And then I realized this morning that I forgot that needed to portion out my meds and supplements for the week, so I'm scrambling to get that done now on top of the other things I had planned. Yesterday got a bit messed up by unplanned things, which happens.
So this articles is:
Bickley, Hugh J. & G'Segner, Ford F. (1975, Fall). Games and values clarification: aids in human self-development. Military Chaplains' Review, 43-51.
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"Throughout the last three decades chaplaincy has given serious attention to human self-development. Though given different names -- Character Guidance, Our Moral Heritage, and the Human Self-De velopment Program -- the intent has been to involve soldiers in a process of moral and ethical self-development." (p. 43)I just hope that it was a better program of self-development than what the Vienna mission had. Since the Vienna mission was a total institutions and my experience of it, as explained elsewhere throughout this blog, was not totally unlike how Christians experienced their treatment at the hands of Communists, I'd like to suggest what it might have been like under the Vienna mission total institution:
"The lack of individual responsibility is a product of decades of living under limited freedom. People get used to oppression. This has always happened with totalitarian regimes. I remember, I was greatly surprised to meet people with a similar mentality in East Germany, a country that has always been very different from Russia. This happened during the unification of the East and West Germany. I saw fright in the eyes of the East Germans, the same reaction as I see here in Russia – people do not know what to do. There is a psychological term for this – the acquired helplessness syndrome. The syndrome is usually manifested in social pessimism and lack of self-confidence. The acquired helplessness syndrome is the main feature of Soviet mentality and unfortunately it is prevalent among senior citizens."
This describes the acquired helplessness syndrome of the "Soviet man". And lest you think I'm over-exaggerating, just remember that the whole time I was with the mission they continually took away one by one a whole chunk of my external supports and relations until I was more and more cornered in and reliant on them... helpless, if you please.
Fortunately for me, however, I had an easier way out than the hapless Soviet citizens and my commitment to the mission was limited to 2 years of my life so that there remained a remnant of my former self that wasn't helpless and I did retain some external connections that helped me buoy above the tragedy and find a way to rise again. But I could very easily have vanished only to have never been heard of again... a mere shell of my former self, broken by the mission and it's treatment of me. And no one would have ever believed me that it was their fault at all; they would have assumed I was just emotionally weak.
Actually, though, I think the opposite is true and it was amazing that I was able to do what I did because no one ever was able to do what I did, and that alone is testament enough to the strength of my character. Everyone else was to weak or scared or didn't have enough knowledge early on, which is when it would have been needed, to even attempt what I did. So, yes, on one level I was weak, but on another level I was incredibly strong and clever and did what no one else was able to do.
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"Educational journals, management magazines, adult education reports, continuing education briefs, sociological and psychological articls, and religious writings and books tell us that contemporary persons share the following characteristis. They (we) are non-authoritarian, dialogical, interdependent, and participative. (p. 44)Did I tell you that I have an M.A. in Adult Education and 60 credits towards a doctorate in the same and that I've published articles and given numerous conference presentations on adult education related subjects? So I'm sort of in my league here.
The thing is that the Vienna mission knew this stuff as far as how it taught its classes in Eastern Europe; it just sort of forgot it all it seems to me when it came to socialization of new members. Oh sure, the mentoring process was on the surface like this, but in the end it was not because the mission was a total institution and it was not about dialogue with its members, at least not according to my experience. Dialogue was not an option. The only thing it wanted was obedience and childlike submission, like for the Soviet man above. And better not to ask any questions, of course, because of the security issue. Security could be an answer to everything, like a broken record. Like, as soon as you raise your hand in class you don't even have to ask the question, the teacher will just automatically answer, "Security," and move on. So security quelched everything and trumped everything.
But at some point there has to be some accountability and the individual has to be treated like and adult and if there are unethical things going on behind the facade of "security" some members might like to know.
This is true with government, too, right? Think of Washington, D.C. (my country's capital); there have been times when they classify documents that shouldn't be classified. These are documents that pose absolutely no security risk to the country at all. So some media outlet or nonprofit watchdog group gets a whiff of an incidence like this and exposes it and it turns out documents were classified only because they embarrassed the current administration - made them look bad and they didn't want people to know about it. That's not why documents are supposed to be classified! And when missionaries come to the Vienna mission and tacitly (or otherwise) agree to suspend judgement for the sake of security, they are most likely thinking of security issues involving logistics and the like. But if the mission is hiding information like cooperation with a government, that's a whole other ball of wax and some missionaries might not feel so comfortable with that, especially if it's something like the military or CIA or something. But then by the time they learn of such things they're already in the thick of things, so they really needed to know about this kind of thing up front or earlier on, but that's the psychology of the mission (the leadership) and they understand how that works. They're not stupid.
