439. Military Chaplaincy, pt. 46 (Seidel (b), pt. 1)

I'm sorry, in the shuffle of things, I forgot that I hadn't finished going through the military chaplaincy file.  It's so hard to keep up with things and it's doubly frustrating when I want to do things but half the time I don't feel up to doing most of the things I want or half to do.  So right now at least I can do some things at the computer (some of the time - I have to lay down some too).  There's all this stuff at home to do, too, and, of course, that says nothing about what I would do if I were healthy and could get around like a healthy person. 

But we all have our limitations, and I've always been able to somehow make the best within the limitations I have.  But that doesn't mean there isn't an adjustment period.  So every time there is a change there might be a bit of adjustment, depending on the situation.  Maybe you can relate to what I'm saying.  It's just that I've been through it in some pretty extreme situations, from Vienna isolated where I had to figure things out on my own (as I thought, anyway), to Siberia, to dealing with family where I thought my father was part of my problems but would never admit it and I couldn't trust him completely. To employment problems that have left some family members to this day as pegging me as lazy or just dealing with living alone in a strange city with all these health issues and trying to rise above it. 

It's really hard, I admit.  I don't really want people to feel sorry for me, but sometimes it would be nice for mom or a good friend, for example, to put their arms around me and let me have a good cry.  I'm only human after all!  But I'm the epitome of the strong person that just forges ahead in the face of all sorts of adversity.  And by the way, I don't need anyone, especially if I sense at all that there might be any ulterior motives or hidden agenda in a potential assistant.  Or sometimes it's just that they naively try to associate me with a position, for example, such as, "I'm so glad you finally made it to the land of Capitalism and came to your senses about the wickedness of Communism." 

Whoa, Nellie!  This is referring, of course to my rescuing from Russia (I originally moved there when it was the USSR still) in 1997, in which my father played a part.  The thing is that 1) I never did like Communism.  and 2) I never did like Capitalism.  So please do not ever try to associate me with either one of these.  (Without going into reams of boringly repetitive materials from earlier posts, I think Communism errantly assumes humans are fundamently good and will of their own free will share everything.  Balderdash.  On the other hand Capitalism is sheer greed and anyone who has any understanding of sin knows that the love of money is the root of all evil.  So how can Capitalism be good, especially from a Christian standpoint? 

Just don't try to ask me, then what kind of economic system I do believe in, because I do not claim to be an economist.  I'll leave it up to the economists to try to come up with something that more closely resembles scriptural Christianity.  Of course, some might say that the early church practiced early socialism or comunism or something of that nature.  If they had the new nature and the Holy Spirit living in them, then that deals with the issue of humans not willingly sharing prossessions with each others.  The problem is, however, that, unfortunately, Christians still can sin, so even this is going to be problematic.

The other issue was that the missions I went to Vienna with were more or less openly right wing.  While I was in Russia I joined Americans United for the Separation for Church and State which seems to be represented more by liberal than conservative churches (as well as other religions), although they deal with issues across the board.  But Conservative and Fundamental Christian churches tend not to like them and the very concept of separation of church and state.  For example, conservative churches tend to want prayer - Evangelical prayer, to be specific, or the Evangelical version of the Lord's Prayer - in schools.   I think I would have been persona non gratis at the Vienna mission on the basis of my membership in this organization alone, had they known.  I would have been the enemy or at the very least not someone they would chose to divulge anything more than the route to the W.C. to, which in Austria, was usually right near the entryway, anyway.

What am I trying to say?  I guess it's just that one of the things I've had to deal with in my transitions is that when people have helped me it seems they inevitibly have preconceived ideas about me when they do help me.  But those ideas often misrepresent me.  In the USSR they were not in my best interests no matter how you look at it, although I was able to turn some things around and make some good come of it eventually.  Other times when people helped me I didn't understand; it seemed like I was being set up for something that missed the mark of where I was and what I'd become.  It's like people were thinking of me as I was years prior and not in the then and now.  I inevitably ended out tearing myself free of these shackles, as I ended out feeling them as, and I was very much misunderstood and not a lot of good came of it.  It smelled to me like it was related to dad because there were themes like there had been themes for years since the whole debacle leading up to my move to Russia.  But no one believed me any more. 

This was way after Vienna, so I'm getting ahead of myself.  When I left Russia, I knew I had to change my profession.  I changed profession after I left Vienna, so that I got a Master's degree in Adult Education and teaching certification in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.  I tried to get into a doctoral program in sociology with a focus in peace studies, but I wasn't accepted (presumably because I didn't have a sociology background). 

Then I was accepted into a doctorate program in Adult Education, but I was interested in social justice issues, and I didn't realize that adult education in the US was so business and corporate-oriented and even ESL and literacy is so top-down focused and concerned only with making learners conform to society rather than create and have an impact, be a force for good in society, etc.  So I couldn't stand it.  That's not what I'm about.  And I got stuck with a professor that I had a feeling he might make me look bad with sexual inuendos.  A couple other doctoral students told me about rumors going around.  The thing was that I put out a post on the list serve that I wanted adult education for community development and there wasn't a program.  He'd been brought on staff the year before I came as a student, but nothing had been done yet.  So I didn't want my reputation ruined by him either, and I was being told by these two professors that I would be a professor and I was looking around at the schools and I was gagging, thinking, where do I want to be a professor?  and I jumped ship.  I wanted to direct a community program and/or do applied research (participatory, community-based, evaluation, needs assessment, etc.)

After that I had to take time out to get treated for Hepatits C which I most likely contracted in Russia in 1992 in a blood transfusion.  (Ironically, I'd gotten tested for AIDS on a trip to the USA after the operation in which the transfusion was administered, but I hadn't heard of Hepatitus C to get tested for it.]

