parent (or significant other) should concur. In this way, children become used to the idea of following authority figures, rather than questioning received wisdom and thinking for themselves. This might well be acceptable in an unchanging world. But the world we live in is constantly changing and people need to develop FLEXIBILITY in order to adapt to the changes.
Conversely, if one parents makes a statement (a "positive truth") and the other expresses a contradictory opinion (a "Negative truth", or "negative language"), the child faces a dilemma. In order to go beyond this dilemma situation, if both parents' statements were well-balanced, the child is obliged to use (and develop) its ability for Critical Thinking, Self-reliance and Autonomy, in a word: Flexibility.
One could
argue:
"But children need positive language to learn the truths that are necessary
for survival!" I would answer:
"No, dear sir. Those 'truths' must be taught by acts, not by words! You
must not insist your child follow your words, regardless of how you act,
even if your words are not in contradiction with your actions..."
My starting point is analyzing the general structure of communication relationships.
In any language practice that sees its "speaking subject" in the person who delivers the message and its "object" in the person who receives it, everyone who creates information seems essentially to have the purpose of obtaining the consent and trust of the "object"of the communication practice to which one delivered one's message. Further, the speaking "subject" could present her message according to two different variants, depending more or less on the adherence of the message--and of herself--to objective reality.
Furthermore, whoever creates information can address it to people that are either equipped with an autonomous, critical and flexible personality, or to people who possess a rigid, psycho-dependent and conservative personality. So what I'm going to consider now is both the power of a message to convince, which could depend on either the content of "truth" of the message and thereby its adherence to the reality, and/or the gullibility of the listener. And in this latter case, the quite independent issue of the adherence of the same message to reality.
The problem of the relationship between a message's "content of truth" and its power to convince is of considerable importance whenever the content appears different or somehow new, with respect to what had been already said in that communication context, and had therefore already been accepted as common knowledge. Actually, the problem of the relationship between truth and belief becomes particularly evident when the message is directed to modify the context of common knowledge or its contents. Actually, from everybody's experience it emerges that just as someone who receives the message has a mentality which is rigidly dependent on their traditional leaders, that person is likewise impenetrable to any proposal for change coming from the outside; but if vice versa someone is endowed with an autonomous, flexible personality, such a person will be permeable to the novelty contained in the message, even though it doesn't come from the local leadership.
In this perspective, two different functions of each communication relationship can be considered.
* The first
function is given by the content of "truth": the message's adherence to
reality;
** the second function, always inherent in each action of language, concerns
the possibility of developing a more flexible personality in whoever receives
the message.
In fact, a more modern frame of mind would allow its owner to share more
fully in society with her aware and creative criticism, and her ability
to change - thus according with her autonomous flexible personality -
and this is a main goal of communication.
I once had to develop the relationship between "truth" and freedom of thought and belief in a letter to a friend who was trying an electoral experiment. I wrote: If in a communication relationship the "truth" contained in the message is a function of its adherence to the reality being described, this adherence may not appear in itself conclusive or convincing. This phenomenon becomes particularly evident whenever the message deals with proposals whose adherence to objective reality is not immediately verifiable in the short term, such as proposals for a political and social order, for example.
Essentially,
there appear to be two psychological processes governing the beliefs in
human communication relationships: the suggestive, demagogic power of
the speaker on one hand, and the aptitudefor Critical Thinking owned by
the message-receiver on the other.
The demagogic power of any statement seems, however, to correspond to
the level of psychological dependence of the message-receiver. Thus it
would be a function of the latter's gullibility and fundamentalist frame
of mind. Such an effect is therefore unrelated -- at least in the short
term -- to the adherence of the same message to objective reality.
By the same token, the aptitude for Critical Thinking characterizes a
listener who is able to verify every statement by a logic of comparison
with its opposite hypotheses, and who therefore brings to effect logical
processes of autonomous criticism and flexibility. It is therefore possible
to explain the logical variants in message communication, as shown in
the chart below:
Legenda:
+ positive truth
- negative truth
I psycho-dependent fundamentalist thinking
II autonomous critical (flexible) thinking
v The arrow indicates the direction of the message, from the speaker who is communicating either a (+) positive, or (-) negative, truth to the message-receiver. In turn, the message-receiver can perform either (I) psycho-dependent (fundamentalist) thinking, or autonomous critical (flexible) thinking.
From the above chart one can deduce that the logical variants in language relationships are four, as below:
+/I : in the first variant, the message (+) is a "positive truth" as it adheres to reality. Nevertheless, the belief power of the message is a function of the demand for demagogic suggestion which is a specific characteristic of the receiver (I)
-/I : in the second variant, the message (-) is a "negative truth" as it does not adhere to reality. Yet the belief power of the message is equally ensured, because the message is delivered inside a demagogic relationship corresponding to the receiver's (I) specific demand for demagogic suggestion.
+/II : in the third variant, the message-receiver (II) compares the message critically (+) with its opposite (-), so accomplishing an autonomous process of Critical Thinking aimed at choosing between (+) and (-) whatever proposition seems most adherent to objective reality.
-/II : in the fourth variant, the message-receiver (II) compares the message critically (-) with its opposite (+), so accomplishing an autonomous process of Critical Thinking aimed at choosing, between (-) and (+), whichever proposition seems to adhere best to objective reality.
At this point, if you wanted to give the public information aimed at changing the political arrangement of the social system, you will invariably need to define the most appropriate variant:
a-
do you want to renew the information already existing in the system, according
to the hypothesis that the content of "truth" currently present in the
cultural and political context has become insufficient ? i.e. to make
a passage from (-) toward (+).
