THE POST MODERN CONTEXT
In academic circles it seems that every discipline has some members who claim to be postmodern. Generally, this means they think they have gotten beyond the dualistic, hierarchical thinking that was suppose to be characteristic of the modern period's Age of Enlightenment. A postmodern voice should be ". . . nonauthoritarian, open-ended, and process-oriented. . . . [and give up the Enlightenment's optimistic faith in] the interconnections between reason, knowledge, progress, freedom, and ethical action" (Flax, 1990, pp. 3-7). I do not want to become embroiled in the debate over what counts as having adequate postmodern credentials. Whatever the outcome of the debate, it is clear that something is "happening" in the intellectual professions. I would like to bring PBSP® into dialogue with a couple of these "happenings" as they appear in postmodern debates about social and political philosophy.
Contemporary postmodern philosophers insist that because differences in back-ground culture and personal experience always cause people to "project" different interpretations of events into the world, there can never be a transcendent perspective that gives some interpretations of the world privileged access over all the rest. While people generally would like to think that their own way of interpreting the world is the best, a professional philosopher ought to acknowledge that there will always be many interpretations that work equally well for those other people who are different from us. Thus, we must abandon ". . . `truth' enunciating or adjudicating modes. . . , [since there can never] . . . be a perfectly adequate unified theory of the `whole'" (Flax, 1990, pp. 4-5). In a strong statement of this kind of thesis, Dancy (1992, pp. 462-63) claims that postmodern particularists understand that ". . . there is no room for [universal] moral principles, and that it is bad faith to try to make moral decisions by appeal to them."
The more flamboyant critics also claim that the Enlightenment's style of universalist thinking supports "totalizing", "homogenizing", "reductionist" programs that distort the reality of humanity's diversity by ignoring the truth of our "embodied", "heterogeneous" existence (Young, 1990, 107f). It is claimed that universalist thinking tends to reify "abstract fictions" like human autonomy (Young, 1990, 95) to support essentialist, predominately sexist world views driven by "fantasies of omnipotence" (Bordo, 1992, 162) and androcentric needs for "unity and control" (Young, 1990, 94). Impulses such as these are supposed to be directly implicated in the worst atrocities of the 20th century, leading the postmodern particularist Walzer (1994) to assert that any impulse to promote a universal vision must always be resisted.
. . . sometimes, watching the tribal wars, some of us may yearn for the uniform repressiveness of imperial or even totalitarian rule. For wasn't this repression undertaken in the name, at least, of universal-ism -- and, in the case of the communists, of a thick morality ambitiously intended to replace every sort of moral particularism (p. 81)?
In their attacks on Enlightenment assumptions, many writers have relied so heavily on "obscure, exclusive power language," (Bordo, 1992, 162) that a sympathetic critic like Bordo has felt inclined to remind us that "Dualism, apparently, is easier to `go beyond' in theory than in practice" (p. 161). In addition, she argues that "Insofar as modernity, whatever else it is, conceives of itself as breaking with the past and inaugurating the `new', then any movement or condition which describes itself as `postmodern' is something of a redundancy" (p. 160). In the midst of all the confusing rhetoric, however, one theme consistently emerges, and it is well worth considering. There is a general "anti-universalist sentiment" at the core of the leading postmodern interpretations. For instance, according to Glass (1993), it was Lyotard's belief that universalist thinking exercises a debilitating influence on both action and perception that lead him to assert that. The grand narrative has lost its credibility, regardless of what mode of unification it uses, regardless of whether it is a speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation. . . . The principle of uni-totality -- or synthesis under the authority of a metadiscourse of knowledge -- is inapplicable (Lyotard, 1989, 393ff).
As an alternative to the alleged failure of all universalistic attempts to develop a transcendent account of diversity, particularists claim that we must give up on universality and adopt a postmodern story that ". . . leaves room for all the tribes" (Walzer, 1994, p. 64). The point would be to make room for all those thick tribal conceptions of justice which are essential to different ways of life. Thus, Walzer (1994) claims
Everywhere, people need only adopt one thin universal principle, that of tribal "self-determination" (p. 67).
. . . [the] minimalist principle is that it [tribalism] must always be accommodated: not only my parochialism but yours as well, and his and hers in their turn (p. 81f). . . . The crucial commonality of the human race is particularism: . . . [we should] at last recognize this commonality and begin the difficult negotiations it requires (p. 83).
But, who is going to negotiate and to what end? For the sake of self-determination, do we have to accept whatever a tribe does to its people, no matter how brutal? (For instance, many feminists are rightly squeamish about blandly accepting the practice of "clitorectomy" in young girls just because some tribes endorse it.) Walzer (1994) says these judgmental questions are complicated, since individuals are internally divided into particularist moments as well. Thus, he admits that modern individuals will need some moral room within which to be themselves, but he refuses to use this insight as a basis for drawing any universal conclusions about the structure of just societies.
My many-sided self . . . requires a thickly differentiated society in which to express . . . my different senses of who I am. . . . points of access should always exist for deviant members. . . (p. 102-3). [He asks:] Are there some (minimal) structural prerequisites of society and selfhood to which even the most severe (maximalist) critics must adjust? I don't know the answers to these questions. [He says] . . . the production and reproduction of selves, and even of self-critics, is a great mystery. . . . There is no ideal pattern of internal relations (pp. 100-101).
Contrary to this rejection of the search for universal standards, PBSP® theory assumes that there are universal needs and norms to be discovered that ought to be accommodated in all societies. Albert Pesso (1995) says,
It seems so evident to me and so simple that we are fashioned by two forces and not just one. . . culture forces and genetic forces. . . . There is a need for honesty . . . and the continuance of life is so deeply embedded in this, that all these ethical procedures that make living possible are going to be seen in all cultures in one form or another. . . . There is so much humans do that is the same, there are basic needs and a base of universality and the rest is just detail.
[Diane Boyden Pesso (1995) says], If it is universal to animals it is probably universal to people . . . things like parenting and response to distress. . . . If human beings didn't have an instinct to care, then there would be no truth to the structure work . . . instinct makes it possible, caring is not just a decision that humans make.
Problems for a Postmodern Philosophy
The abdication of the search for universal standards does not seem to bother many of the postmodern writers. Some seem happily oblivious to the moral consequences that can follow from the wholesale rejection of even "minimal structural prerequisites" for justice. As Carr (1992) points out, many of these writers domesticate
. . nihilism by making it an unobjectionable characteristic of human thought and discourse. . . We are left only with the prescriptions of a community, a community which it seems impossible to change with-out falling prey to a form of bad consciousness. . . . [The irony is that once nihilism] becomes accepted with an indifferent shrug, it devolves into its antithesis: a dogmatic absolutism (p. 10).
The way in which the nihilistic potential behind postmodern forms of particu-larism and contextualism is often accepted with a shrug, betrays a failure to appre-ciate how easily people can accept forms of oppression when they bury their head in the sands of their own perspective. Systems of belief that have such nihilistic consequences can undermine attempts to help those who benefit from oppressive ar-rangements to see that they have ethical obligations to create a world that encourages people to discover less oppressive ways to organize institutional life. It seems to me that the legitimate doubts about metaphysical foundationalism in epistemology have precipitated in many of these postmodernists an unnecessarily hasty anti-universalist movement in ethics which threatens to cut off our moral feet, in effect, leaving those opposed to oppression with no place to stand.