Then I was accepted at another doctoral program I felt very excited about, but it was in Canada, and I didn't get a grant of fellowship there and I couldn't work there, because I was not Canadian.   I mapped out a nearby U.S. city and I thought I did pretty thorough study of the districts, current nonprofits and activities, the demographics, etc., etc.  I put together a plan and whatnot, but I just couldn't get funding for it.  I even found a building and had professionals come out and run estimates as to how much it would cost to fix it up, make it handicap excessible, etc.   I was really excited about it.  I know I could do it.  If my health were up, it would have been a fantastic thing to get started with inheritance monies and just prove to people, because people never believe what I can do, until I go out and prove it to the world.  So that's why I'm a loner and I like to do things on my own, because no one seems to believe in me, I guess.  And if people believe in  me, they ignore my conscience.  But my conscience, is who I am.  How can you just ignore a person's conscience?  In Vienna they did it?  They did it without a care in the world.  My dad even did it.   The Komsomols did it, but that's a no brainer.  The professors at my doctoral staff even seemed to do it.

Conscience.  Is it something that you can just take and try to make over to your image?  (like the Vienna mission) Is it something you can try to humiliate? (like the Komsols) Or is it something to just ignore and deny exists? (as dad seems to have done, not wanting to admit I changed)

All I wanted was ministry to a people I felt called to reach with the gospel.  That was my initial conscience. 

***

I wasn't going to do that... it just evolved.  That's one way to look at my life from 1987-2000.

Returning to the discussion of our texts... in my haste to just jump back in, I overlooked the fact that I hadn't finished with the Military Chaplaincy file yet.  So I'd better finish that one and then we'll go back to the Discipline & Justice File.

This article is:

Seidel, Andrew B. (1981, Summer). Developing a healthy self-image. Military Chaplains' Review, 49-59.
 

***

"Given the biblical antagonism against selfishness in all its forms, it is not surprising that christian [sic] psychologists and theologians began to react to the unfortunate equation of a good self-image with self-love.  Paul C. Vitz in his book Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship, writes:

... Certainly Jesus Christ neither lived nor advocated a life that would qualify by today's standards as 'self-actualized.' For the Christian the self is the problem, not the potential paradise." (p. 49)

So the issue, remember is not just the teaching and what I think of it, but how it relates to my experience in Vienna.  In my experience and memory of them, the leadership - my boss, the secretaries who were mentoring me (my boss', boss' secretary in particular) and the infamous H.R. director who was the reserve U.S. military chaplain - could sort of pull these kinds of things out of a had and tweak them or focus on particular aspects according to the situation at hand and as they thought, it seemed to me at least, in their best interests. 

And when they went in counseling mode it was hardest for me to trust them because I was always certain it was a lure.  The emotional aspect of things was a lure, because they were not going to deal with things point blank.  I mean, they weren't going to deal with the kinds of things that were bothering me, at least, in a direct manner.  I think I I broached my issues directly to them they'd somehow come up with a cannon that would shoot me straight back home, and believe me, I would NOT pass go or collect $200.    I'd be out of there so fast I wouldn't know what hit me. 

The mission leaders, H.R. director included, would probably have agreed with this quote, although I knew that while I was with the mission there was one woman staffer that wasn't full time on the woman's ministry team, but did a lot of trips with them and she didn't agree with some of the staff that had nice homes in the suburbs.  Some of them, and I only saw a few, actually, were pretty well appointed I must say for missionaries.  So she really thought that missionaries shouldn't live so high on the hog, and she was somewhat disgruntled about that. 

That's not exactly the same thing, but I think it might be related to what this passage is saying.  So there may have been some variance of conviction regarding how exactly this passage might be applied in daily life.

As for myself, well, it's no great secret that my "self-actualization" was at level "0" by the time I left Vienna, so maybe I was at the perfect place for God to work in me.  Maybe that's a good way to look at it, that I hadn't seen before, and maybe I need to actually thank the mission for breaking me to make me more vulnerable for God's work.

I'm not sure if what transpired after I left Vienna, though, might be understood as God's leading necessarily.  But that is getting ahead of myself, isn't it?

At any rate, I don't think that at time in my stay in Vienna can you say I had self love.  I never really was caught up in myself, I don't think.  Even outside the mission, when I was going to the Austrian church, I worked under the auspices of the church's leadership.  But in the Austrian mission I just met nonsense after nonsense so there wasn't much for me to follow.  I'm not into a lot of games.  So I don't put up with that kind of stuff.  You either want me or you don't. 

***

"It is self-acceptance, not self-exaltation of self-depreciation (nor indeed self-love) that is commanded in scripture. Self-acceptance is taught in scripture because an adequate self-concept is necessary to function successfully in life.  Any pastor or chaplain who has been involved in counseling has noted that those who struggle with strong feelings of inferiority have a difficult time living a satisfying life.  The same may be said for those who are conceited.  Both have a very difficult time relating to other people.  Speaking of the need for an adequate self-concept, Lawrence J. Crabb has said, ".. people must accept themselves as adequate in a truly significant role if they are to honestly  regard themselves as worthwhile and so to enjoy the fullfillment of being a real person, he must be able to help him develop a realistic, accurate, and adequate self-image." (p. 51)

This passage follows a paragraph discussing Romans 12:3 " For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you."  So the context specifically is not to consider our role or position in the church as greater than you should.  The journal article is taking the liberties to expand the application of this verse beyond the original intentions.  I don't want to completely preclude that use of the verse, but I must admit that it is wanton use of it without any mention of the original limitations.  Things like that tend to put my guard up.  You really can say anything with Scripture if you want to.

Now let me show it in context so you can really see what the verse is saying:

Romans
³ For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. ⁴ For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, ⁵ so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. ⁶ We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your^[a] faith; ⁷ if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; ⁸ if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead,^[b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

So the author is making it to be anthropology (the theology of man) whereas I think it's really eccleseology (the theology of the church).  Romans 3:3-8 is a microcosm, one of several places in Scripture, showing us what the church should be like.  And the church just happens to be made up of people, so of course it has to describe the people that make up the church. 

But the author of this text takes out one verse and chooses to make that one verse be anthropological - actually, not even that, he makes it psychological, so it's not even a religious study, but a secular study.  So he uses a religuous basis, a weak one only tangentially drawn out of context and uses it to support his secular thesis. 

