Hi friends,
I append my last writing, hoping it may be of some interest to you.
Sorry for the length, but it is not yet mounted in the Internet.
No copyright, of course
regards,
antonio
===================================================
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE
CROSS
By Antonio Rossin April 2006
INTRODUCTION
Psychological dependence appears in an individual either as a passive
relying on comfort, or as a consensus towards the social leader in
hierarchical subordination. If both these conditions fail, whether
because of a natural creativity-transgression-diversity or because the
young individual finds it increasingly difficult to insert the self
into the social fabric, the same psycho-dependence becomes drug
addiction, with all the concomitant discomfort and depression.
The antidote to a psycho-dependent personality and its counterpart,
the domineering authoritarian personality, is to be sought in an
education aiming at forming an autonomous, flexible personality,
capable of being part of the social context critically and
creatively. This condition is essential, among other things, to
the development of a genuine democracy.
The Circular instruction 84 of 20th October 1984 of the Ministry of
Health indicates the flexible personality as the most resistant to the
risk of drug addiction. A dependent personality gets moulded, long
before the individual comes into contact with the many-faceted and
necessarily hierarchical social system, in the model of family
communication. The child, between zero and three years of age, learns
the language that allows it to communicate with its first social
authority, the parents.
During that stage of education, the model used by parents/guardians in
communicating, and its feedback, favours either the structuring of a
dependent personality, or that of an independent, flexible one. This
structure is analogous to a cross with four essential poles:
Giving-Receiving, which represents the hierarchy parents-child along
the vertical beam, and Consensus-Confrontation, which represents the
relation father-mother in function of the child along the horizontal
one. The dialectical relation between parents with its critical, joint
confrontation of opinions, not always coinciding, is an educational
option.
The value of this option is being increasingly practised in secular
Western culture, and ignored, or radically opposed, in
religious-fundamentalist cultural traditions. According to such
traditions with their extreme in Islamic fundamentalism there
is no dialectical equality between father and mother contributing to
the growth of their children. The dominant role, first in the family
and later in society, is reserved solely to the figure of the father,
which dominates without even becoming subjected to dialectical
criticism, as it should be from the very same family.
DEPENDENCE
In the early years, the child depends on its parents for every vital
need. Communication between child and parents is inevitably
hierarchical by natural law. By preventing an excessive psychological
dependence, which may evolve later into drug dependence, the parents
have the possibility so to regulate their language as to build an
educational model that prevents the imprinting of a hierarchical
psychological dependence in the child. This process takes place
between zero and three years of age.
The stakes are not small. The quoted official document states that the
issue is to prevent the youngest from becoming drug addicted.
Yet this possibility is not developed as it ought to. The formational
role of the parents at that early critical time for the child remains
a void. It would seem that human society as a whole is victim to a
diabolical, albeit unperceived, plot, based on the abuse of hierarchy,
both in the family and in society. The psychologically dependent are
the most obvious symptom of such abuse. In time, the model of
hierarchical psychological dependence has increasingly become an item
of cultural inheritance. The meme has now grown into a Moloch
that feeds on the children, generation after
generation.
But if this meme reproduces in
a context of hierarchical dependence, we ought to ask ourselves what
the position of the domineering role is in our logical structure of
communication. What is the hierarchical authority that all of us
parents/educators look up to, and on which we depend when we duplicate
in our children the model of psychological dependence? We ought to ask
IN WHOSE NAME our system defends such hierarchical mechanisms to the
bitter end, to the point indeed of camouflaging the very mechanisms by
denying the existence of hierarchies. This happens against every
attempt at critically and dialectically analysing hierarchical
communication, even when the complete lack of reasons for a hierarchy
can lead to the cruelty of drug addiction.