Sometimes particularists manage to avoid confronting the looming nihilistic implications of their metaphilosophy by implicitly assuming the background universal norms of a postconventional humanistic liberalism. For instance, Iris Young (1990) says, ". . . an emancipatory conception of public life can best ensure the inclusion of all persons and groups [emphasis added] not by claiming a unified universality, but by explicitly promoting heterogeneity in public" (p. 94). But why do particularists care if all persons are included? Concern for "all" people shows a commitment to a universalist moral agenda. To avoid equivocation in the use of universal references, Pierce (1991) advises postmodern feminists to be careful not to confuse the logic behind universalistic moral discourse with the logic behind universal claims to metaphysical foundations in epistemology (pp. 60-78).
In a similar manner, the feminist epistemologist Louise Antony (1993) argues that particularists are vulnerable to a "bias paradox" (p. 190) which undercuts their ability to fight oppression. That is, if those who are oppressed are to have any basis for distinguishing normal forms of bias from the pernicious forms that oppress, they need more than descriptions of how context affects belief, they also need to make normative distinctions between types of contexts. Huntington (1995) is concerned about an equally embarrassing contradiction in poststructuralist feminism's attack on the Enlightenment's attempt to privilege rational, critical judg-ment over other ways of searching for standards of justice. She says their approach is ". . . stuck in the awkward position of being unable to differentiate naive from critical consciousness while nonetheless presupposing [their] own authenticity as contrasted with other positions" (p. 49).
In some ways, then, postmodern philosophy represents a negative conservative force, since it can be used to protect any oppressive status quo. That is, if there is nothing that is not an interpretation against which to judge, choices among competing interpretations become arbitrary (Hiley, Bohman, and Shusterman, 1991, p.8). Why change anything at all if all positions are equally arbitrary? There are, of course, legitimate reasons to be concerned about traditional attempts to formulate rational answers to the fundamental normative problem in epistemology and ethics. As the psychoanalyst Flax (1990) points out,
Those of us who love philosophy are not immune from the fantasies of `infantile omnipotence' that are so powerful in unconscious processes. . . . In intellectual life these fantasies sometimes result in an over estimation of the power of thinking and its centrality to human life. . . . So philosophers need to find ways to improve consciousness of and develop critical perspectives on our own more grandiose and self-deluding ideas (pp. 10-11).
Who is in the best position to help us "improve consciousness of" and "develop critical perspectives on" reason's limitations? Those who tend to position local contexts over the search for universal standards of reason are not well positioned to offer much help. They tend to portray people as essentially passive recipients of the world view introjected into them. As Huntington (1995) points out, to characterize people as mere products of their language community's forces of social construction reduces activities of liberation ". . . to a form of stoic awareness" (p. 43). When culture is destiny, oppressed people have no choice but to wait for a change in historical circumstances. This emphasis on passivity undercuts the interest in emancipation that emerges in many adults. That is, characterizing adults as passive products challenges the very idea that people might choose to develop critically self-reflective capacities on purpose, in order to further emancipate themselves from oppressive forms of socialization.
Many of those involved in the fights against oppression are rightly uneasy about the underlying passivity in some poststructuralist accounts of political consciousness. For instance, Huntington (1995) argues that even though the feminist therapist Kristeva postulates that a postconventional subject can have access to a decentered perspective, because Kristeva fails to develop a theory of critical consciousness to explain the transition to this new mental perspective, her subject remains essentially passive. Huntington's point is that "Semiotic disruption itself, without mediation by a subject deliberately aspiring to a critical self- and world-relation, yields no post-conventional identity" (p. 45). ("Postconventional consciousness" refers to the stage of cognitive, moral development that emerges when we transcend conventional ethnocentric capacities. It is this capacity to adopt a decentered universal perspective that makes reflective dialogue and self-criticism possible. This is much like the ego's self-critical, pilot function in PBSP®, when a client develops the ability to look back and judge her own history during a struc-ture.) Huntington is arguing that Kristeva needs to develop an account of personal transcendence that will show how postconventional consciousness can emerge from a sense of
. . . critical awakening as opposed to being tied necessarily into the existing symbolic (47). . . . [She needs] a normative ideal of autonomy that is neither stoic (acquiescent before oppressive signifying practices) nor transcendent (pre-linguistic) (pp. 43-44).
It seems to me that the emphasis on passivity found in the philosophy of mind of some postmodernists, directly conflicts with the practice of PBSP®. As Pesso (1995) says,
Energy, action, interaction, and meaning has always been at the core. . . . but I hate the idea that the client does not know what is going on and is only being lead through the unconscious. . . . . We are fashioned by two forces, genetics and culture, and we are the interplay of these two forces. . . . the most exciting part is when we understand that mechanism we can participate in who we are and who we can become.
[Diane Boyden Pesso adds:] Clients are in charge. Even in the early days with emotional improvisation we always had the client call a halt and discuss it when something is not going right.
Thus, in so far as the symbolic interactions that take place in a structure strengthen the rational "pilot" function of the self, successful PBSP® therapy supports a "normative sense of critical autonomy." In this way, the PBSP® work is a direct concrete practical refutation of the postmodern skepticism about the emancipatory potential of human reason. The point is to realize that reason is not synonymous with abstract logic alone, but makes use of bodily experiences, critical self-reflection on those experiences, and critical dialogue with all those with whom we have interactions.
Even though some varieties of postmodern philosophy are overly cavalier about critical reflection's emancipatory potential, we should not in our own turn casually dismiss all the postmodern criticisms of Enlightenment errors. For one thing, they are right to emphasize the intersubjective (social) nature of even personal emancipation. As PBSP® work so clearly demonstrates, emancipatory work takes place in groups, and is achieved through symbolic social interactions which are controlled by the pilot. In addition, as Walzer's concern for tribal integrity shows, many post-modernists are genuinely involved in the struggle to make moral sense of our fragmented world. Their insights need to be taken into account if we are to develop adequate options that can guide us into the future. The current dilemma facing us is nicely summarized in Susan Bordo's (1992) review of Flax's (1990) text, Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West.
My divided reaction to Flax's "postmodern" hesitation to present her book as (at least in part) an argument is exemplary, perhaps, of the love-hate relationship which many of us who are trying to develop insights and perspectives out of marginalized experience have with the postmodern fragmentation of knowledge (p. 163).
Bordo is pointing out that even though they give brilliant criticisms of the way oppression can be hidden in standardized institutional structures, postmodern writers are very hesitant to draw any universal conclusions, least they too fall prey to over generalizations that may inadvertently contribute to oppression. It appears that an applied postmodern philosophy suitable for a world of value pluralism, needs to discover some way to help people become what Lugones (1987) refers to as "world-travellers" (p. 4). Lugones argues that although much lip service is given to multiculturalism and diversity, few people actually strive to be world-travelers, that is, people who not only appreciate what is foreign but also strive to nurture those places where different worlds can meet (also see Bordo, 1991, p. 166). Such a person would be willing to accept both the fact that others may have their own complete world view and the idea that the best way to show respect for another's humanity is to try and see the world from the other's perspective without having a prior agenda to make the other behave differently.