At least the vast majority of the Vienna missionaries didn't do that, except for.... you guessed it... the U.S. military reserve chaplains.  My contention is it's because they were raised on drivel like this.  They had spent too much time in the military and instead of being salt and light they themselves had been affected by the military and came away less salty and shiny than when they went in.

Consistent with everything I just said, the author ignores why Paul admonished the Romans to not think of themselves more highly than they ought, etc., by ignoring the very next verse, which says that we all have different gifts and members and we need each other.  We're not an island!  Now this is what I'm talking about.  It's simple, and get past all the psycho babble and gobbledy-gook and if you're going to use Scripture, get down and roll up your sleeves and really do it, not to just pull out one verse and take it out of context!!

***

"What is Our Self-Image?

The self-image is a collage of images, feelings, and value judgments pertaining to oneself. (p. 51)

I guess I just put this reference sake.  I know my self-image is all over the place and that's why I feel like it's hard for people to relate to me; because I've had too many unusual experiences between Vienna and Russia and a few others thrown in and it really feels lonely, believe me.  I miss Grandmother, because she was the one that I really could talk to, but I think dad was going to sway her about my problems in the USA because she wasn't going to believe me about those for long in opposition to what he would tell her.  It's very lonely.  If it weren't for the health care I might well be better off in Russia.  I might have friends, at least teacher friends, if not among Christians.  The Orthodox might accept me; same with the Quakers.   One of these days I should try to make it down to the Quaker meeting here.  It's close to where I used to live though, at my old condo, so it's like 20 miles (42 km) away.

***

A person's self-concept is also the product of his own evaluation of his experiences.  All of us react to our experiences by making value judgments about them.  When we succeed in accomplishing something something we desired to do, we feel good about ourselves.  When we do not succeed, we place a negative value judgment on ourselves for failing and feel bad about ourselves.  If we usually accomplish what we desire, we tend to have a positive self-image.  A number of failures to meet our own goals would tend to produce a negative self-image. It is, however, extremely difficult to talk about value judgments as being strictly individual because our goals and values are so heavily influenced by other people. (p. 52)

The part about being influenced by other people has been a real stickler with me.  I've tended to chose the people I might let influence me and if I think people are way off and don't understand something, such as family back home not understanding what's happened in Vienna, then I sort of cardone off a part of me, or I might become silent or just drift off or look for work where I might be able to reach my goals, and the like.  So my family has on one hand been through the most of anyone with me, but on the other hand, they misunderstand me up the wazoo.  If I felt like they wanted to understand I might be willing to open up, but I feel like they'd just deride me, especially since the only ones left now are my brothers. 

I think the way other people's judgments influence me the most now is by the fact that now I have ended out at a time in my life alone.  I can't contribute that completely to these judgments, because my moving around had a very large amount to do with it too, but I think friends sort of lost faith in me and began to misunderstand me more and more as I moved around more and  more so that it became harder and harder to keep friends.  So that was a kind of judgment perhaps.

Otherwise, I have tended to have been a person of strong conviction and I've often run against the crowd in difficult situations or poked my head into difficult situations and being sure of my values haven't necessarily wanted to change with the values of the new group or setting.  Sometimes I've ended out tweaking my values a bit as I've thought through things.

So, in the end, I think that I'm not the type that's directly very vulnerable to direct influence in the area of values.

The author is probably thinking of things like being influenced by parental upbringing and at church and the like.  Well certainly as a child I was influenced by my parents and also at church and then in my formal schooling.  So those things I would say did have affect on my values. 

***

Even later in life a person's self-image is significantly affected by others' responses to him.  Particularly in a highly competitive professions such as the military... A low efficiency report or missed promotion can be devastating to the self-image." (p. 53)

Of course, no matter what I thought about whether I could work with the mission or not, by the time the end of my two year commitment had come my self-image was on the floor.  Missed promotion?  I had been demoted and sent back to the US and tossed around like a hot potato and you'd think I was spy or something.  Even though I didn't show it on the outside, I was a shambles on the inside and it all came to light once I returned home to the USA after my term with the mission was up. 

***

"Physical attractiveness is a major source of human worth.  After describing the powerful influences of physical attractiveness on children, Dobson states: "Most of the major choises made by adults are influenced one way or another by the attribute of beauty."

Intelligence is another quality highly values by our society... For most people it does not matter whether these values are right or wrong.  What does matter is that the majority of people hold these values.  One therefore can feel worthy and significant only if he conforms to these values." (p. 54)

In these realms I pretty much had it going for me.  Well, I wasn't a genius, but I'm relatively intelligent, and I'm pretty good looking.  I don't think I ever got overly caught up in the physical attractiveness, because, for example, when I learned many European women don't shave their legs I was all for it, and no or minimalist makeup was fine with me.  So I was an easy care person and not one to spend hours in the mirror gawking trying to get everything perfect or trying to run down the boys or anything.  But on the other hand, I was naive, when I should have been a little more cautious.  I didn't really think about the psychology of men and what they might be thinking or how I need to deal with them even if I hadn't been otherwise thinking about men until the issue came up.  So my problem was naivety mostly, I think, and maybe not being able to stand up for myself; being timid against men. 

I think that's partly because men in my family all had the upper hand.  So even if someone taught me to "just say no" (well for sex or something I did manage to say no, but before that I mean), I had no close precedent for that.  In fact just a couple years ago I asked mom if she ever disagreed with dad and she couldn't think of one time even!!  So how on earth was I ever going to learn to stand up to men based on the examples of the men in my family.  Well, as an teenager it was mom and dad, because I was the oldest, so my brothers were still just learning from dad and they were 2 and 4 years younger than me. 

As to intelligence, well I have 2 master's degrees now, a couple graduate certificates and I've presented at several professional conferences and published articles, so I must have some intelligence.  I need some intelligence to get my points across in this blog, and I couldn't do it without intelligence.  But I don't think intelligence alone is enough, either.  I think there also needs to be a certain insight, maybe wisdom, hopefully spirit-led perception and ability to communicate it. 