INFORMATION DENIED
A stiff resistance is being put up against giving parents (and their
educational task) the information about possible models of
communication aimed at changing its original, traditional set up. The
social system defends its hierarchical pyramid by denying the very
existence of a hierarchy among individuals, in the name of a presumed
general equality. Modern scientific research has not been able to
offer to the weak and disadvantaged youth the right knowledge to avoid
the damage done by psychological dependence. At a wider social level,
it has not been able to provide a remedy against the economic
imbalances linked to consumer dependence. Parents, who are responsible
for the early formation in the children, are enticed into delegating
every one of their competences to the school or to institutions above
the family. Their attention is directed towards what to say to
the children, i.e. the traditional exhortation to good manners.
How to speak to the children encourages them towards taking charge
of their own decisions, sharing experiences and reasoning. Thus are
the bases laid for psychological independence and therefore prevention
of drug addiction. But all this remains in a limbo.
All in all responsible educators, and parents first of all, ought to
place more emphasis on day to day communication, for this is what
gives the children the information denied. The two main parameters are
illustrated by the following text of an e-mail message sent to the
Italian Minister for Education Ms Moratti on 10th September 2005. The
title was, What synergy ought to exist between family and
School?
I have analysed the
models of family communication from zero to three years of age, when
language is first learned in a milieu of interpersonal relations. I
have isolated the following two basic parameters:
1. a. Should one avoid showing the child conflicting opinions
between parents?
b. Or should
one show that confrontation is possible and constructive, thus
fostering active, critical participation to dialogue first in the
family and then in society?
2. a. Should one speak to the
child first, thus systematically forestalling every initiative it
might develop
b. Or should one regulate the parents’ answers according to the
child’s conscious question, respecting its creativity and
encouraging its taking up of responsibility?
My question to You is:
What kind of child would the School like? One capable of
participating autonomously, critically and actively, educated to live
in a “dialectical” context based on confrontation and responsible
autonomy? Or else a child incapable of critical confrontation and of
autonomy, since it has been brought up in a fundamentalist context
based on conformity? In any case, shouldn’t the School inform the
Family about the School’s specific requirements? The type of
participation demanded of today’s student and tomorrow’s citizen
would thus develop synergy between the two institutions instead of
opposition. Shouldn’t this happen from the very first family
education of the child, when we parents are the sole teachers, however
misinformed?
The Minister’s
Secretary answered as follows on 26th September 2005:
On behalf of the
Minister I wish to inform you that the question you have posed by
e-mail is at the moment being studied by the competent office in the
Ministry, to see how best they can answer it.
By 31st December 2005 I
thought that a reasonable time had passed to figure out what the
answer should be to such a simple question. I solicited a reply. The
answer was:
Dear Sir,
Re.: your letter to the Minister about intra-familiar communication
models and relations between family and school.
As you may have well noticed, the whole set up involving the
educational reform according to Law 53/2003 and appended decrees is
characterized, among other things, to a re-assessed central role of
the pupil, whose education is based on personalizing the course of
formation.
As a result of this choice, the reform has meant to restore to the
family a different role in the educational setup, acknowledging its
right to choose and to participate, with which the ratio between
supply and demand is modified.
All this will not be put into practice immediately, and it will not be
easy to operate a cultural turning back. We hope, however that the
direction sketched out, approved and supported by both families and
teachers, will cause important changes in the future.
There was no specific
answer regarding “intra-familiar communication models” and
above all no indication about the necessary communication parameters
necessary to “restore to the family a different role [?]
acknowledging its right to choose?” If there are no
models of intra-familiar communication to choose from, a “right
to choose” becomes meaningless. Hence the necessary information
is still denied. We parents are led to believe that the present
structurally vertical model, centered on the principle of absolute
parental (even single parent’s) authority, never to be submitted to
critical analysis in function of the child, is the only one that
exists.
THE CROSS
On the other hand no indication is forthcoming from the Catholic
authority, which otherwise places great emphasis on the family, about
the present proposal, which I have been promoting for more than 35
years. The proposal is based on the critical analysis of the structure
of the relations present in the hierarchical intra-familiar
communication. Graphically, this relation is cross-shaped. Its
horizontal beam represents the thesis-antithesis relations between
parents, placed at the two ends of the beam; its vertical beam,
cutting the other in the middle, has the child at the end, in
subordinate relation. The child is hierarchically dependent in respect
of the family authority represented by the parents.