To achieve such a perspective, however, people have to be more than cultural-linguistic products who merely mirror the conventional order within which they are embedded. They also need a capacity to adopt a postconventional, universal perspective that allows them to appreciate those who are different. From such a vantage point, they may be able to resist forms of oppression, as well as the inclination to oppress, without feeling that in doing so they have abandoned commitment to their own heritage. Although this sounds a bit utopian, PBSP® work shows that this kind of advanced consciousness is not a mere fantasy. Successful PBSP® therapists have to be world travelers. When asked about this idea, Pesso (1995) said he thinks it is the natural developmental direction of mankind.
It is inevitable. If people do PBSP® work, then they will have to move, because nature is moving in the direction of universal consciousness anyway. I think we are furthering nature in this work, that is, we are helping to give birth to the true nature of people. People are going to be universal and inclusive in this way if they move.
Take the term postconventional consciousness. Is that just a cultural invention or is it just another stage of evolution? I think it is a stage in the blossoming of mankind. It is inevitable. We are just midwives in the work we are doing to see to it that the proper base is given. We are asking what makes the good life, what are the tasks needed to promote the good life, and if we follow what human nature seems to demand that we do in order to produce the sequence: pleasure, satisfaction, meaning, and connectedness, then we will end up with this universal consciousness. It seems to me that it should be the natural outcome, not because I decide it should be, but because that is the way of it, and we are just helping the way along.
Can A Universal Philosophy Respect Differences?
One might wonder, is the capacity to be a world-traveller merely the result of isolated personal achievement while working with an individual therapist, or is there a universalist philosophical perspective that could in principle be adopted by everyone, because it is compatible both with the human need to favor one's own tribe and the willingness to embrace diversity as a necessary and welcome expression of humanity in general? Habermas (1993) argues that the best way to approach these issues is to reconstruct Kantian concepts so as to get ". . . beyond the sterile opposition between abstract universalism and a self-contradictory relativism [so as] . . . to defend the primacy of the just (in the deontological sense) over the good" (p. vii). The point of such a postmodern universal philosophy should be to show how it is possible to ". . . create some legitimate commonality among different forms of life, with `legitimate' here carrying the sense of reciprocity and mutual respect" (cited in White, 1988, p. 154).
Because a sense of commonality between all people will have to be based on fairly abstract considerations, it will not be easy to apply such universalist conceptions in a world filled with conventional ethnocentrism and conflicting values. Thus, Habermas (1993) argues that any complete theory will need "principles of appropriateness" to help people determine when and how universal norms ought to be applied in particular situations (p. 37). These principles are needed because especially vexing problems always surface at the level of application. That is, conventionally minded people are generally confused about the difference between the concrete `historical origins' of norms and the logic of those `reconstructed justifications' which are designed to show that some norms can and ought to have universal standing. The two endeavors are related, but they are not the same activity. Justification discourse is always after the fact and can be very abstract, while application discourse must always be particularly sensitive to concrete local differences. People who focus exclusively on the conventional level, think that because a norm that deserves universal respect is honored "here," it must always be applied as "we" apply it "here". This kind of confusion often leads to the kind of local oppression in the name of a universal value that rightfully worries the post-modern critics. (To see how principles or appropriateness work in practice, Habermas recommends Klaus Gunther's The Sense of Appropriateness: Application Discourses in Morality and Law.)
To construct a sound philosophy, then, we will have to distinguish between the justification of universal norms and the separate task of developing principles of appropriateness that can guide their application in ways that show hermeneutic sensitivity to and respect for local differences. As Pesso (1995) says, we must not confuse the ". . . details with the underlying norms. . . . We want to be universal, but with the notion that life is still becoming. So, there is no such thing as a final narrow absolute that will structure the details in one specific way. Basic needs are an absolute that are open to diversity with regard to the details" [of implementation]. That is, if we fail to be sensitive to the details found in local circumstances, then we will be vulnerable to those kinds of errors in judgment that feed mankind's willingness to oppress those who are different.
The Standard Man Problem
This kind of common error in judgment is sometimes referred to in feminist philosophy (Narayan, 1992) as the "standard man problem." The concept draws attention to those occasions "when some group assumes without reflection that its story, with all its details, can accurately serve as a standard for judging everyone's experience just because historically the story has always worked well for the local group." Critics may be right, then, when they complain that too often the law in Western culture has been infected with the myopic point of view of a privileged class of wealthy, aristocratic people who have assumed that their own outlook is a universal standard that would be chosen by everyone else, no matter how different the others might be. Because people are naturally biased by their own background experience, whether it be male, female, black, white, old, young, and so forth, we can expect even the most well meaning of practical interventions by a privileged powerful group to be tainted by the special history of that group. Pesso (1995) also worries about this kind of standard man problem. He says,
We need new images for mankind, and men and women. The traditional approach leads into stereotypical regressive modes where the women are subjected by men and confined to the household, etc. It has preconceived notions of what a woman needs and wants, a notion made by men, tied to the ancient idea that man is the descender of the universe and the woman is the handmaiden for the man's goals, and no one has asked the woman what she wants. We need to get this standard approach out of the picture.
For a clear example of how the "standard man (person) problem" can arise even among people who are united by a desire to help someone, lets consider the case of an extraordinary woman who is so different that it would be unjust to treat her according to standards of application designed for an average person. In her case, principles of appropriateness were desperately needed but sadly lacking for much of her life. Temple Grandin is a highly functioning autistic woman who has earned a Ph.D. in animal science, is a professor at a major Western university, has published hundreds of articles and several books, and is a highly successful business woman who designs facilities for handling livestock. These accomplishments are extraordinary, since autism generally creates social barriers that make it almost impossible for the autistic to function in standard social settings.
Autism is now considered to be primarily a genetic disability that is usually quite apparent by the age of three, when autistic children begin to show a fierce heightening of sensations. Because ordinary stimulation can be experienced with excruciating intensity, the autistic can't stand normal human interactions. Thus, although Ms. Grandin reports that she longed to be hugged when she was a child, she also found she was terrified of such contact. Her heightened sensations made a simple hug feel overwhelming (Sacks, 1995, p. 263). Because they can't stand such stimulation, the autistic often flee from emotional contact with those who love them. In PBSP® terms, they can not find an appropriate "countershape" in normal social environments that can allow them to satisfy their universal human needs for affection. As Diane Boyden Pesso (1995) points out,
It is extremely important to have responsible people around children when they are growing up. But these people need to be sensitive to the needs being expressed by the child and be careful observers of what is the best way to provide satisfaction for the child. If a choice we make does not satisfy, then something is wrong. Someone might say it is important for my child to be hugged, and then they hug the child when she doesn't want it. We need to proceed with careful observation. It is not about rules that say "this is the way to proceed in each situation," it is much more easy to go with the clues from the child, which you get from how they breath, how they look, how they move, their behavior, etc.
Of course, with autistic children the clues may be so impossible for the average parent to decipher that parents may be completely stymied, leading to a massive failure to accommodate in a way that the child needs. When this happens the autistic child's genetic disability will be reinforced by inadequate environmental accommodation. Then the autistic child will fail to experience those prerequisite bodily interactions that are so essential for teaching normal children around the world how to "understand" complex human emotions.