So the mission leads a double life, where they know these truths, as given in this text, but they don't really live them internally inside the mission. So this is a case of "Do as I say, not as I do."
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"All persons -- young and old -- face some confusions about the important things in their lives. They are surrounded by a glittering array of choices, like a child at a candy counter. Youth feel this confusion intensely and reflect it readily. Older people also tend to be confused; though their confusion is less noticeable, it is not less acute.Ever since my Vienna mission experience I have been very interested in the ethical issues for Christians in various fields. Most professional level fields have ethical statements from their professional association they can turn to, but that isn't always adequate for the Christian.
In almost every area of human endeavor and involvement one observes values and value conflicts operating:
... Within the milieu of modern living conflicts arise, problems emerbe, and values clash. Chaplains -- as pastors, teachers, and leaders -- are aware of these conflicts." (p. 45)
Anyway, it's clear that Christians are going to experience these kinds of conflicts because the world's values don't mesh with the Bible's instructions for us. So we should be masters of dealing with conflict and be able to readily recognize conflict, but we can't always, or for some reason we might be able to recognize it but we don't respond as we should. It's not easy being the minority and standing out as being different. I know because I feel like I've spend a lot of my life in that position, although it wasn't always that way. The Vienna mission changed that, because after that I began taking stands that weren't even popular in Christian circles. I've already paid a heavy price for taking stands for what I believe in, and while I didn't really necessarily want to, I felt I had to because there was no way I could give in in those situations. So now I'm less willing to just go along with the flow if I really don't agree with something or think something is wrong enough to not be able to go along with it.
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Next the author suggests 4 ways the chaplain can "provide guidance in values training:The thing here is that the values were taught especially during the socialization process at the Vienna mission, rather than in the seminary classes. As I've said before, although it bears repeating here, socialization was a very individualistic affair in the mission for several reasons, I think. For one thing, new missionaries came trickling in so you couldn't really have classes of cohorts training. Also, the positions varied as did the personals and the issues they might have needed focusing on. I think it may also have depending on who was doing the socializaing, because different socializers might have been more or less comfortable with different tactics of socilalization. So I'm going to go through these discussing them as things that might have been used with some people (or not).
1. MORALIZING: This direct approach assumes that the chaplain's experiences and resulting values system is right for those whom he teaches... moralizing usually influences only one's vocabulary and little else.
2. A LAISSEZ-FAIRE ATTITUDE: This approach says, "Think and do and be the way you want, and in the long run, everything will turn out okay."... In daily life... everything does not "turn out okay," regardless of the values one cherishes.
3. MODELING: ...The multiplication of models make it difficult, if not impossible, for one to know which is right for him or her.
4. VALUES CLARIFICATION: This is a process which allows persons to bild and to discover their own values systems... To use values clarification exercises, however, it is essential to recognize that process is far more important than content." (p. 45-46)
Moralizing. I think this was used some, but probably mostly in the guise of sharing one's testimony to the effect of "This worked for me, you should try it too."
Laissez-Faire. I think this only would have been used if the mission wanted to watch the individual, but I think it would have been the rarest of them all, because the mission was basically more controlling.
Modeling. They did use mentoring, probably pretty much across the board with most if not all new missionaries, so part of the mentoring process would have included modeling. But I don't think that modeling would have been used as a stand alone method apart from mentoring. However, the new missionary would have been watching to learn from others, but a lot of times the one they were watching might have been unaware that they were modeling.
Values Clarification. I think this happened, but only by those who were well able to explain clearly what the mission's values were, so that would have been limited to just a select few members of the mission, very likely not the mentor of the mission. If a person had to have a serious sit-down values clarification, I expect by that point that something seriously was wrong and the person might be in trouble, like I was.
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"Values clarification exercises, whatever their form, are essentially connected to this process of valuing: choosing, prizing, and acting." (p. 47)The Vienna mission uses a variety of means to try to make new missionaries choose their values, the values that don't show up on their annual report, in their brochures, etc. The values that have to do with security and whatever else lies behind that veil of secrecy. In fact, I learned that they'll pretty much do whatever they have to to get you to choose their values (and norms), such as:
- trying to lure you in with their love and familial acceptance
- threats of going crazy (backed by stressors, sending you for counseling, etc.), which I think is a kind of use of force
- humiliation, such as demotions and shunning
- cutting off outside relations
- etc.
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So that's the end of that article. 