November 30 Blog

 1) Note your top two VALS types. (I want to collect all individual responses so we can compare everyone's.) Primary: innovator. Secondary: experiencer. 

Kendra: Primary Type:  Innovators; Secondary Type:  Achievers

2) Discuss your reactions to Century of the self. Share any overall reactions, but please focus on the human potential movement. Integrate materials from the readings as needed.

Century of the self did an excellent job contextualizing and illustrating the ultima thule of the human potential movement, building from the advent of psychologically driven marketing to the narcissistic navel-gazing egoism of the 70s and 80s. Watching the documentary before reading Sotillos (2012) helped underscore this characterization. The dart-straight story in which the tripartite personality delivers contemporary consumerism initially sounded like one of Kipling’s just-so stories. Eventually the narrator allowed that Berneys, rather than drawing out and creating American consumerism, was best positioned to render it using Freud’s terminal vocabulary.  The arranged arc of the story seemed to make much out of outsized contemporaneous personalities and little of existing ideas which would explain the phenomenon being discussed equally well. Certainly, human potential ties together a variety of philosophies and has a wide pedigree, but it ultimately reckons with the essence in its locus and source. Does essence precede existence - If not where does it emerge from - bundled socially experienced traits? These questions have been pondered over and something is lost by relying only on Freudian psychoanalysis to explicate the status-quo -- especially as the “documentary” wraps with a seeming admission that the Freudian personality is likely a Pygmalian fiction which reflects the proclivities and neuroses of its stalwarts. Consumption has long been a salve for aversive internal states. As a nation of consumers superseded all primary production it has become necessary to interrogate the forces driving discretionary spending within a seemingly free market of choice. Freud tried to minimize and excise the bad object of sexuality. While this is a compelling side-door for capitalists looking to curry interest in their widgets, it seems likely to fuel the furnace of the American economy. Century of the self made too little of social objects which transcend the self. What is the purpose of culture? How do we access it and signal our belonging? What intensifies in-group identification? If consumer choices can ameliorate anxieties and accentuate our sexual appeal (as one interviewee suggests) - what abates and for what reason is our stature improved? The new reality of slacktivism, wokewashing, and faux-conscious consumerism begs answers to these long-standing questions. 

3) Tom James, whose 1993 essay The winnowing of organizations you have read earlier this semester, wrote several issue papers between 1978-1980 about the way Outward Bound's philosophy was changing, and encouraging discussion about those changes. As Mark Freeman discussed in his 2011 paper, the shift from character training to personal growth was a source of controversy in OB in the 1960s. The controversies centered on the narrowing of OB's focus from society's needs to the individual's needs. Do you think these concerns were warranted? Why or why not?

 I have many mixed emotions about both the controversies.  Perhaps this is because as a person, I seek to understand different individuals' and thus organizations' motives, and I am able to find the "yes and's" that abound.  (I am also indecisive and perhaps have a difficult time deciphering just one thing that I do stand for!)  In my mind and when completing readings, I actually see another area of relevance when it comes to the potential meaning or impetus behind Outward Bound expeditions which is the use of ritual that so often was a key component of indigenous cultures.  When I hear Freeman discussing the importance of "manliness" that was the goal of programming along with character education, this is where my mind goes.  There is much research that has been done to show how the importance of becoming-a-man rituals are missing within European American society, for example, and the negative impact this may have on youth.  I also know from a personal relationship of someone who knew that he wasn't applying himself/meeting his potential and ended up signing up to become a Marine.  And on the OTHER hand, the Marines were awful and showed him all that is wrong with the world - so perhaps that isn't a good example.  Regardless, I can see how character education and helping young individuals to learn the importance of the whole over the individual can be important.

(Freeman, 2011, p. 28-29): I BELIEVE this... "More generally, materialism and consumerism were seen as diseases of affluence. Kurt Hahn repeatedly identified ‘six declines which surround and influence us all’: the decline of physical fitness, of craftsmanship, of initiative, of self-discipline, of memory and, most important, of compassion.47 An important aspect of the decline of initiative was the social disease of ‘spectatoritis’, which was widely commented upon in Outward Bound in this period."

I also just wonder if I'm the wrong person to comment on this in general - when Freeman writes about the Outward Bound course (cold showers, dealing with the elements, pushing oneself physically - "There was a tough regime featuring a cold shower or bath each morning, a series of individual and team challenges that gradually increased in difficulty as the course progressed, and an emphasis on confronting the dangers that were posed by the sea and the mountains."), it doesn't bother me.  I guess the difference is if one signs up for this rather than being required to do it.  Maybe that is the difference in all of this... 

Controversies on narrowing the focus from society to individuals' needs:  It seems that Outward Bound changed many of its policies due to the importance of not being to militaristic - this was a valid reason.  The changes also matched societal changes and pendulum swinging.  In this way, I also do not think that controversy was warranted.  Personally, I believe that societal needs and individual needs are both important - and I don't see how Outward Bound doesn't focus wholly on both of those efforts as well as any other organization.  When there is change, there is often controversy, however I don't see it that way - I see it as discussion intended to challenge and improve and question.  So along with a lot of rambling, my final conclusion is that no, I don't see the controversies as warranted and I think that 1) Outward Bound is and has been a group of humans trying their best and using methods that were meaningful to them and 2) Outward Bound has ideals and ambitions that I believe are designed with good intentions.  

Brief overview of the history and controversies from Freeman (2011):

 In Britain, too, it has been argued that the language of character was less prominent in the second half of the twentieth century: Arthur shows that there was little sign of the word in government education policy in the second half of the twentieth century, and that, more generally, the growing dominance of cognitive psychology and ethical relativism in education tended to marginalise character education.9

However, by the mid-1960s, the language of character and leadership, and other aspects of the Hahnian educational vision, had come under sustained challenge from both outside and within the organisation, and the rhetoric of character-training was gradually abandoned, replaced with an emphasis on the ‘softer’ aims of ‘self-discovery’ and ‘personal growth’. This, it will be argued, confirms Arthur’s identification of the 1960s as a real ‘turning-point’ in the history of character education, reflecting the wider social and cultural changes that characterised the decade.13 Although it will not be considered here, the 1960s also saw a downgrading of the religious components of Outward Bound courses, which were challenged in similar ways, provoking considerable debate within the movement.14

Therefore, while the ‘central contours’ of the ‘normative masculinity’ that was inculcated among inmates of probation homes remained ‘disciplined work ethic, strength of personality and self-control’, the 1960s saw a downgrading of the physical and militaristic aspects of the probation regime, and ‘reform came to be understood primarily in terms of its benefit to the individual’. This reflected the growth of affluence, the abolition of National Service and the emergence of new theories in the treatment of delinquency. As with the probation service examined by Wills, the changes within Outward Bound do not fit neatly into a model that associates the 1950s with ‘tradition and stability’ and the 1960s with ‘social upheaval’: not all aspects of the earlier conception of character-training were jettisoned, and the changes were gradual, involving disagreements between the founders of the movement and new, usually younger, leaders who had joined Outward Bound in the 1950s. As a result the transition from ‘character-training’ to ‘self-discovery’ and ‘personal growth’ was both complex and incomplete.

 In a contemporary context, Winton ‘links a renewed interest in character education to insecurities about students’ academic achievement, economic competitiveness, civic engagement, personal safety, moral decline, and the loss of a common culture’;41 these comments could apply equally to the 1940s and 1950s.

 

Tom James and Cheryl Bolick will be visiting class. What questions do you have for them, based on their work?