For instance, if you show very young children a picture of a face that is looking with interest at some object, all normal children will easily pick out which object the face is interested in. On the other hand, autistic children find it difficult to identify the appropriate object. Because they have no idea how to read or interpret normal signs of human emotion, autistic children are easily deceived and often perplexed in social situations that require shared emotional understanding. All of them suffer from a fundamental developmental disturbance. [They] . . . have no true concept of, or feeling for, other minds, or even their own; . . . `high-functioning' autistic individuals . . . with Asperger's syndrome can tell us of their experiences, their inner feelings and states, whereas [for] those with classical autism . . . there is no window, and we can only infer (Sacks, 1995, pp. 246-247.)
Because Grandin has Asperger's syndrome, she is able to give us some fascinating glimpses into her world that teach a fundamental lesson about how hard it is to reach mutual understanding when there is a deficit in the ability to share bodily experiences. She says (1995) that she identifies most with two of the characters on the Star Trek science fiction shows, the Vulcan, Mr. Spock and the android. Mr. Data. They are pure intellect, and like her, they have to try to understand human emotions from the outside (pp. 132-133). Grandin says,
Much of the time, I feel like an anthropologist on Mars (Sacks, 1993, p. 259).As a child, I was like an animal that had no instincts to guide me; I just had to learn by trial and error. I was always observing, trying to work out the best way to behave, but I never fit in. I had to think about every social interaction. When other students swooned over the Beatles, I called their reaction an ISP--interesting sociological phenomenon. I was a scientist trying to figure out the ways of the natives. I wanted to participate, but I did not know how (p. 132).
Notice how she uses "anthropologist on Mars" as a metaphor to try to help us understand what it "means" to be autistic. Anthropologists study other cultures with whom they often have very little shared experience. Thus, while observing from the outside they try to interpret what is happening on the inside. This often leads them to misinterpret some of the metaphors of the tribe, but it is also remarkable how often they succeed in understanding what is going on. Before we proceed with Temple Grandin's fascinating story, it will be very useful at this point to pause and consider the implications of an interesting theory about the importance of body based metaphors to rational understanding. According to Mark Johnson and George Lakoof (1980), the human imagination is not given enough credit for its role in structuring the content of rational discourse by metaphorically extending bodily based systems of meaning to the more abstract linguistic contexts.
Body Based Metaphors in the Mind
A metaphor is a "language construction that carries meaning from one context to another." For instance, consider the following metaphorical usage that conveys a perspective found in Ancient Greece: "Women are like sheep." What meaning is being transferred from the experiential domain of "sheep" to help us understand the status of women in Athens? People who have experience with sheep know that sheep can not take care of themselves, they need to be tended and cared for by a shepherd. With a good shepherd the sheep will be happy. The metaphor "are like sheep" helps us understand how woman were supposed to be treated given the background culture of Ancient Athens. Notice how a different meaning is conveyed if we switch metaphors and say "Woman are like slaves." Slaves are people who should be free to govern themselves but are owned by a master who uses them for his own purposes. Even if the Master is good to them, they will not be happy once they realize that they are oppressed. The metaphorical constructions we use in our system of symbols will determine what kind of meanings we are prepared to entertain when we evaluate events in the world.
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) use metaphor in a broader sense to refer to the imaginations ability to extend the meaning found in one domain of experience over to other domains of experience. They argue that socially significant perceptions (if not all perceptions) are laden with content substantially determined by background metaphorical systems that originate in our prelinguistic or nonpropositional bodily experiences. Because they are based on the basic bodily experiences that we begin to have as babies, these metaphorical extensions of meaning function on both the preconscious and conscious levels to structure our way of giving meaning to the world. Obviously both reality and the body exist, and
So does the unconscious system of metaphors that we use without awareness to comprehend reality. What metaphor does is limit what we notice, highlight what we do see, and provide part of the inferential structure that we reason with. Because of the pervasiveness of metaphor in thought, we cannot always stick to discussions of reality in purely literal terms (Lakoff, 1991, p. 26).
We also know that such metaphorical models, . . . inevitably hide important aspects of any domain and lock us in to certain ways of comprehending our experience. . . . Moreover, it appears that philosophical theories, over the centuries, have tended to be consciously-constructed versions of unconscious metaphorical models (Lakoff, 1992, pp. 3-5).
Johnson (1987) argues that our imagination automatically extends body based structures of meaning to help us create those more abstract interpretations of experience that make up our conceptual framework. On the individual level we learn to do this so automatically, and from such an early age onward, that we are seldom ever aware of how much bodily based metaphorical constructions are used to organize our more abstract beliefs.
Understanding via metaphorical projection from the concrete to the abstract makes use of physical experience in two ways. First, our bodily movements and interactions in various physical domains of experience are structured . . . and that structure can be projected by metaphor onto abstract domains. Second, metaphorical understanding is not merely a matter of arbitrary fanciful projection from anything to anything with no constraints. Concrete bodily experience not only constrains the "input" to the metaphorical projections but also the nature of the projections themselves, that is, the kinds of mappings that can occur across domains (Johnson, 1987, p. xv).
Our understanding of events, then, is tied to our imaginations ability to take the body's experiences and extend them to new domains of understanding via metaphorical extension. Is there a universal, bodily based foundation for at least some of our metaphorical extensions or are the belief systems found in diverse cultures always built on incommensurable structures as some postmodernists allege. Since everyone in the world has to learn to accommodate gravity, experience verticality (up and down), maintain balance while standing up, etc.. it is not unreasonable to expect that these common bodily experiences will lead to "embodied image schemata" (Johnson, 1987, Chp. 2) of verticality that will help people everywhere make similar sense of the world on a prelinguistic level. Then, by making use of these "embodied images" and metaphorically extending them, people everywhere should come up with some similar abstract ideas like: "More is up and less is down." If our body did not experience the world in this way, we would not be able to convey meaning with the following metaphorical usages: "Prices keep going up; The number of books published each year keeps rising; His gross earnings fell; Turn down the heat. [These] ". . . and many other symbolic constructions, suggest that we understand MORE (increase) as being oriented UP (involving the verticality schema)" (Johnson, 1987, p. xv). Traditionally the body had been ignored by the developing human sciences because they assumed talk of the body would
. . . introduce subjective elements alleged to be irrelevant to the objective nature of meaning. The body has been ignored because reason has been thought to be abstract and transcendent, that is, not tied to any of the bodily aspects of human understanding. The body has been ignored because it seems to have no role in our reasoning about abstract subject matters (Johnson, 1987, p. xiv).
As in PBSP® theory, Johnson argues in his book, The Body in the Mind, that to accurately portray what is going on, we must put the body back into our accounts of mind and human reason. Pesso (1995) responded to this theory with enthusiasm. He said:
Exactly, the mind is sitting on top of the biological body. Absolutely. I have been teaching lately that there are three aspects to the body in therapy. [First] There is the client's "body in the mind" tied to the client's memories. And then, [Second] the therapist has to latch on to the client's "body in the mind" and create an equivalent picture "in his own mind" in order to track the process. And then, [Third] there is the experience that is going on "in the room," where we are trying to create "another equivalent picture." So, were the therapy takes place is not only in the body of the clients as they are moving with the other bodies [of the accommodators] in reality. They are also taking that raw material and putting it in the "body in the mind" of the client, and out of that they are getting the new experience. So it is not just the experience in the room that is important. It [the room] is the raw material to make the experience in this other internal video. The "body in the mind," that is where imagination and play come from. We need the "body in reality" before we can have the image of the "body in the mind," where we then can manipulate it for creative purposes. So, I think of PBSP® as a movement form, and as a therapy form, that is facilitating that kind of creative process, and then too, the more the therapist understands that there is a "body in the mind," the more therapy will be facilitated.