I must tell you though, lest you think I risk thinking of myself more highly than I ought, that I feel like this is sort of my last harrah.  I feel like I have to do this, but I don't know what else I can do.  You have to understand that my health isn't good, so I'm at home too much of the time and I'm unreliable for much of anything.  I'm just telling you as it is, really. 

***

The weaknesses that cannot be changed are best acknowledged for what they are without excess significance being allowed to transform them into fatal flaws.  Most people seem to want to work and worry about correcting their weaknesses.  A much better solution is to concentrate upon the development of strengths.  James Dobson calls this 'compensation' and says; 'compensation is your child's best weapon against inferiority.' compensation works for adults too." (p. 56)

I don't like the psychological lingo here and I'm not prone to particularly like the approach but there is some similarity, I think, to my approach, that I have used just through natural (I think) reflexes or how my personality works or something.

Basically the issue is that there is a weakness that is hindering you from doing something.  I think the weakness can be within the individual/a part of the individual or contextual  or otherwise external to the individual, but the effect is basically the same, right?

My approach is to try to figure out how to make lemonade or how to rethink the situation to make the best of it, maybe come up with a better solution, etc. 

Even now with my health limitations it works because I revise my interests and activities around what I am able to do.  So you have to take a creative, problem-solving perspective.  You have to be somewhat flexible and willing to accept a certain amount of change, which might be difficult for some people, I think.

It's been easier for me, though, because it's just me.  It's lonely, though, so I'm not sure I'd recommend that.  But if you have supportive family and/or friends they should be willing to work with you in that. 

***

Because a person's self-image is constructed primarily from interpersonal relationships (particularly with his parents), his self-image may be modified through the same process. (p. 57)

Well, there's no doubt my parents had an incredible impact on my self-image growing up.  Not only did we just have the usual family times, but our family did more than the usual family together, including a lot of camping and the like.   But the adult years are where we hit rocky roads and it's just because of the problem between my interests and dad's work.  And then my brother who lived there near them gets all hot under the collar about how dad was so upset trying to get me out of Russia and everything, but he doesn't understand everything else and how I had troubles getting jobs here and it wasn't until I became a librarian that I could get a job and all those problems were still fall out related to dad.  I'm not sure exactly how it works, though, so don't ask me to explain it, but all I know was I knew when I left Russia that I had to change professions and in fact I didn't start getting good career jobs until I changed professions. 

Dad loved me and maybe he was conflicted over me.  It hurt when he said he didn't believe me any more.  (After I dropped out of my doctoral studies, when I was being treated for hepatitis C and was in the hospital having had a very bad reaction to the Interferon.) Then that was it.  Then I couldn't talk to him for sure about anything.  I'd lost him.  I think when I dropped out of my doctoral studies he was off the hook, whereas before that things could still point back to him as my problems stemming from him.  But once I dropped out of my doctorate that was the point he felt he could free himself of this burden and he said he didn't believe me anymore.  That's how I understand it.

(I'm not sure if that last paragraph is clear so I'll try restating part of it.  Maybe Dad didn't like it  that my problems in Russia were pointing to him, meaning that it was because of him that I was invited over there and the problem was bad enough that I still had problems leaving in 1997, over 6 years later.  When I was making the appeal to try to get out of Russia it was to try to make it to a study program.  So when I dropped out of the doctoral program, which actually was not the original one even, dad decided to drop this bomb that he didn't believe me, which would sort of clear him of any responsibility.)

***

I can't quote this whole paragraph, because one line is cut off in the copy I made, but the author discusses how interpersonal relationships that become facilitative are characterized by feedback and feedback loops the evaluation and re-evaluation going on.

"The desired end result is a more accurate, balanced, healthy, self-concept." (p. 58)

This may be what my parents wanted to inculcate into me, and did a reasonably good job, I think.  But I have absolutely no reason to believe that the H.R. director at the Vienna mission desired this for me.  What exactly he wanted, I'm not sure, but the things I would hazzard guesses on are far from this description. 

What he was practicing was pseudo psychology in the service of security. 

***

I guess that's all for now.  This has really taken a long time.

416. Military Chaplaincy, Pt. 34 (Bickley & G'Segner, pt. 1)

This next article is going to be a less involved one.  Some of these in this file, when they get into a lot of theology or philosophy or emotionally-loaded (for me at least) subject area can take a lot of time and I can't deal with that today.  And I have to spread those out a bit because it does take a bit out of me to do those sometimes.  It's almost like reliving a bit of what happened when I was with the mission, especially when I hit upon someting that really validates my experience.

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.

 ***

"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.

***

"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."

***

"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.

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)

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.

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.

***

Next the author suggests 4 ways the chaplain can "provide guidance in values training:

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)

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).

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.

***

"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:

1. trying to lure you in with their love and familial acceptance
2. threats of going crazy (backed by stressors, sending you for counseling, etc.), which I think is a kind of use of force
3. humiliation, such as demotions and shunning
4. cutting off outside relations 
5. etc.

I'm not sure what they'll do to make you prize it, because I never got that far.  Prizing it, I think might include actually internalizing it.  I think you can choose it, but not really internalize it, but I can't imagine prizing it and not at the same time also inernalizing it.  The mission wanted it's values and norms internalized, so it would have not been satisfied with just choosing.

***

So that's the end of that article. 

211. Socialization File, Pt. 93 (Roberts, pt. 10)

Since I left Vienna one of the areas I've learned the most about is education, since I have an M.A. in adult education and 60 credits towards a doctorate in the same (I didn't like my options once I realized what they probably would be after completing those studies, so I dropped out). I initially chose the Master's degree subject because the program in which I studies allowed for studying both women's ministry/religious education and English as a Second/Foriegn Language instruction. I'm bringing this up to talk a bit about philosophy of education.

There's a huge range of what adult education is like around the world, but in the USA (but not only in the USA) there is a tendency for education to have a socialization role, in that it is designed to help learners to fit into a specific, pre-existing context, such as a business or society at large. In this approach to adult education the learner learns to adapt to the way things are and function well within that established social configuration and normative setting. This assumes a conservative approach to teaching in which the only change is in the individual.

