Hurmainologie creative dialogue envisions a certification program for conflict resolution

“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.” – Dalai Lama

“The first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself... Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.” – Nelson Mandela

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

Salima will facilitate the dialogue this coming Wednesday April 20. Her topic will be Peace Portal: Developing a commonly required certification program for conflict resolution, empathy, inclusive communication and other essential skills we need in order to live together well. This will be the first in a series of topics chosen as possible program content for a Calgary peace museum proposed by the Ploughshares Calgary Society.

Salima describes what the session is about as follows: “It’s very much about inventing a way to promote a culture of ‘peace’ (or whatever term you want to insert here) in Calgary. It begins with examining how we experience peace in our own lives and then drawing from that to help us understand ways we create peace in our world, and how we can engage all Calgarians in a learning process around that.”

A book which may provide very helpful background for our topic is Reframed: Self-Reg for a Just Society by Stuart Shanker. Part I of my synopsis (covering the Introduction and Chapters 1-4 of the book) is about 1,500 words and is appended below. Here’s my preview (trailer) in less than 190 words: Self-Reg is a method for managing stress. The book provides a neuroscience-based way of understanding human behaviour. The recently evolved rational brain (neocortex, highly developed in humans) is what we usually think of as controlling how we behave. Instead, our behaviour is the result of a constant interaction of the neocortex; the limbic cortex (the paleomammalian brain); and the earliest-evolved part of the brain (chiefly the brainstem and cerebellum – call it the reptilian brain). Amid the constant interplay of the three, we can be calm when the rational brain is dominant, upset if the limbic brain is dominant, or enraged (fight or flee) if the reptilian brain is dominating our behaviour. Specific types of parenting can enhance or undermine the influence the rational brain will play in the behaviour of the children throughout their lives. He connects this to the efforts of Descartes to question his own assumptions; and to the fundamental necessity of rational thinking for overcoming such things as racism and for actualizing genuine democracy. We can use this understanding to improve our own personal well-being and our interaction with others and move toward a just society.

Here is the Zoom link for Wednesday provided by Shinobu:

Topic: Hurmainologie creative dialogue

Time: Apr 20, 2022 06:30 PM

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82493463628?pwd=bm9kOFJCL3NtZm9CUmxaWWU4QlFLdz09

Meeting ID: 824 9346 3628

Passcode: 12345

At check-in I’ll invite the early-arriving participants to share a favorite piece of recent good news https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ or to share a simple idea for something you could do to promote a culture of peace in Calgary, using the Five Transitions for a Better World that Greg presented at the dialogue last Wednesday (involving energy use; capitalism for the common good; governance; consumption; and good community interactions). I’ll provide a bit more detail in the follow-up email you’ll receive before the dialogue next Wednesday.

Arthur

Book: (Stuart Shanker, 2020) Reframed: Self-Reg for a Just Society (Part I of this synopsis, covering the Introduction and chapters 1-4 of the book)

Stuart Shanker is professor emeritus of philosophy and psychology at York University. This is the third in a trilogy of books on actualizing human potential, with emphasis on the potential of each child. He explains the concept of Self-Reg in the Introduction to the book. Siena Hopkins-Prest, was an eight-year old who had enrolled in one of the “Self-Reg Foundations Certificate Program” courses at the MEHRIT Centre https://self-reg.ca/ “Ultimately, I grasped that what Siena had intuited is that a Self-Regger is someone who is driven to create a just society, who can’t abide seeing any child or youth suffer because of inherited biases that colour our thinking, and who believes that helping children to realize their full potential is a way of life and not a platitude. These are the traits that absolutely define me.”

I highly recommend this book to your reading. It can help with whatever you want to do with your life. The book consists of an Introduction, eleven chapters, and a Conclusion. This Part I synopsis gives a glimpse of the Introduction and Chapters 1-4.

In the Introduction, we learn that “Self-Reg is a five-step method for managing stress: 1) Reframe behaviour by learning the differences between misbehaviour and stress behaviour and the signs of each. 2) Recognize stressors, looking always at the totality of physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and prosocial stress and how they interact. 3) Reduce stress, addressing all five of the stress domains and not just one that may stand out. 4) Reflect on what it feels like to be calm and what it feels like to be overstressed, and when the latter, reflect on what the stressors were that led to this state. 5) Respond in a way that is not fixed on the rear-view mirror but is always forward-looking.”

In Chapters 1 (“The Science of Self-Reg”) and 2 (“Reframing Human Nature”), the author makes reference to a 1990 book by Paul MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution. Our evolutionary past that connects us with both reptiles and more recently with other mammals is not just something for the academic classroom; it is something that affects each of us every moment of the day. The reptilian brain consists chiefly of the brainstem and cerebellum and provides the basics such as the capacity to fight or flee. The limbic brain is mammalian and adds to the basics a tendency to connect with others of our group and a set of related capacities, including diverse emotions and capacity for memory. It’s the rational brain (neocortex, especially prefrontal cortex) that we often associate with the word “brain.” However,“MacLean opened up a new, dynamic way of thinking about the fluid relationship between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ neural systems. According to his model, the traffic between the neocortex and subcortex is constant and co-actional, each of these systems influencing and co-regulating the other to maintain neural stability.”

