Paulo Freire wrote an intriguing book titled, “Education for Critical Consciousness” which is so appropriate to this day & time that I’ll just share a few quotes here (I recommend reading the whole book though):
“Become transforming agents of our own social reality in order to become subjects, rather than objects, of our own history.”
“What is it that blocks oppressed Americans from controlling their own social destiny? Lack of certain skills? Inability to manipulate the law to their own ends the way the dominant class does? Faulty ideology? Inability to organize locally beyond mere self-interest? Do most people {Americans} recognize themselves as either oppressed or oppressors, or do they see themselves as inert beneficiaries, & thereby passive connivers, in impersonal structures of oppression?”
“The phase between a yesterday which is losing relevance but still seeking to survive & a tomorrow which is gaining substance is a Time of Announcement, a Time of Decision.”
“Sectarianism is mostly emotional & uncritical. The sectarian disrespects the choices of others while trying to impose his own choice on everyone else. He loves sloganizing, which never rises above falsehoods & half-truths, & he attributes absolute value to the purely relative. For the sectarian, the people matter only as a support for his own goals.”
SEAN BROWN
DOC #1083630
I think most people see themselves as oppressed, or inert beneficiaries. Not many people tend to outright view themselves as the oppressor. Only the truly maniacal.
“All the power it [The State] has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power…The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.” -Albert Jay Nock