The Vienna mission's approach to socialization was like this, as are most work place socialization processes. To understand the philosophy of the teaching ministry of the mission, I think it is helpful to compare it to other career training programs. Usually, part of the objective of such programs socialize students into the field they are studying for. They aren't particularly taught to change the field, but rather become a part of it, much as other kinds of socialization. That isn't to deny, however, that once in the field the students might need to have garnered knowledge and skills which might help them with problem solving and perhaps even a certain amount of effecting change, such as policies and procedures of a workplace or department as pertain to the individual's job and sphere of expertise. These kinds of skills are expected to be able to fulfill the position effectively. In this way, the student of a career position is socialized into their field, although that might include some limited ability to affect change.

However, there are other options and other paradigms and for teaching, several of which are well-developed and in great use in various institutional settings and societal cultures. Here are a couple of which I'm reasonably familiar.

Folk education , in brief, empowers the individuals and groups via collective discussions, learning and problem solving to effect gradual change in their lives and environment around them.

Popular education, again in brief, empower groups to understand societal constraints on their lives and to wield changes that improve their existence.

Many theoreticians believe that whether you take the more traditional conservative education perspective, the perspective more akin to folk education or a critical education stance, the decision you make in this regard determines what kind of political impact you expect or want the education to have. The conservative approach vies for and supports the status-quo, the folk education vies for limited localized and possibly segmented change, while the popular education perspective aims, in the long haul, at broader and more extensive social structure change. The point here is that even a choice for the conservative approach is a political choice.

As far as the mission's teaching ministry was concerned, it was not intended to, as far as I ever knew, have any other impact other than spiritual, so any potential impact would be intended to be limited to that sphere. But even if you consider limiting impact to the spiritual realm, I think you'd have to say that the teaching was conservative in nature, although in praxis aspects of subject matter taught (but not theology, for example), there could have been some folk education-type influence on the teaching.

[4/9/11 comments: The mission did intend its teaching ministry to have a more far-flung influence, however, which could have nudged it towards "folk education". However, in (classic) folk education, information is not just handed down from one generation to the next (as in "serial" socialization), but to a certain extent the group also creates its own knowledge by studying its particular issues (i.e., not just abstractly) and tries to come up with context-specific solutions. The mission might have included elements of this in its teaching of ministry skills (the applied elements of the teaching content) but I think it's much less likely that it would have done this with its more basic/fundamental theological content.]

But this is actually still conservative education, anyway. Consider, for example teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language. I want my students to not only be able to ask yes/no questions, use the present perfect, or understand bus schedules in class; I want them to take this and apply it to their everyday lives outside of class. This means they have to be able to use the knowledge learned in class in such as way as to mix and match what they learned appropriately to come up with English language utterances (or understandings, as in the case of the receptive language skills of listening and reading). Moreover, if I'm teaching in the typical ESL program in the USA, I want these students to use these skills to be able to successfully function in the USA (using English). This involves some creativity, but the students are intended to use their skills and knowledge (that they've gained in class) in a conservative manner. That is, the student changes, but the society doesn't. (This isn't to say the student has to assimilate; there are other ways to change, such as adapting.)

If, however, the mission wanted more than this, so that the student might not only use what is taught by the mission, its instructors and its textbooks creatively but also use it to change their surroundings in some way, then we're moving more towards a classic "folk education" position.

And if the mission wanted to effect something akin to Freire's conscientization, in which the students of the mission actually change their frame of reference for understanding their situation to the end that they will go out and attempt to instigate systemic change in their surroundings, the mission would be using something closer to "popular education."

I think that the mission was closer to the classic "folk education" in its teaching ministry, and if there was anything closer to "popular education" involved it either wasn't intentional (on the part of the mission) and/or would have been an implicit (rather than explicit) secondary or tertiary objective of the ministry. I wouldn't rule this out, because of the other things I know about the mission. I'm speaking here of what was or might have been in 1987 to 1989 when I was with the mission. I can't speak at all for the present or what happened after I left. Also, note that I specify "classic" folk education, because a lot of what is called folk education today is significantly different from how Grundtvig originally meant it to be. I'm not making a judgment here on the change, however; I'm just noting that there has been a change and that this needs to be clarified in order that we're all dealing with the same understanding of the term.]

But as far as socialization to the mission was concerned, the mission seemed to use a strictly conservative approach, because the mission was not open to change and did not have any change mechanisms, grievance structures, etc. in place. (And if any of these were in place, it was to the same extent that the right to study German and to have time off when supporters came to town were in place and effective.) So the socialization was purely and simply conservative in nature and the new recruit was expected to accept it as such. If the new recruit had any questions or disagreements with how the mission did things or why they did them, I think the only two ways one could have dealt with such issues were either to resolve them by somehow learning to accept the mission's ways and reasoning, or to leave. So for 2 years, basically, I lived in the limbo between those 2 and had an existence with the mission consisting largely of a sequence of negative reinfocements, punishments, and extinguishing, punctuated by an occasional positive reinforcement. At least that's one over-simplistic way one could view my 2 years with the mission.

The other interesting thing about education and learning is that it involves a lot of aspects. For example, I did my M.A. thesis doing classroom observations, semi-structured interviews of English instructors and teacher training professors, analysis of syllabi, textbooks and exams (all of the preceding were done in Irkutsk, Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk), as well as literature review (both in Russia and the U.S.). My classroom observations involved two kinds of guides: one regarding how much time was spent on different kinds of activities and the other involving more descriptive aspects of what was happening. I also took notes about desk formation and posters on the walls, for example. In other words, there's a lot more to teaching than just lecturing, for example. Taking my research as an example, if an instructor said that the communicative aspects of the language were the most important, but tested only on sentence structure and verb formation, for example, in the end it would appear that grammar might in fact be more important than communicative skills. This is just a very simple example, and I'm not saying it happened, but it's the kind of thing I was looking for to try to find out what was happening in these Siberian institutions of higher education against a specific teaching paradigm. When I get to that part of my chronology I'll post parts of my notes and things, I'm sure.