The author introduces a colour-coded way of understanding human behavior: “According to this way of thinking, we have three distinctive mental states, each a function of the neural system that is dominant, what Self-Reg refers to as being in Blue Brain, Red Brain, or Brown Brain. You can see the origins of this colour scheme on any weather map, where clear weather is depicted in blue, stormy weather in red, and all-hell-breaks-out (earthquakes, flash floods) in brown.” In a drawing, the author shows the human brain with the neocortex in blue; the limbic system in red; and the “reptilian brain” (brainstem and cerebellum) in brown. (The actual figure appears as light gray, white, and dark gray in the copy of the book I have.) We think of ourselves as rational beings, with the neocortex ruling our behaviour. “But this is not what MacLean was saying. The Triune Brain is not an autocracy. It’s more like the US Constitution: a system of co-equal branches of government, each with its own unique role and responsibilities. On this heterarchical model, Blue Brain and Red Brain are both vital for human survival, with different attributes, different checks, and different balances. Neural stability can occur only if Blue Brain and Red Brain work together, in harmony, keeping Brown Brain at bay.” Once this conceptual model is understood, it can make it easier to distinguish misbehaviour from stress behaviour in children and adults. That capacity can make a world of difference.

In Chapter 3, “Reframing Development,” the author refers to Wittgenstein: “See a philosophical question differently, he argues, and you arrive at a whole new type of answer.” Being self-aware of how we are thinking about an issue is always important. It’s important for Self-Reg. “Only in this case, what’s at stake isn’t metaphysical confusion; it’s the well-being of children and youth, our own well-being, and the future of our society.” Using English-language words for personality traits led Gordon Allport and psychologists to identify five: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and conscientiousness. Studies using non-Indo-European languages, however, found that depending on the language used for the study, human personality traits could be summarized under anything from one to six headings. Even the language we learned early in life is shaping how we perceive human development and human potential. Chapter 3 rejects the deterministic way of thinking about development and emphasizes the enormous potential in each of us. Determinism has been encouraged by data such as studies of identical twins who have remarkably similar personality traits even if they are reared separately. Furthermore, “An infant who scores high on certain temperament traits is likely to have more trouble on a delay of gratification task.” However, Shanker emphasizes: “That is simply what the data tell us. What we cannot say is that the reason they have more trouble with the task is because of those traits.” We need to ask why. For example, why is it so difficult to change a child’s temperament? “The big problem with deterministic thinking is that it closes the door on such questions.” The neuroscience-based way of thinking introduced in Chapter 1 opens the door. Our paleomammalian brain is constantly scanning the environment to determine whether another person approaching us is friend or foe. The limbic brain anticipates situations that will be stressful and usually drives the person to avoid them. Shanker emphasizes that this “limbic form of stress awareness shows up as temperament.” By raising our awareness of what is happening within our own brain and those of people with whom we interact, we can dramatically change outcomes – not just in child development, but in our everyday interactions – and our society.

Chapter 4, “The Age of Reason(s),” emphasizes the importance of curiosity and rational thinking for a living democracy. Turning to Descartes, Shanker mentions “the fundamental Cartesian principle: Rationality is not about knowing why we make the choices that we make. Rationality is about wondering why we make the choices that we make.” Get into the habit of asking good questions. Quoting from Descartes, “The aim of our studies should be to direct the mind with a view to forming true and sound judgements about whatever comes before it,” Shanker describes “Diana Baumrind’s ground-breaking research on parenting styles.” She identified three styles of parenting (permissive, authoritarian, and authoritative), adapting her terminology from political theory “precisely to make the point that how we parent a child has profound implications for how – for whether! – we sustain democracy. As Hilary Putnam put it, democracy and rationality are intrinsically connected. It was Descartes who laid the foundation for this argument….” Permissive parents are overly indulgent, making few demands of their children. Authoritarian parents are disciplinarians. Quoting from Baumrind: Authoritarian parents are “obedience-oriented and expect their orders to be obeyed without explanation.” Shanker describes resulting poor outcomes: “[The children] often develop the type of submissive personality that so concerned Descartes.” Of the three parenting styles, it is the authoritative parents who “…foster their child’s sense of autonomy by encouraging her to express her own thoughts, feelings, and desires; and by engaging in joint decision making. Baumrind’s central thesis was that, if we want to sustain democracy, we need to strive to become this type of parent.” Drawing Chapter 4 toward closure, Shanker states that “…Self-Reg reframes Baumrind’s theory so as to highlight two very different questions: How do parents and teachers instil self-control? How do parents and teachers nurture rationality?”