Notice the implication of Johnson's, Lakoof's, and PBSP®'s theories. If metaphorical extensions of bodily experience underlie our more abstract theories, then to fully understand one another's story we have to share at least some bodily experiences or the metaphors in the story will not make sense to us. That is, the "sheep" metaphor will work best with someone who has physically experienced sheep, and the "slave" metaphor will be most meaningful to someone who has physically experienced the nature of that kind of oppression. Those who have never been enslaved or witnessed this form of oppression might find the metaphor to be "unenlightening."*
To summarize: if the construction of our most common abstractions depends upon basic bodily experiences, then as Johnson (1987) says, we can not ignore the fact that "We are not just rational animals, we are rational animals" (p. xix). Bodily experience is the background that determines which basic metaphors are available to reason when imagination tries to extend old meanings to help us interpret new experiences. All of our more abstract conceptions will depend on our ability to carry meaning upward from the bodily based, prelinguistic experiences that governed our first interpretations of the world. The linguistic symbols we are capable of using to interpret experiences will be partly constrained, then, by what our bodies have experienced and are capable of experiencing. PBSP® work helps us understand viscerally why it is so important for people to share real bodily experiences even on the symbolic level. It is much easier to understand concepts, like how to be a good parent, when you have physically experienced the bodily prerequisites for the concepts, that is, when you had a good enough parent yourself or have been hugged by an "ideal" parent in a structure. Once this happens, new opportunities for understanding emerge. To an extent then, the kinds of metaphorical extensions we can make are partly constrained by the nature of the human body. This requires us to expand our notion of the empirical. As Johnson (1987) says,
`Experience,' then, is to be understood in a very rich, broad sense as including basic perceptual, motor-program, emotional, historical, social, and linguistic dimensions. I am rejecting the classical empiricist notion of experience as reducible to passively received sense impressions, which are combined to form atomic experiences. By contrast, experience involves everything that makes us human--our bodily, social, linguistic, and intellectual being, combined in complex interactions that make up our understanding of our world (p. xvi)
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*Notice how the concept "unenlightening" uses our common bodily experience of light to metaphorically convey meaning about what it means to "see" and thus understand, as opposed to "being in the dark" with regard to understanding. But is a language construction that is so common really a metaphor? What is and is not a metaphor can be controversial. D. E. Cooper (1986) claims in his book on metaphors that conventional constructions such as some of those discussed by Johnson and Lakoof are not metaphors at all. It does not matter here how this debate is resolved, since it does not affect the point at issue.
In so far as people around the world have certain fundamental bodily experiences in common, we should expect some shared biologically based meanings to appear. For instance, it does not matter where people are raised, they have to learn to respond to gravity, to the feel of up and down, back and forth, day (light) and night (dark), birth and death, dry and wet, pleasure and pain, etc. In PBSP® terms, everyone has basic needs on the basis of which they experience the world, including things like nurture vs hunger, support vs falling, protection vs exposure, social acceptance vs rejection, social boundaries or limits vs feelings of omnipotence, being acknowledged vs ignored, a social place in which to live vs ostracism, etc.. Around the world languages everywhere will have to address the kinds of issues that come with these and other basic bodily experiences. It is not an accident, then, if all symbol systems use "light" as a metaphor to explain understanding and "darkness" as a metaphor for inability to understand, that is, to be in the dark. Everywhere, up means more, down means less, etc. Social emotions that have to do with love, hate, membership, kinship, etc, are discussed everywhere, and it is not unreasonable to expect considerable overlap in understanding along with, of course, considerable differences at the more abstract levels.
Of course, as we mature it becomes increasingly difficult to make universal comparisons between people. Abe Edel remarked at a social and political philosophy conference in the late 70's that he once asked the developmental psychologist Erick Erickson if he knew how to design an environment that could make everyone happy. Erickson said no, he didn't know how. But, he then added that he could design an environment that would make babies happy. From a developmental, constructivist perspective this makes complete sense. The older we get the more diverse we become, as culture teaches us to have diverse interpretations of biological needs, as we develop new culturally based needs and wants, and as we participate in our own development by choosing experiences unique to our own situation. When beliefs and cultural overlays get added on to natural responses, interpretations can get complicated. Diane Boyden Pesso said:
When we asked different age groups to respond to crying by just doing whatever comes up in a direct emotional response, we found that in the young children you get spontaneous motion. They go forward and try to help. With teenagers, older kids, some just sat back. They gave reasons like it wouldn't do any good, etc. They are beginning to ignore the body and go with ideas they make up, and [so they] stop responding naturally.
Temple Grandin's Mechanical Ideal Mother
Lets return now to Temple Grandin's story to see how she dealt with her difficulties in finding adequate accommodation. It will be as hard for normal people to understand Temple Grandin as it is for her to understand normal people. Is there anything that can be done to help us in our attempts at mutual understanding? For her part, Ms. Grandin has made remarkable progress. She says (1995, p. 137) that even though she experiences the complexities of the emotional world from the outside, she has accumulated a vast amount of observational data which she stores in her memory like video tape recordings of standard human interactions. When she confronts new situations, she simply runs an appropriate tape in her head then imitates the behavior of the people on her mental tape. But this approach can only take her so far, it can not teach her how to feel empathy for the emotional world of her fellow humans. Adequate instruction in how to feel empathy would require some bodily interactions approximating the kind of accommodation found in a PBSP® structure experience. There are two aspects to it. We can learn about empathy both by doing our own structure work and by witnessing other structures. Pesso says (1995)
. . . the more we become our true self, the more we are going to naturally expand and have new ideas and new ways to become. New awareness and new perspectives are the result of the soul expanding, and since structures help expand the soul, then expanding the creative process is a natural outcome of being accommodated, so you get to be who you are. With this new awareness greater empathy is possible.
[Then Diane Boyden Pesso added:] Watching others work [in a structure] also triggers much of a person's capacity for empathy. As you begin to understand something you can feel more about it. You see the other person's needs, and you want them to be satisfied. You want it to come to a happy ending, and you are living it along with them to some extent, as though you too are in that place. So, with all the new information and new understanding of their needs, it is natural to feel greater empathy for someone after you see them in structure.