So if I was going to do this kind of analysis of, say, my first five months with the mission, using everything that might have been included in my socialization, what would I come up with? What would I determine was really happening and to what end? Socialization is an educational process, after all. There's a lot I could do with this, I hope you understand, and I might well come back to it. If only today I had all those now missing cues, data and original sources... now that would be interesting!

***

I saw the ENT doctor this afternoon and he's ordered a swallowing study, which is now scheduled for the 19th.

But now back to the text...

***

I'm skipping a lot and picking up in the chapter section "Distinguishing Countercultures and Subcultures."

"As in any act of deviance (see Chapter 5), the prevailing culture may act to stop counterculture activity, initially devoting a great deal of attention to the deviant in an attempt to get him back into the fold. If this does not work, it frequently attempts to wall the deviant off, building a protective wall around the original culture, essentially isolating the deviant by other means." (p. 137)

These things are not easy for me to distinguish when looking at my time in Vienna. That is, it is clear that the last few months were of the kind where I was "walled off," etc. And early on, after it was determined that I wasn't falling right in their lap like a helpless fledgling lost in a strange world or something, I was subject to what seemed to me to be a rather intensive effort to try to get me back on track, namely, to submit totally and completely, which, of course I never did. But the time in the middle between these two more clearly demarcated treatments that more or less serve as book ends to my Vienna mission experience, it was not always so clear to me what was going on, and I got a lot of mixed signals (they seemed mixed to me), but they might have been likewise unsure about me too. That is, there were points when pretty much everything seemed like a punishment or negative reinforcement, and there were times (in the middle) when I got a mixed hodgepodge of positive and negative feedback. Nevertheless, I think most of the time I was with the mission I was subject to one or the other of these treatments. Since so much of my time was spent like this and I seemed to be the only one with this much trouble, I did wonder, though, if there was anything I could have ever done to please them, and if not, then probably my dad's work was a mediating factor. I'm not sure now, and I wasn't sure then about this, but it wasn't like I ever expected anyone would admit to this kind of thing if it was true, so then I was stuck just trying to put together the pieces I knew (or later, could remember).

The time in Vienna took on even more importance than it might have if leaving the mission had been the end of my troubles, but it wasn't end of them (which you'll see eventually, if you haven't picked up yet in little bits and pieces I've dropped along the way). So then, in looking back over my life, I had to put the Vienna years in the context of what also came afterwards, which might have raised more questions than it answered.

***

This citation is in the "Organizational Socialization" section of the chapter.

"Because socialization is an ongoing process, it has a feedback loop. As newcomers are socialized, the socializer monitors the degree to which they fit the organization. Where fit is good, they are given more socialization. Where fit is too minimal - where the newcomer shows potential signs of deviance or at least nonacceptance of the corporate culture - the newcomer is either eliminated or given less of the secret information. Businesses want 'team players.'" (p. 138)

This pretty well sums up my time with the Vienna mission, I guess. The most interesting part of the paragraph, though is the part about giving "less of the secret information." I want to talk about this a bit here.

It should be pretty clear by now that security issues were of vital importance, and I have also mentioned some about the division of knowledge and the applicability of the "need to know" approach to knowledge (only having access to knowledge you need for your job, nothing more). Knowledge was one of the key things (along with, say, people, for example) all the security efforts were meant to protect, so it would be almost natural for them to withhold organizational knowledge from anyone they didn't completely trust. And this they did. But this paragraph doesn't really go far enough in my case, because towards the end of my time in Vienna I was also subject to (I believe) disinformation and/or misinformation efforts to, I imagine, make sure I didn't leave with any reliable information (like what I've been writing about on this blog, for example) or be so confused as to not know if the knowledge I had was reliable or not.

***

I need to stop here to do some other things, but we'll continue with some other discussions about socialization from this text next time.

67. Dad, Again (and Trust)

I just want to add something to the last post, regarding my sort of outburst against my dad's insinuating that I left the adult education doctoral program because I couldn't trust anyone.

The first thing I would like to say about that is that that outburst is indicative of part of the ambivalence I've had towards my dad starting in my mid 20s. I felt like our relationship was fraught with intense good things and equally intense not so good things, like this event/issue about leaving my studies. You'll see more of this, I'm sure, as we go along. Having said that though, it wasn't just me, but he did concrete things and some things that weren't so directly and visibly connected to him, so this isn't just my problem. He's dead now, but I imagine he had (probably mostly) unspoken struggles (although he may have confided to other family members at times, making it just unspoken to me specifically. I refuse to take all the blame and listen to a bunch of gobbledy-gook about it being all in my head or all my fault. I know that dad is sort of this patron saint of the family, but he was just human after all, and others in the family have the choice of whether they care to hear my side of the story (really hear it, not just go through the motions) or not. At this point I'm assuming they've chosen the "not" option.

The other thing that I would point out about the situation in question here, is that actually it could be said that my leaving the doctoral program was actually a step of trust in my professors, who kept insisting that I was on a doctoral track. I believed them so much that I dropped out based on their statements alone. I risked my whole career on believing what they said, that I would become a professor if I stuck with it and got my doctorate. But I didn't WANT to be a professor, so, believing them, I left the program. Perhaps that was foolish faith, but it was faith; I believed that they were right and that's what would happen. I was under the impression that at least most people in the program were there because they thought their studies could help them meet their career goals. Once I became convinced that the program could not do that for me I left.

~ Meg

66. Espionage (CIA, KGB, FBI) File, Pt. 8 (Sarbin & Eoyang, pt. 3) (Was: Spy File, Part VIII (Sarbin, et al Cont'd - again))

I wish I could say I'm all rested up and raring to go this morning, but I'm not. I'm still tired. Nevertheless, I'm up, so... on with the show!

***

This is our last chapter in this book:

Chapter 9, Work Organizations as Contexts for Trust and Betrayal, by James H. Morris and Dennis J. Moberg, p. 163-187.

Actually, the subject of this chapter also comes up in sources in other files too.

***

"Three work-process conditions increase the need for personal trust between functionality interdependent workers: (1) ambiguous or dynamic tasks, (2) difficulty in observing tasks, (2) outcomes that are hard to assess (Govindarajan and Fisher, 1990; Ouchi, 1979)." (p. 166)

I'll discuss these in the next chapter sections, which are based on these three situations.