The analogy with another cross appears at this point. This sign has
been monopolized by the Catholic tradition, which has identified it
with the Crucified to symbolise Christianity with the words: “In the
name of the Father and of the Son” along the vertical axis,
“and of the Holy Spirit” along the horizontal one. Such analogy is
therefore based on a substantial structural identity, the symbol of
the cross, but with a formal difference as to the pertinent roles.
In fact, should one want to apply the sign to the field of human
communication, it should recite: “In the name of the supreme
Authority?and of its children.” It would thus indicate the
vertical hierarchical relation that binds the children to the Creator
in the Christian tradition. Analogously, the “Holy Spirit”
of the religious tradition becomes the spirit of family dialectics,
through which all material and spiritual values are produced and
handed down, communicated by the parents to the children in the
familiar praxis. Therefore the name of the Father should be
placed at one end of the horizontal beam, and that of the
Mother at the other end. The relation between them is equal and
dialectic. The necessary dialectic space of critical and constructive
space between the parents and the children is thus open.
The placing instead of the name of the Father, which we common
mortals identify with the dominant parent, at the top of the vertical
beam, is that of the supreme Authority, dominating over the Mother as
over any other family or social role. This established a first
hierarchy, placing the father as the domineering authority whom all
the other members of the family must pay the tribute of psychological
dependence. The first conditioning to psychological dependence is thus
born from an inappropriate, not to say ambiguous, placing of the
various roles of the sign of the cross, on acknowledging it among the
cultural roots of our society, starting from a rational education of
social communication that begins with the family.
This change of parameters,
however, does not seem possible, at least without the approval of the
Church. The analysis of the “cross” formed by the triadic logical
elements of family communication: hierarchical (vertical) between
parents and children and dialectical (horizontal) between father and
mother, recalls our deepest cultural roots, and thence to our Catholic
tradition. In it, the meaning of the cross makes reference to the
Crucified; the triadic elements of human communication refer to the
Trinitarian elements of divine communication linked to them, and the
mystery of dialectic denied refers to the mystery of the Holy Spirit,
which cannot be discussed but ought to be accepted by an act of faith.
And as the divinity of the Trinity cannot be discussed, neither can
its analogical representation, the family triad. It is never
structurally analysed. In fact, every time I have submitted my
analysis, my proposal of revising the model of family communication
has been accepted with a certain interest in words, but with a
substantial refusal of active participation. When I went on
highlighting the analogy of the rational cross of dialectic
communication with the mystical Cross of religious tradition, I met
with a trenchant refusal by all the people to whom I submitted a
previous version, in truth more involved than the present one. All saw
in it a sacrilegious profanation of the divine reality of the
Crucified. No one was able to grasp the sense of a constructive
proposal towards analysing the Family rationally, as a human reality.
“How” to communicate rationally with the children, in the delicate
age between zero and three years, when the parents are its only
teachers, remains therefore space denied, and this with the tacit
approval of the Church. She considers the structural hierarchical
model centered on the Crucifix as the only one existing. The dialectic
thesis-antithesis, in particular, is banned from the horizontal beam
of the cross, where the Catholic tradition places the Holy Spirit. Let
me quote a personal communication:
It is [equally]
evident that a sign of the cross without reference to the Crucified
could not be anything more than an apotropaic sign, something like
touching wood. To grasp the meaning of the cross it is necessary to
pay attention to the Crucified?
He who knows how to read the signs of the times, let him read. He who
does not, let him learn if he so thinks, or let him change the
Trinitarian elements of the cross with the sociological ones he thinks
fit. The Trinitarian divinity is neither obvious nor provable
philosophically. If Jesus is the Christ, it is an act of faith
(in him) [otherwise] let us cultivate the ignorance sown at school,
irrigated by pop culture and matured in the milieu of relativism,
consumerism and materialism that holds forth.