In fact, when Grandin did discover a kind of PBSP® way to satisfy her need to be hugged, she was pleased to find that it gave her great insight into the alien world of normal human emotion. She was lead to her discovery by way of her genius for understanding animals. While watching cattle get dehorned and branded, she was struck by how calm they often became when they were squeezed in the machine that was designed to hold them steady. She points out that cows are very much like her, easily excited by sudden or intense stimuli, and thus rarely calm when in stressful environments. It was easy for her to feel empathy for cows, since with her heightened sensitivity, she too was very rarely calm. She felt on an intuitive level that the squeeze machine would give her satisfaction. With her engineering mentality, she quickly built a similar machine for herself and discovered that it had the desired calming effect. She was even more pleased to find that while in the machine, she had body experiences that provided a foundation for new metaphorical extensions which helped her begin to understand abstract ethical concepts that are fully available to us only after we have experienced appropriate foundational bodily interactions. That is, she came to conclusions that are compatible with the underlying principles of PBSP®. She says (1995),
To have feelings of gentleness, one must experience gentle bodily comfort. As my nervous system learned to tolerate the soothing pressure from my squeeze machine, I discovered that the comfortjng feeling made me a kinder and gentler person. It was difficult for me to understand the idea of kindness until I had been soothed myself. It wasn't until after I had used the modified squeeze machine that I learned how to pet our cat gently. He used to run away from me because I held him too tightly. Many autistic children hold pets too tightly, and they have a disproportionate sense of how to approach other people or be approached. After I experienced the soothing feeling of being held, I was able to transfer that good feeling to the cat. As I became gentler, the cat began to stay with me, and this helped me understand the ideas of reciprocity and gentleness (142-156).
The meaning of abstract ideas like "reciprocity" and "gentleness" are based on bodily experiences. Until she experienced gentle touching she could not understand the command to be gentle with the cat while petting it. And until she could be gentle, she would have no opportunity to learn about reciprocity from the cat (i.e., if you will pet me gently, then I will reciprocate by staying with you). In PBSP® terms, it is as though Grandin had discovered a physical metaphor for a good enough mother, if not an ideal one. What she could not get from real people, she could get in mechanical form from her ideal squeezer. Reading her account reminds me of a structure I once witnessed. A woman who had been sexually abused as a child fled into the Catholic church for sanctuary and became a Nun. There she was sexually abused by Priests, and eventually she came for PBSP® therapy, even though by then she was certain that there was no place on Earth where she could be safe. Once she had reached the point of choosing ideal parents, she arranged them to her satisfaction and cuddled into their arms. After several moments filled with deep contented sighs she suddenly exclaimed: "Oh my God, I never knew it could feel like this." Until the body is given the opportunity to have the experience, it is difficult for the mind to understand the qualitative idea of nurturing love. Temple Grandin (1995) reports,
From the time I started using my squeeze machine, I understood that the feeling it gave me was one that I needed to cultivate toward other people. It was clear that the pleasurable feelings were those associated with love for other people. I built a machine that would apply the soothing, comforting contact that I craved as well as the physical affection I couldn't tolerate when I was young. I would have been as hard and as unfeeling as a rock if I had not built my squeeze machine and followed through with its use. The relaxing feeling of being held washes negative thoughts away. I believe that the brain needs to receive comforting sensory input. Gentle touching teaches kindness (pp. 82-83).
How strange it seems to us "standard people" to think that someone would have to learn the biological basis for gentle love from a machine rather than from Mom. But as Diane Boyden Pesso pointed out above, you have to observe the baby, and follow her clues to find out how to satisfy the needs. The message seems fairly clear. Those who are radically different from the norm can not be expected to automatically learn about and understand even universal values in the standard ways that are suitable for the average person. To blindly assume that everyone must be satisfied or learn just like "we" do, is to fall prey to the standard person problem and confuse justification of the universal with the application or implementation of it in a specific context. It is to ignore the complexity of embodied human experience by focusing only on the abstract level of a value's universalizability. When we stay on this excessively intellectual level, we begin to think we can ignore the task of formulating the principles of appropriateness needed to bring the universal value to life in local circumstances. If everyone is to understand the qualitative dimension of a universal principle, we must find a way to give everyone an appropriate ideal squeeze suitably designed for their local circumstances.
If we only talk to others who are just like us when we apply universal values, we will be inclined to reject or misinterpret application procedures developed by people who are situated in the world in a different manner. This is, of course, what happened to Grandin. When word of her machine got out, psychiatrists viewed it as a form of regression and told her mother that use of the machine would impede any chance Grandin had for emotional development. Her mother was distressed by this advice and wanted her daughter to stop, thus, Ms. Grandin also developed mixed feelings about using the machine. Luckily, however, she was a very independent young woman with a well developed pilot. She persevered in using the machine and even improved upon its design. She reports (1995) that although she still has trouble understanding those motivated primarily by complex emotion, her insights into the human situation have continued to develop in terms of the level of empathy she is capable of feeling.
. . . my actions are guided by intellect. This has caused friction between me and some family members when I have failed to read subtle emotional cues. . . . Motivated by love, my mother worked with me and kept me out of institutions. Yet sometimes she feels that I don't love her. She is a person for whom emotional relationships are more important than intellect and logic. It pains her that I kicked like a wild animal when I was a baby and that I had to use the squeeze machine to get the feeling of love and kindness. The irony is that if I had given up the machine [as her mother and therapeutic experts wanted], I would have been a cold, hard rock. Without the machine, I would have had no kind feelings toward her. I had to feel physical comfort in order to feel love. Unfortunately, it is difficult for my mother and other highly emotional people to understand that people with autism think differently. For her, it is like dealing with somebody from another planet. I relate better to scientists and engineers, who are less motivated by emotion (pp. 90-91).
The importance of shared background for shared human understanding can not be overestimated. But, it is important to remain sensitive to the fact that diversity in human experience appears to be as normal as similarity. Thus, if we are going to be sensitive to other people, we can not automatically assume that they share our background experiences or that our personal perspective on how to apply shared values ought to serve equally well as a standard for them. It may be true that one cultural group's perspective has advantages over others, but that has to be proven, it can not be assumed. At the very least, then, we should pay close attention to the metaphorical expressions that people use in their attempts to interpret the world. All metaphors deserve an empathic hearing. They are all particular manifestations of the universal human enterprise of constructing meaning while seeking accommodation for the same human needs. If we fail to be world travelers who feel empathy for others and work to maintain places where differences can meet, we will be prone to the standard person problem, misrepresent the other's interpretation of the world, and fail to accurately identify the kinds of interactions that will be needed to help them satisfy universal needs. One of the strengths of PBSP® is that it shows us via visceral experiences of our own, that it is possible to work in an empathic and respectful manner with the metaphorical system of others, even when their system is very different from our own. PBSP® gives us experiences that can make us say: "Oh my God, I didn't know such empathy was possible."
A Philosophical Theory With PBSP® Insights
As a discipline, then, contemporary philosophy has become so concerned about its own background presuppositions that it has adopted critical self-reflection as the dominant norm for the field. This means philosophers feel an obligation to "critically evaluate their background assumptions at the same time that they use them to analyze and judge all the other backgrounds that support belief systems or define and give meaning to human experience." It seems paradoxical, however, to use one's background to evaluate one's own background. As post-modernists point out, existing structures "always already" (McCarthy, 1984, p. xxvi) presuppose a "taken-for-granted background" that reflects the cultural, sexual, racial, health, etc. stereotypes of whatever privileged group has historically controlled the evolution of institutional structures. No matter how well intentioned, then, a privileged group with power is not properly situated to figure out substantive strategies of implementation that are sure to respect all legitimate differences between diverse people. But if there are no privileged perspectives from which to judge, how can we get started without being unfair to someone?