***

"Ambiguous or Dynamic Tasks...

Fiduciary responsibility requires the trustee to preserve the interests of those who have conferred trust (e.g., the employer, the military organization, the government), and it requires the trustee to subordinate his or her own self-interest....

"The distinction between technical competence and fiduciary responsibility should be important in deliberations about conferring personal trust... It is probably easy to think of examples in which people whom we know to have the technical skill to perform a job well cannot always be relied on to do so of their own volition, and vice versa." (p. 167)

I'm going to address the issues here in relation to my work in Vienna. I don't think I have ever given any employer reason to think that there is reason to doubt my 'fiduciary responsibility' as implied in the last sentence here quoted. I'm the kind of person that you want on your committee - I'm going to pull my own weight and come through. And if there is any doubt that I'll be able to complete a task within the given perimeters I work the communication channels to make sure everyone who needs to know about this does. However, the issue in Vienna was not regarding whether I would do my work or not; it wasn't about my 'fiduciary responsibility'.

***

"Behaviors That Are Difficult to Observe...

"Examples of jobs in which the trustee's behavior is difficult to observe include traveling salespersons, missionaries, and covert intelligence agents. In each of these jobs, the trustee's actual conduct is difficult to observe because of physical distance from the colleagues or parent organizations who have conferred trust. Yet even when jobs are conducted in close proximity to one another, it can be difficult to observe task behaviors in a meaningful way because (1) particular patterns of behavior cannot reliably be linked to desired results (e.g., many different ways of doing the job may be appropriate for the objective at hand, but the observer cannot determine which ways are and are not appropriate) or (2) the behaviors of the trustee are deliberately veiled." (p. 168)

I'm not sure I necessarily like "missionaries" being so closely aligned with "covert intelligence agents," but even following "traveling salespersons" involves some distasteful issues.

But getting back to my situation in Vienna... since I was an office worker, my work wasn't any more difficult to monitor than your average secretary, although I did do a little traveling for the mission. I don't think I "deliberately veiled" anything involving the carrying out of my duties. Whatever task I was given I tried to carry out to the best of my ability, and I don't think there was ever any question about that.

***

"In summary, work organizations cannot always remove the need for personal trust between members, nor can they fully indemnify such trust when it emerges. What organizations can do, however, is to encourage local work contexts in which the members themselves develop covenantal understandings, strong normative regulation, and loyal commitments to one another - all of which are important social conditions for the rational bestowal of personal trust." (p. 171)

Since there was a lot of ambiguity about what the mission's intentions towards me were (i.e., suggestions about this or that opportunity somewhere down the pike), I'm just going to address what my concrete responsibilities were in actuality. I eventually felt like the mission would not really trust me until it had a firm grip on my whole life, including relationships and extracurricular activities. If you know anything about me, however, you should know my basic personality doesn't agree with such confinements. I'm not inclined to give anyone that kind of control or influence over my life.

***

The next section of the chapter is:

"Organizational Control Systems and Need for Personal Trust"

"All organizations must rely to some degree on external controls (e.g., written job descriptions, rules, policies, standard operating procedures, hierarchical supervision, productive or sales quotas, formal performance appraisal systems, phone monitoring, and polygraph examinations), but such controls typically are aimed at preserving the impersonal trust inherent to the employment relationship, namely, the meeting of formally prescribed role expectations. As we suggested above, however, in certain circumstances, functionally dependent organization members must convey personal trust in their colleagues to contribute the spontaneous, unprescribed actions that are necessary to get the job done well, and to preserve the good faith that is elemental to that trust. External controls alone can neither encourage nor maintain such personal trust among functionally dependent organization members.

By contrast, internal control systems rely less on official mandates and surveillance and more on participant self-control and peer influence... An emphasis on internal control seems particularly apropos when the need for personal trust is high. Instead of focusing on detection and correction of inappropriate behavior, internal control systems rely on creating contexts in which informal (e.g., social) impediments to incompetent or self-interested behavior tend to arise..." (p. 171-172)

Now I'm sure that the list of relevant professions mentioned in the earlier quote ("traveling salespersons, missionaries, and covert intelligence agents") wasn't necessarily meant to be exhaustive, but suggestive, but I'm going to let the list limit my discussion anyway.

My job description in Vienna was as a secretary (albeit in a missionary setting), but I wasn't a missionary in the sense most likely intended here, wherein a person has the hands-on people-contact type of mission work. So as far as the job is concerned, I don't think that you could say I met the "missionary" criteria for purposes of this discussion. Now, I wouldn't say that the mission was exactly "covert intelligence" either, but I do think that my situation actually has more in common with a "covert intelligence" context than with "missionary." In a covert intelligence setting I suspect that it to a certain point it doesn't really matter what your actual position is; if you are a secretary in a covert intelligence office, then this need for "internal control" even extends you, and not just the agents out in the field. The agents, for example, need to know that you are reliable and won't blow their cover. This is the kind of thing that was going on in Vienna. In regards to the need for internal or external control my situation was more like that of a secretary in a covert operations office than that of a secretary in a mission office.

If that doesn't make sense to you now, you'll have plenty of opportunity later on to catch on.

***

"Under internal control systems, the group uses its social influence to regulate members' work activities. Identification with and loyalty to one's colleagues are thought to be engendered when a group members sees himself or herself as a pivotal contributor to the group's outcomes and when the group is viewed by the member to be an important source of personal success" (p. 173)

This sounds foreign to me. I include it here because this might point to something else going on in my Vienna experience that isn't addressed in this text. For example, I don't remember thinking that the group used its influence to regulate my work activities - the actual job I did. There may have been some of that, but the off-hours influence was what I sensed most. Maybe that's just because I did technically do my job fully to my best abilities and so there was no need to apply pressure there, or that wasn't an area where I could be influenced, and so the focus for my experience was off-hours activities.

***

This next chapter section is...