Once again there is
a net separation between the divine nature of the Crucified and his
every possible human projection. (Was this Christ’s teaching,
by the way?)
CONCLUSION
No one knows how long ago human consciousness gave the cross a
particular significance: surely, long before Christ, since we find the
“Crux ansata” among Egyptian hieroglyphs. But, in order to
set up its believing-behaving procedures, the independent human mind
needs the four parameters, the Give-Receive on the vertical
hierarchical beam and the Yes-No dialectical confrontation on the
horizontal one, with the beams linked together in a cross
structure.
This logical structure, essential to prevent gregariousness and
addiction, is learned by the child since its earliest age from a
family model where the Give-Receive vertical relationship is exercised
by the family authority above and the child below. The
"Yes-No" horizontal relationship is optionally exercised by
the dialectics between the two parents.
Unfortunately, in time the same cross structure has acquired a
different meaning in Catholic tradition, where it is identified with
the Crucified, even though the actual cross may have been in the shape
of the Greek T. And since our western culture is rooted in the
principles of Catholic tradition, it follows that anyone who tries to
rationalise one’s role in the relations of human communication,
cannot but refer to the same roles of father, mother and child as
sanctified in the toponymy of the religious cross. Here the
upper authority in the vertical axis - God - is but named
"father", like the male parent. This naming upsets the
logical structure being so essential for the independent mind to
function properly.
Further, and even worse, the
figure of the mother, so essential in family dialectics, is absent.
This absence actually denies the formational-educational function of
dialectics from babyhood on.
Is it right to deny such space? The children need it to express their
autonomous and creative participation to the family and to society.
They would thus become free from any useless conditioning that renders
them dependent, passive and uncritical on the family and social
hierarchies, as also on the slavery of drugs.
An analysis of hierarchy in family communication as involving an
absence of dialectics between parents, goes beyond the problem of
psychological dependence and later drug dependence of the children. It
is enough to think about the absence of the father-mother dialectics
in fundamentalist communities and its consequences. Equally, the
richness of a spiritual dependence of love in respect of the divine
hierarchies becomes a misery of uncritical and excessive dependence on
human hierarchies, even when its excess could and should be avoided.
And to avoid it, starting from the family triad, the necessary
information is lacking, even by the church.
I remember these thundering words in a warning by Augusto Corsini, a
famous Paduan surgeon:
Within pathologic proceedings, structure governs function;
within physiologic
proceedings, function governs structure.
Is here to be found the
hidden reason why the Catholic Church resists a representation of the
values of the cross, which she identifies with the Crucified, in the
human reality of family education and communication? If so, the
Church would defend the Cross as the highest symbol of her own
hierarchic structure to the detriment of her very function: the
promotion according with the Crucified’s teachings of the
human values, starting of course from the appropriate communication of
the latter.
Antonio Rossin
www.flexible-learning.org
Notes:
1. From the presentation of “Drugs and the Family” --
published by Libreria Editrice Zielo, Padua 1990, ISBN 88-85689-13-2
-- a reflection on the link between the educational model and the
formation of a dependent personality. Friday 3rd March 2006, Genoa
“Balbiquattro”, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. Cycle 70:
Self-controlled seminar on removed memory, edited by Marino Ramingo
Giusti.
2. For details
see:
http://www.flexible-learning.org/eng/bottom_up.htm
3. Indications on how to
intervene to prevent drug addiction, G.U. n.21 of 25th Jan.
1985.
4. For details
see
http://www.flexible-learning.org/eng/einstein.htm
5. Technical term for a
culturally inherited phenomenological character.
6. The same question, mailed on 2
Jan.2006 by Doug Everingham to the Australian Minister of Education,
did not get any reply up to date, Wed.20 April 2006
7. For details see
http://www.flexible-learning.org/eng/the_role.htm