In this case you will want to base your political information on the first
communicative variant (+/I ), in order to deliver a message with
a more immediate, convincing power. In my opinion, the social effect of
a similar renewal would however be destined to preserve and consolidate
the demagogic relationship of communication rather than to develop the
awareness and critical ability in the message recipients. Whoever bases
the information they provide on the psychological dependence and gullibility
of the listeners, actually keeps on getting the public into positions
of less flexibility, thereby disallowing the public the opportunity of
freeing themselves from the demagogue in office, were the latter's messages
to have lost their adherence to objective reality.
b-
do you want to renew the existing mode of approaching information and
related mechanisms of persuasion according to the hypothesis that the
demagogic relationship that currently seems to pervade the greatest part
of society has become incongruous? i.e. to make a passage from (I)
toward (II).
In this case you will want to base your political information on the critical
ability and the reflective attitude of the public. But in this case, either
telling the "truth" (+) or its contrary (-) does not matter
any more, since both the delivering of a "positive truth" (third variant,
+/II) and the delivering of a "negative truth" as regards the same
reality (fourth variant, -/II), allow the message receivers --
if they possess the autonomous and flexible frame of mind -- to perform
the same process of reflection either (+/-) or (-/+), both
destined to bring them to the same autonomous position of adherence to
objective reality.
What really matters, then, is how to increase flexibility in peoples'
minds, as the enabling condition/circumstance.
Beyond any logical evaluation and faced with such an assumption, every one of us will feel inclined to disagree, at least at the outset, insofar as everyone adheres to the concept of truth which each of us is convinced we possess, and which can be expressed exclusively in "positive language". So everyone feels themselves safe in basing their own fundamental beliefs on it. In fact, however, one's criticism of others' fundamentalism or mental rigidity seems easier than criticizing one's own; but even though the concept of "truth" is always epistemologically debatable per se, it seems useful to remark that the hypothesis of an "also negative" usage of language is understood by reference to that logical level of communication where the conscious participation of the information receiver is expected. This should constitute the rule when the message receiver is the social subject. (Conversely, when the information deals with inanimate objects, which Logical Types Theory calls "the level of object-language", you would expect no demands for any active and conscious participation by the latter, and the discourse obviously requires a more rigorously "scientific" connotation.)
However, without trying to deepen the communication epistemology any further -- but always staying within theme of beliefs -- at this point anyone who wants to deliver social information to the public must choose between two opposite options: either basing one's messages on the gullibility (I) of one's listeners, or addressing their critical ability (II).
As to the first option, I want to make it clear that if the person delivering the message refuses to consider the possibility of a cultural promotion of the average collective mindedness of one's listeners from (I) toward (II), but aims to deliver information equally, is destined to fall into the (+/I) variant, which favours the demagogic fundamentalist scenario. Within this scenario however, anyone wanting to deliver really innovative information would have little chance of becoming successful against the demagogues already in office, because such demagogues are far more skilled and trained in basing their "truths" on the disengagement of proxies and the suggestion of easy hedonistic goals, rather than on the aware responsibility of the public, and there is, therefore, a certain degree of sacrifice by the latter. Thus, if a cultural operator wanted to take upon herself the noble task of increasing the creative participatory potential of the people, she would unavoidably get into competition with everyone else in the same information scenario who may be using their ability to deliver messages with less noble but more immediate belief aims.
There is yet another interesting context of communication which can usefully be taken into account by whoever wishes to use information to get the maximum increase in the critical, active and responsible participation of the information-recipient. This context is the Family; and particularly at the precise age of the child's brain development when the latter's neuropsychical structure begins to fix itself in its final arrangement. In this educative communication context, an appropriate use of language could get maximum results in the formation of the flexible mind frame of children. This necessity points up the problem of the "negative language."
We did in fact consider that telling the truth by using "positive" language or "negative" language -- provided only that the message-receiver was in optimal listening conditions -- is substantially the same, identical thing. The optimal listening conditions are clearly granted by the presence of a "flexible" mind frame in the listener, suitable for reflexive thought and comparison, for autonomous critical beliefs and responsible choices. This flexible mind frame is characterized by a good balance, and the best connections, between the more rigid brain circuits, containing the conservative memories ("positive" thought), and the logical simulating circuits, which can therefore be considered as the realm of "negative" thought. In turn, the possibility of obtaining this mostly balanced mental structure is connected to the adoption by the parents of an appropriate model of family education: indeed, the "objective practice" as characterized by the dialectical and symmetrical comparison in language relationships between the "positive" of one parent and the relative "negative" of the other. Subsequently, from the family context onwards and in the amplest collective context of human communication, the same aware use of "negative" language, besides the "positive", seems very likely to further develop the awareness and flexibility in people generally, opposite to that evil addiction to "one only positive truth" that is known as "fundamentalism".
On the other
hand, what else is one's creativeness than one's systematical application
to one's own brain for drawing out "negative" thought and language? So,
similar to what Arab mathematicians did some two thousand years ago by
inventing the use of the "negative" numbers, and so opening a crucial
door to the furtherance of culture and science, so now the time has come
to enlarge the same "negative" precisely to those other symbols of reality
we call "words": i.e. consciously introducing and using "negative language".
Because, up to the year 2000, in a world that is changing ever more quickly,
it is not so important to start the journey on the right foot, from the
positive side rather than the negative side of words.
The best way is to be flexible along the road.
Antonio
Rossin
Neurologist - Family Doctor
45010, Ca' Vendramin (RO)
Italy
www.flexible-learning.org
Last update: 06/17/03