Personal Trust and Personal Betrayal in the Work Setting

"... [P]ivotal expectations involve covenantal understandings about moral conduct, justice, and human decency that are more fundamental than the formal codes and mandates emplaced by any particular organization. Pivotal expectations can also be distinguished by the high degree of psychological investment or commitment that inheres in the people who hold them. Although they may be implicit, pivotal expectations are sacred - they have a powerful and fundamental influence on the person who holds them and are elemental to that person's sense of social identity. In this respect, pivotal expectations serve as constraints not only on the person toward whom they are held but also on the person who holds them toward others...

... For the person who holds them, violations of pivotal expectations can constitute significant, perhaps catastrophic, disturbances to the social foundations of personal trust." (p. 175-176)

This section, in contrast to a lot of the earlier discussion, refers to how I felt regarding the mission. I hope you can see by now that I have fundamental beliefs that the mission in Vienna betrayed, in my view. It was indeed catastrophic to me, and even to this day the horror of it extends to churches who I see as being "accomplices in the crime" by their unwillingness to hold the missions accountable, not just for how I was treated, but for their general modus operandi. This lack of willing oversight has created in me a great ambivalence regarding churches, even when I would otherwise agree with their theology. In this way, the catastrophe continues to this day in the form of how I relate to/feel about churches in the here and now.

***

The next section is...

"A Prototype of Feeling Betrayed"

"We propose that four dimensions are primary objects of attention in the reasoning that a victim does when a trustee violates the victim's pivotal expectations in the work setting: (1) sufficient harm, (2) intentionality, (3) personalization, and (4) inadequate redress." (p. 176)

That's me... I feel that sufficient harm was done intentionally to me personally with inadequate redress in Vienna. That is, all four of these sub-parts describe me/my situation vis a vis the Vienna mission(s).

***

I'm skipping over points 1 and 2 above and going to 3, about personalization. After explaining how there are levels of personalization, from the highest being against the person solely and directly down to actions taken against the larger group that the person identifies with. At the end of this discussion on personalization the text concludes that:

"Overall, personalization is perhaps the key dimension in determining the emotional stink of personal trust violation because it threatens the victim's views of his or her own social identity and sense of agency... High personalization requires the victim to adjust orientations toward the particular transgressor. But perhaps more unfortunately, it can so disturb the victim's fundamental views of self and others that the victim is less able to trust anyone." (p. 182)

My dad later picked up on this, but in a situation where it was totally irrelevant, implying, I think, that an action I took was out of paranoia. Let me explain. That particular context was when I dropped out of my doctoral studies, which my dad attributed to my lack of trust in the leadership of the program. But the main reason was that I kept hearing that I was on a track to become a professor and it's not that in general I didn't want to be a professor, but I didn't want to be a professor in Adult Education because I hadn't realized before that the field of adult education in the USA (in contrast to many other countries, but far from all) is focused mainly on supporting the workforce. In other countries there are stronger individual improvement segments of the field (think European Folk High School) or grassroots community development (e.g., participatory action research) or popular education (Brazil's Paolo Freire and beyond). I'm not the least interested in dedicating my life to making sure that corporations (who are "persons" in US law) can have workers to meet their interests, which may or may not be the best interests of the workers. Even ESL and literacy in the US is so mainstream, I tried and tried to find popular education programs here and I was shocked at how few and far between these are. THAT is why I dropped out, not because of lack of trust or paranoia. That was my reason at the time and it remains so to this day. After I left the program I went on to do social movement learning research ON MY OWN for which I gave numerous conference presentations. Sorry, dad, you're wrong here. Later I read that in a book on the history of the American Library Association that in the 1920s (I believe that's when it was) ALA was considering developing closer connections to the then manifestation of adult education association (there were several changes throughout the years in adult education association name and function in the USA), but they found, even back then, that adult education was too conservative, so they decided not to proceed that with that collaboration.

But back to the text. Yes, my trust in other churches is not what it was prior to my Vienna experience. But I think of it as being a case of knowing too much and not believing that anything's changed and believing also that churches back home don't have any problem with that modus operandi, which I still disagree with completely (can you tell?). Sometimes when I find a church that that isn't an issue with I might have other problems, like general disagreements of theology, which is not particularly related to the Vienna issue. After all, I was raised in a pretty opinionated church context, way before anything about Vienna came into play.

***

Now on to the 4th issue, inadequate redress.

"...[R]edress can involve efforts by the trust violator to (1) undo the harm or remove its objective effects, (2) soothe the implications of high perceived intentionality and personalization, as with an apology..., or (3) provide compensation after the fact for acknowledged harm." (p. 183)

The missions in Vienna did none of these things, and I suspect they may well think they did nothing wrong in relation to me. I also think that some things happened to me specifically which they weren't aware of, or which only a few might have known. The problem with the likelihood of there could have even been an effective redress is that 1) I felt that how I was treated was a part of the modus operandi in general, although perhaps in a rather extreme manifestation of it, but not out of character, and 2) if what happened vis a vis my experiences while with the mission involved other things related to my dad, they might not have even been able to do anything about it without putting the ministry at risk. If part of my experience in Vienna was connected with my dad's work, then it could very well be that the mission or only very few of them knew about these kinds of things. If that is the case, they might have been somewhere bewildered also at my actions, not being completely aware of all of the causes of my actions. Even so, the mission did enough clearly on its own, things that it quite clearly and actively did in relation to me, for whatever reason, that I think I had/have reasonable cause to "feel betrayed."

***

"Given a strong sense of personal betrayal, the victim's efforts at redress are likely to depend on his or her sense of power and control over the transgressor or parties who have the capacity to extract restitution from the transgressor." (p. 184)

After about 5 months into my time in Vienna, I realized I was up against a behemoth, and began to feel pretty powerless to wield any influence. For a long time, though, I did hold out a little glimmer of hope that I would be found to be a valuable worker and we could talk openly (which would have to have entailed a certain amount of equality of relationship considering my virtually lost faith in them). Eventually I realized that that was just wishful thinking and naivete on my part.

***

That's all for that book, but I'll talk about some of these things from different perspectives more as we go on, especially in a couple other files that deal with these kinds of issues.

~ Meg