The postmodernist, MacIntyre (1981), argues that the only thing that seems truly universal is that everyone has a story, other than that, there is only diversity. As far as a universal definition for mankind, then, he asserts that the best we can do is say that a human is ". . . essentially a story-telling animal" (p. 201). Of course, what is told is more than just a story, since most of us believe that what we say about the world is true in some fundamental sense. But, setting aside the issues of biological needs and truth for the moment, is there anything that all the stories themselves might have in common? Well, they all use a symbolic medium to convey meaning to other people. In fact, the use of language is so important to human experience that we could just as easily say that a human is "essentially an animal that conveys meaning with the abstract symbols of a language, be it verbal or bodily." Pesso (1995) says that he is impressed by the fact that the ability to use language seems to have genetic roots, and it is absurd to him to think that everything could be merely a cultural manifestation. He says, "An MIT professor who is a protege of Chomsky is making a very good case for the fact that there is an underlying universal basis for all languages. There is also an underlying meaning in human behavior in the grammar of action and human expression."
People everywhere know how to use and manipulate the symbols of their language. These language skills will naturally develop in normal environments, but how creative can we be in the use of symbols? That is, when we are using language to convey meaning about the world: "Are there natural constraints on the stories that we can tell?" or "Can we say anything we like and still be taken seriously by those who hear us?" In the first place, as we have seen above, in so far as meaning is based on metaphorical extensions of what our bodies are capable of experiencing, there may be natural limits tied to the nature of our bodies. In the second place, the symbols we use to communicate are not personal, they are public. Our use of symbols will always be constrained by history, since there is always a language community that passes the symbols down from generation to generation. People are born into a socially constructed system of language which determines how they will learn to talk about the world. So there are also historical cultural constraints on any particular stories. But, are there any other constraints that can also serve as universal guiding norms for regulating the construction of just institutions?
For centuries philosophers have asked: "Are the stories expressed in languages all culturally arbitrary or are there some universal norms of religion, science, or ethics behind at least some of the interpretations that language communities give to human experience? Habermas (1993) argues that since a primary function of symbol systems is to communicate with others, then there has to be public norms underlying the discursive use of symbolic systems. To become a language user, people around the world will have to adopt the basic norms that govern the use of language in general. Styles may vary, but the form and function of communication through language is the same. There are underlying norms of honest communication that lead to common human expectations everywhere. That is, everyone knows that one way to show respect for people is to be honest when communicating with them. Consistent honest use of language is what we would expect from a world traveler who wants to maintain a place where differences can meet.
Habermas has based his ethical philosophy on the intersubjective norms needed for honest, respectful communication between all people, no matter how different they may be. He argues that the kinds of norms underlying human expectations about honest communication can serve as an adequate universal foundation for a theory of justice that ought to guide interactions between all people, even those who are different. But, if different groups are to ". . . coexist and interact on equal terms within the same political community, the majority culture must give up its historical prerogative to define the official terms of that generalized political culture, which is to be shared by all citizens" (Habermas, 1995, p. 33). He agrees that the majority's local cultural conception of the good life is not and can never be universal in the same way that the norms of honest communication are. Much of the content of local cultural conceptions of the good develop in response to unique local contingencies. However, since the need to be acknowledged during communication is a universal need, Habermas believes that a theory of justice which is based on the norms of honest human discourse can help us define a set of moral constraints that are universal, in the sense that, they would be agreeable to all people capable of participating in practical communicative discourse. These norms, when applied with hermeneutic sensitivity and adequate principles of appropriateness, ought to serve as universal moral boundaries to regulate all local choices of the good life.
Habermas is, of course, working in the Kantian tradition. In the face of both obvious real differences and the need for universal norms that can help us communicate across these differences, a reconstructed Kantian moral theory offers postconventional advantages that appeal to Habermas. As O'Neill (1989) reminds us, Kant began by sending out a call for "fellow workers" (p. 16) to help him with the epistemological task of grounding knowledge claims. "Fellow workers" should mean all people who come together to reason, even though they are all already embedded in particular different ways of life. This rich social metaphor (which is often ignored by Kant's critics) reminds us that to adequately critique the foundations for knowledge or social ethics, fellow workers with all of their differences, must engage in an ongoing critical, self-reflective, practical dialogue aimed at constructing out of the materials of their different histories as good an account of mutual moral understanding as they can. Habermas (1993) argues that Kant's emphasis has historically been too monological in its focus. The concept of pure reason tended to lead people astray by diverting their attention away from the need for "real" discourse between the people who are affected by decisions. Monological approaches are bound to lead to "standard man" errors in judgment, since the corrective of public discourse between all affected is missing. In PBSP® terms, the goal should always be to empower the pilot so that people can actually participate in the dialogues that lead to the decisions that affect their life. Habermas' entire emphasis, then, is on the intersubjective constructivist nature of both self identity and moral autonomy. He wants choice to be constrained by honest real dialogue between the real people who will be affected by any decisions.
Abstract universal principles are, then, best conceived of as metaphorical insights that emerge during cross cultural moral discourse between fellow workers about their respective moral metanarratives. It is a mistake, then, for critics of deontological universals to claim as Walzer (1994) does that advocates of the universal approach to justice mistakenly assume "Minimalism precedes maximalism; [as though] once we were thin but have grown thick" (p. 13). When people actually make this concrete historical mistake, it is usually because they lack theoretical understanding of the difference between the logic of a reconstructed justification for universal values and the historical origins of those values. People need to understand that although abstract universal standards have logical priority when judging local conditions, their priority is due to the logic of reconstructed justifications, not the fact abstractions are historically first on the scene. Understanding of universals is in fact second in terms of personal historical etiology. That is, everyone begins embedded in a heritage where they first learn to feel and talk and be someone, only later do they develop the ability to engage in abstract reconstructions designed to justify their sense of justice.
On the other hand, in so far as abstract metaphors can be traced back to the shared roots of bodily experience and the norms of honest language, universal values do have an early place in human history, and we can expect some mutual understanding between all people. Developing critical self-reflection and engaging in the kind of cross cultural dialogue that leads to a decentered world view are, then, natural responses to a pluralistic world. This approach to ethics allows us to honor our own heritage and at the same time show respect and empathy for the developmental track of those others who are different. We display this kind of respect every time we follow those universal norms that support honest dialogue with those who are different from us.
Feminist Philosophy and Real Dialogue
We should begin with people where we find them and strive for real honest dialogue now, not wait for ideal conditions. It is the dialogical activity itself that will generate the development of postconventional consciousness. I am not saying that the proper kind of dialogue will be easy. I think I see the right process at work in PBSP® encounters, but clearly in the larger political arena such ideal discourse is often discouraged rather than promoted. In fact, to get a clear idea of just how difficult it can be to foster honest dialogue between real people who are different, it is useful to look at the fascinating and instructive form of self-criticism taking place in feminist philosophy. Women of color have been pointing out for some time that many of the perceived interests of privileged white women are not universal and in fact may represent special needs of this group that conflict with the more basic needs of those women of color who are differently situated. They charge that the failure to recognize that different women speak with different voices has lead to a betrayal of women of color as well as those from less privileged socioeconomic classes.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony--broke ranks to form their own uncompromising movement for "woman suffrage," in the process abnegating their commitment to black freedom. In the postwar movement they helped to found, black women would be excluded for decades and black men would long be disdained. This moment of emancipation, its great promise of justice hedged in from the beginning by compromises and double deals, gave rise to chronic tensions in American politics between universalist aspirations and particularist claims (Stansell, 1992, p. 252).
