A Central Role for the MarginalizedEvolutionary Context
There is a unique opportunity for members of communities who feel they have been marginalized to contribute to the redirecting of humanity, thus a central role for the marginalized (CRM). This role can be to help move humanity beyond a psychology of fear.
Moving beyond a psychology of fear may have evolution valence, for it is how we treat each other out fear that literally threatens our human existence today. In order to "fight" a mentality, however, one must be able to live above that mentality oneself. This is thus about psychological discipline as a foundation to political strategizing. It behooves members of the groups who are victims of fear-based state of human psychology to reframe their marginalization as an evolutionary call to help catalyze the development human psychology beyond being fear-based. In this context, being on the margin can have an evolutionary purpose to move the center.
A first step in heeding that call is internal work. Most “movement”, “liberation” work has focused on making an external agent (“oppressor”) do what is right. That is, trying to force those who practice fear-based thinking, e.g. racism, to move beyond that practice. But why should they? It is the responsibility of those who are victims of fear-based thinking to develop a psychology that is more resistant to that practice. Simply put, in order to make those who practice fear-based thinking move beyond that practice, those who are victims of that practice must first (psycho-spiritually) move beyond that psychology themselves. Refocusing the movement work on internal work is a prerequisite to having the psychological strength to transform the external forces.
There are two fundamental challenges facing the marginalized communities are: (1) The weakness of the bond that connects the members of these communities and (2) The inadequacy of enough of the present community institutions to address enough of the fundamentals of enough of the needs of enough of the members of these communities.
The Weakness of the Human Bonds: The bonds of being a member of these communities are not stronger than the challenges facing the members of these communities. That is because, psychologically, the core bond that define the marginalized communities are often are intrinsically bonds of oppression. It is problematic to try to build community around pain. To be clear, the bonds among individuals of non-marginalized communities are also problematic. It is just that they have less social burdens. So comparing the relationship of community bond (social capital) to social burden, those of marginalized communities are at a disadvantage.
The Inadequacy of the Institutions: A critical function of institutions like family/friends, church, school, job/career, and leisure/entertainment is to support the mind health of the individuals they service. It is on this clinical premise that these institutions are lacking. The analysis of these institutions as clinical structures introduces the concept of psycho-cultural infrastructures.Psycho-cultural infrastructure is much related to social capital. Fuller discussion of this point is being made elsewhere.
Specific to the community peoples of African descent, for example, with their major institutions being church and family, sports and entertainment, these institutions, in their present formats, are lacking in clinical power to address the depth of the needs of members of these communities.
At Vaya Institute we have identified where each of these psycho-cultural infrastructures are weak from a clinical point of view on a 21-point scale, and developed a tool that is strong where these institutions are weak. We call this: Human Community Process (HCP). HCP is in essence a spirito-bio-psycho-social model of mind health. Vaya will be offering exposure to this model in different forms: social activities, consultation, therapy, and training.
Vaya is proposing to work with ALL including members and organizations in marginalized communities to develop a comprehensive psycho-cultural program specific to each community—this is our Human Core\Community Project (HCP’) initiative
HCP will address this fundamental disparity between community strength (resources) and community needs. It will do so at the level of both economic and psycho-cultural infrastructures. With these two components in place, a stronger political power base will naturally develop.
In conclusion, should members of marginalized communities choose to claim leadership in the internal movement work of helping to catalyze human development beyond a psychology of fear, they will, in one step, engage in a cultural process that will create bonds within their communities that are stronger than the challenges facing these communities. And from a business point of view, they can champion the market as practitioners of holistic approach to mind health. They would be transforming their weakness into a strength: They would be “once-victim- of-weak-human-community-bonds” to come to be known as a “community-of-people-who-champion-a-technology-that-strengthens human-bonds. In other words, they would be known as once a community where the bond was marginalization to a community where the bond is the shared mastery of the question: “What Does Being Human Mean to You?
Discussion lunch/dinner presentation parties are held weekly. Registration required
