I think that people who place a lot of emphasis on the institutions that grant degree qualifications, rather than the work produced to earn those qualifications, may have a somewhat distorted perception of the abilities of the general workforce in The United States. Education at Walden Univerity I had noted while at the International Democratic Education Conference, required in large part the characteristics of intrinsic motivation that were imbued through my story at Tanglewood Elementary and Jefferson County Open School. I had been in a conversation with Arnie at the time, who I will only refer to as Arnie, because that is the way we were taught to address the teachers in our lives who were all founders of Open School. Internalizing the values of the community and sharing in an appreciation for the community and a desire to help it grow were a part of the "It takes a village" philosophy of the Open School. So, when offered a chance to educate myself and also to enable greater healing in the community, I naturally chose to commit to the work and create the level of education I saw would be successful in my perception and did not choose to simply meet requirements. Overall the education one might receive has not much to do with the learning that one chooses to accomplish.
One example I have is the development of what would intellectually be called a mastery skill, or a skill for constructing and employing dynamics as a part of the learning process. I wrote about this skill once, and I will present it here. What follows is a Google Drive link to the 2014 capstone document that I wrote as a part of the completion of my undergraduate program, as the result of some of the extra postgraduate training I was comitted to. If there can be any doubt about the legitimacy of a man's education, then the internet and the process of information sharing and peer review, serves to disperse that shadow quite well.
Balance
***
I think from a highly sensitized viewpoint, that my career
objective is the establishment of symmetry, in life and in various social
dynamics. Dynamics in psychology were in many ways first elaborated by Kurt
Lewin (1935). I can only hypothesize that these dynamics began through
reconstructions of Kant’s transcendental idealism as an epistemology, but in
that case at least the geography is almost in alignment. Dynamics throughout my
education were something that I learned to reframe as dialectics. As I would
talk about various social dynamics or individual dynamics such as with the idea
of diathesis-stress that I had mentioned, I began to understand them as
reciprocal systems (Hixson, 2012).
These I termed dialectics. Examples of dynamic fields in
contemporary writing are widely available. In Soul of a Citizen, Loeb (2010) begins describing social change as
the formation of a displacement, the accumulation of awareness and social
capital through shared experience, and the eventual discharge or balance of the
displacement through the actions of social leaders who empower groups who are
ready for the change. Looking at this from a slightly over-rated intellectual
standpoint, this collective process is not unlike individual learning processes
had been described classically. The Gestalt Cycle of Experience developed by
Joseph Zinker (1978), is an individual dynamic of this type. In the Gestalt
Cycle of Experience a displacement exists where there is a new opportunity to
learn that an individual first senses intuitively, then becomes aware of the
opportunity, then mobilizes to balance the displacement, achieves contact
between intuition and objective awareness or object of knowledge, then begins
to resolve the associations created between the initial polarizations, and then
withdraws until a new displacement raises this awareness again (Zinker, 1978).
This action that occurs between displaced polarities is a dialectic, and the
larger communal action that occurs as a part of the sense of social injustice
in the larger community also follows through dynamic changes, as I attempted to
show with the previous example.
In criminology dynamics began to be demonstrated as an
awareness of energies displaced through actions of criminal intent. In Changing Lenses these dynamics began to
be described as the fields which build before crime takes place, crime itself,
and the acts of restoration that can begin to achieve equilibrium again as a
part of a potential change to punitive or retributive justice (Zehr, 2005).
Restorative justice principles reflect the awareness of displacement created
through crime. Restorative justice focuses on obligations created by the
criminal act in society and for the offender to seek balance, the understanding
of the harms that describe the crimes and the needs resulting from them, and
the civic responsibility to maintain engagement among all stakeholders in
criminal events (Zehr, 2002). Victim offender conferencing programs offer the
chance for people who have been victimized and the offenders who had victimized
them to attempt to achieve a sense of balance through an understanding of the
crime and also through the achievement of balance through shared meaning
(Amstutz, 2002).
Conflict is best described as dynamics or fields that begin
to set up around mutual needs that can be in conflict. The conflicting needs
can be survival needs that describe basic resources and security, interest
needs in terms of tangible interests and representation and respect in terms of
processes for negotiating them, and identity needs related to the sense of
group autonomy identity and belonging (Mayer, 2012). The dynamics which
motivate actions of balance and imbalance among mutual needs are displacements
in relationships in terms of power, culture, personality, or information
(Mayer, 2012). So when thinking of dialectics the learning and larger social
dialectics mentioned previously would be compared as a T-test in statistics
would be compared to a multifactorial ANOVA, but the reciprocal interactions
between fields can exist simultaneously.
Dialectics can also be applied practically, some parts of
emergency management can be described as fields. Hazard and risk assessment
plays a role in the establishment of mitigation and preparedness strategies
available to balance the awareness of risk (Haddow, Bullock & Coppola,
2011).
So, putting this all together a lot of fields exist in
social space collectively as well as individually. I think that the best
perception of my career then is finding ways to establish symmetry. Of course
my most current goal is to obtain the degree in mental health counseling, but
in terms of application I am seeking the degree in order to begin healing
displacements that occurred through the existence of violence and trauma. The
idea that I have for this is the application of meaning for experience, and in
some cases greater community engagement and awareness in order to help the
larger community become motivated to begin mitigating the larger losses that
occur from traumatic events (Hixson, 2013). Over the next 5 years I also hope
to share the larger message about the meaning and value of experience that I
had identified was a way to de-escalate the social energies that I feel are the
result of the acceptance of violence as a normative context in our social
environments, and through one of non-profit organizations I am committed with I
can develop a leadership academy that can begin that process based on the ideas
I developed for PSYC-4010-1 this term.
References
Amstutz, L. S. (2009). The little book of victim offender conferencing. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
Haddow, G., Bullock, J. & Coppola, D. (2011). Introduction to emergency management (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Elsevier.
Hixson, S (2013, December 26). Diathesis-stress, default network, and epigenetics. [Discussion post for PSYC-4010-1]. School of Psychology, Walden University.
Hixson, S. (2014). PSYC-4010-1 capstone presentation: Corey Hixson. [Video Podcast]. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTMavqfeueU
Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality (Adams, D. & Zener, K. Trans.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Loeb, P. R. (2010). Soul of a citizen: Living with conviction in challenging times (2nd ed.). New York, NY: St Martin’s Press.
Mayer, B. (2012). The dynamics of conflict: A guide to engagement and intervention (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Zehr, H. (2002). The little book of restorative justice. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
Zinker, J. (1978). Creative process in gestalt therapy. New York, NY: Vintage.
***
Here I present the link to my final capstone document, that addresses violence in the context of The United States as well as the development of new therapies for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
