CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS POST

WE began with the conviction that the role of man was not only  to be in the world, but to engage in relations with the world--that through acts of creation and re-invention man makes cultural reality and thereby adds to the natural world, which he did not make. We were certain that man's relation to reality, expressed as a Subject to an object, results in knowledge, which man could express through language.

This relation as is already clear, is carried out by men
whether or not they are literate.  It is sufficient to be a
person to perceive the data of reality, to be capable of knowing, even if this knowledge is mere opinion.  There is no such thing as absolute ignorance or absolute wisdom.  But men do not perceive those data in a pure form.  As they apprehend a phenomenon or a problem, they also apprehend its causal links.  The more accurately men grasp true causality, the more critical their understanding of reality will be.  Their understanding will be magical to the degree that they fail to grasp causality.  Further, critical consciousness
always submits that causality to analysis; what is true today may not be so tomorrow.  Native consciousness sees causality as a static, established fact, and thus is deceived in its perception.
Critical consciousness represents "things and facts as they exist empirically, in their causal and circumstantial correlations....naive consciousness considers itself superior to facts, in control of facts, and thus free to understand them as it pleases.  

Magic consciousness in contrast, simply apprehends facts and attributes to them a superior power by which it is controlled and to which it must therefore submit.  Magic consciousness is characterized by fatalism, which leads men to fold their arms, resigned to the impossibility of resisting the power of facts.

Critical consciousness is integrated with reality; naive consciousness superimposes itself on reality; and fanatical consciousness, whose pathological naivete leads to the irrational, adapts to reality.


It so happens that to every understanding, sooner or later an action corresponds.  Once man perceives a challenge, understands it, and recognizes the possibilities of response, he acts.  The nature of that action corresponds to the nature of his understanding.

Critical understanding leads to critical action; magic understanding to magic response.

Education for Critical Consciousness

Paulo Freire 1973

Once upon a time, circa 1969-1974, I studied to be a teacher, got a license, taught for 3 seasons.  I was in love with History, objects, teaching procedures and measuring them skills.  Teachers suck!


Down here some have blogs.  Their blog writing shows as  in a classroom, with a captive, obedient, docile audience.  My beef with teachers is that, besides the family,  they impose their silly, personal, narrow views on anything at hand in addition to the curriculum.  Rarely showing a once in a while spark of originality.

Tradition, Spanish language, customs, culture, flag, patriotism, seems to be their motto.  No wonder we have become a cave of thieves.  No impulse, support for those
looking at this pathetic reality differently, through another lens.

To all of them with/without blogs, but particularly to my favorites: Minga/Petraca Blog Guild, they bring you the news after tv/newspapers with their archaic plantation like views.  As if reality is just what they believe morally it to be, and therefore should be and become.

The article above is from some old, yellowish photocopies of better times.  When I thought the world would be a better place. The future, what a big lie. The future is now. And it seems to be more hopeless and fucked up than ever.

But do not despair...Keep on propagating, planting and or setting trends...