Feminists from nonstandard backgrounds point out that when forms of oppression are sufficiently diverse, individual subjects can become so fragmented or internally divided by the contradictory differences that influence their social construction that they can feel set apart from other women. Such women become especially
aware of the displacement of their subjectivity across a multiplicity of discourses: feminist/lesbian, nationalist, racial, socioeconomic, historical, etc. The peculiarity of their displacement implies a multiplicity of positions from which they are driven to grasp or understand themselves and their relations with the real, . . . [they are] aware that these positions are often incompatible or contradictory, and others did not have access to the maze of discourses competing for their body and voice (Alarcon, 1990, p. 356).
In short, many women were raised not in a uniform, even if oppressive, community that provided them with a stable linear heritage, but in what Gloria Anzaldua (1987) calls "life in the borderlands" (p. 20), the space between cultures. Women in the borderlands are rightly suspicious of women who seem to understand only one position and yet claim to speak for all women. Recently, this suspicion has been acknowledged in the literature by white feminists, so discussions have taken on a different tone. While acknowledging that there is a new dialogue, Maria Lugones (1991) points out that there is also a deeper step that has yet to be taken.
Difference makes the kind of difference that makes inappropriate the theoretical division of labor between those of us who work on difference and those of us who don't.
White women used to simply and straightforwardly ignore difference. In their theorizing, they used to speak as if all women as women were the same. Now white women recognize the problem of difference. Whether they recognize difference is another matter. As white women are beginning to acknowledge the problem in their theorizing, it is interesting to see that the acknowledgment is a noninteractive one, or at least there is no clear emphasis on interactive acknowledgement (p. 38).
Lugones (1991) believes that privileged white feminists are well meaning and concerned about respecting differences, but she is concerned in return by the fact that their response to the criticisms leveled by women of color is too often to avoid real change by staying focused on the theoretical problem of difference. She argues that Lorraine Bethel's question "What Chou Mean We White Girl?" was actually a call for real dialogue [between fellow workers?], but many women treated Bethel's question simply as an interesting theoretical problem about how feminist theory ought to be adjusted so that it can better explain the phenomenon of difference (pp. 24-44). As a result, the necessary practical interactions on the substantive level that would have allowed mutual respect to develop never materialized. Discussions continued, but in a theoretical vein that failed to engage the lives of many women. The primary practical problem in a multicultural world, then, is to find ways to implement our universal ideal of empathic respect for differences. Perhaps the best way to promote postconventional consciousness is to insure that everyone has access to a place where honest dialogue across differences can occur.
Is honest respectful dialogue between diverse people possible in the real world, or is ethnic strife our only possibility? There have been many calls in the literature for greater communication across differences and for practical reforms like coalition politics, etc., each of which requires shared participation in decision making and dialogue between all people. The optimists assume everyone knows how to get the dialogue started, we only need people to be well-intentioned. On the other hand, the obvious conflicts around the globe make others profoundly pessimistic about the possibility of honest productive political dialogue, since politics seems to stiffen animosity rather than diminish it. Who is right, the optimists or pessimists?
The Promise Found in PBSP® Practice
If someone has never had the bodily experiences that can lead them to say: "Oh my God, I never new it could be like this", then it may be difficult for them to believe that people are capable of empathic, respectful dialogue across their differences. It may seem to them that the only appropriate move is to flee into particularism and advocate tribal separatism. I think these people would be more optimistic if they could experience the kinds of interactions that emerge between strangers when the principles of PBSP® govern. We need to be squeezed a few times in the right way to know what respectful dialogue is supposed to be about. PBSP® work combines all of the best universal ideals into a practical system that can teach us how to enter into the metaphorical system of others and learn to appreciate their differences. This kind of insight can be taught, and it can become the basis for a kind of moral education that will respect differences rather than crush them. There are, of course, also reasons to be pessimistic. As Pesso says:
The rise of fundamentalism, of the kind where there is a sense of knowledge of an absolute truth that is going to be imposed from the outside and that pays no attention to the spirit that is within, is truly scary. What you get is a kind of totalitarian brutal rigidity that, in the name of this "law", will kill what the human spirit can be. This and occultism are reactions to the fragmentation of the modern world.
But it does not have to be that way. Pesso says he thinks PBSP® can make a contribution by showing a better way to respond to fragmentation:
I watch community form so rapidly in this work, long lasting connections, care of another, even of the notion of a possibility sphere where there is the idea that we must leave room for all that a person is. It is also in the defining philosophy itself, the idea that it is all embracing and universal. My part in its development has been a very conscious attempt to make a livable world where every part of me and every part of everyone else can be included. There is something about ethnic cleansing that is so scary. If we define mankind as only those in our culture, then we have a right to kill. What we need is to move toward cosmic consciousness, and an increased pilothood that has [with in it] a sense of the divinity of all things.I see plenty of evidence, and it is growing more and more, that there is both an individual self and a social self, and that they are coming together. I see communities developing out of this work, so we should be included in any system that is set up to contribute to the building of communities. What we have to offer is quite good, and has a lot of history behind it. The techniques and the philosophy behind it will be part of future society.
[Diane Boyden Pesso adds]: You need services of all kinds in a community to help the nuclear family, so they will not be so isolated. And it would be nice if PBSP® stuff would also be available for those who want to work on problems coming out of their own history.
This is very important, because if physical and emotional needs are satisfied, then the destructive impulses will not be present. We know that deprivation causes pain, which then causes anger, which then causes people to look for whose fault is it, and then the killing starts. So we need to provide both physical satisfaction and emotional satisfaction, and PBSP® is the way to give emotional satisfaction. Therefore, we have the techniques for helping communities develop in healthy ways. That is why I have been so interested in trying to develop a community based on these ideas, but it is not easy to get the money for small magnet communities, or we could have explored these options in greater depth.
Habermas is surely right, when he says a postmodern ethics entails that policies should never be implemented if the people who must live under them find them unacceptable after engaging in honest dialogue. But how can we get people to engage in this kind of dialogue? The experience in feminist circles shows how difficult it will be even among those of good will. PBSP® is one of the few developments I have experienced in my life that gives me reason for optimism. It is possible to learn about another, and feel fundamental respect for their humanity, at the same time that you recognize how different they are from you.
The choice does not have to be dualistic, i.e., either particularism or an oppressive universalism. The biological and ethical norms found in PBSP®, do not oppress. They represent universals that liberate. They show respect for difference at the same time that they put boundaries or limits around permissible social interventions. PBSP® illustrates in a concrete way how growth of the autonomous self is in fact an intersubjective phenomenon, that relies on our shared understanding of the body's needs, and on our willingness to engage in honest dialogue that respects and accommodates the uniqueness of the other's soul. If we could find a way to institutionalize on a larger level what we can experience at the structure level, then the great gulf between universal values and practical differences could be overcome. I think one place to begin, is to make PBSP® experiences part of educational curriculums everywhere -- which of course requires money for training programs and thus political commitment, and we are back to the need for honest dialogue between people who are, on the surface, different.
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