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Time and again, courageous enlightened people are faced with the question of how to reach out to their fellow human beings intellectually and emotionally in order to be able to take away their individual and collective prejudices.

At a time when, according to President Putin, the danger of nuclear war is growing (1) and the self-destruction of humanity is possible, we need fellow citizens more than ever to tell us what is truth and what is a lie.

Insights of scientific psychology still little in demand

The answer of humanistic psychology to the question raised could be: Not to be afraid of fellow human beings, to join forces with them, to empathise with them and appeal to them without coercion.

What beneficial effects it would have for our children and our social coexistence if we could give up the fear of fellow human beings and set them free. Man is a harmless being and by nature not evil but good (Alfred Adler). People – even the mentally ill – would become healthy. Some mature people already guessed this in the century before last and depth psychology proved them right (2).

Although enlightenment through alternative media is perceived as important, fewer and fewer people are able to solve their own life problems because of the economic and social decline in the country. Therefore, a peaceful world will only come about with a profound change in the current conditions. However, for such a world, people will not set themselves in motion until they are able to solve their own problems. Humanistic psychology and non-speculative psychotherapies offer promising solutions for this.

At a time when boundless social hardship and injustice continue to be perpetuated and will even intensify, world-threatening wars are staged and the tremendous progress of nature and technology is misused to the detriment and harm of people, we are all the more dependent on the insights of modern depth psychological research.

But the knowledge of the psychological faculty is still little in demand today, because its research results are relatively new, little known and difficult to communicate. Moreover, they are not appreciated or even fought against by those in power. Only when it is recognised that humanity cannot progress without psychology will people gratefully draw on their findings.

According to the findings of depth psychology, the starting point for the problem at hand should be education.

Barrack yard in education – “that’s where the dog is buried”.

Of course, parents teach the child the rules of decency: how to behave well at the table, for example, and how to wash their hands thoroughly beforehand. But most parents don’t take the trouble to teach the child, “come with me, see how I wash my hands!” and explain to him why he should wash his hands.

There is usually coercion involved in parenting, “Go wash your hands first before you come to the table, otherwise you’ll get a slap!” The whole attitude of the parents is the coercion, the violence, the barrack yard. And that makes children sick, corrupts their souls at a young age. You don’t have to force people to cooperate, the child likes to cooperate without coercion. It is precisely coercion and violence that stifle the child’s natural need to cooperate.

As adults, these people then do not find their way; they cannot live together with their partner and marriages perish because they have different opinions about education, about other people and about the world.

The world will only recover and humanity will only progress – history shows us this – if people associate on a voluntary basis; if they sit down together and think about how they can solve the problems together. Freedom in the sense of voluntariness is an essential part of man’s social nature. Misusing it can have serious consequences.

Negative example of the Russian Revolution and the treatment of religious people

In Russia, the leaders of the revolution misjudged people and used coercion; they could not let people go free. If Russia had chosen the humanist path, even in part, the Second World War might have been prevented.

After all, the people go along with it, they want to live. In Russia, the people freed themselves in the October Revolution, but afterwards they did not become independent. In a society that organises itself into two classes – one that governs and one that is governed – two ideologies, two mentalities develop: the mentality of the slave/servant and that of the master. Such an organisation makes freedom impossible.

And how did the Bolsheviks behave towards religious people? They locked the churches and turned them into meeting places. In doing so, they hurt people deep inside, in their faith, in their dependence, in their fear. Was the Russian peasant converted by this? No! He was involuntarily against it. Today we know that you don’t have to take religion away from people: “Do you want to pray?” Yes, pray!”

One could have appealed to the farmers: “What, you don’t want to insure your field, your grain? Your neighbour will get a possible damage paid out by the insurance company in roubles and can buy new grain. And you? Who will help you if you don’t join the community of the insured?” The Russian revolutionaries were just not that far ahead because the problem of psychology was not yet known.

Giving people freedom so that they like to participate and become healthy.

Freedom does not mean the freedom of the rulers. They take the “freedom” to exploit people: A clique of capitalists exploits other people. They then have no right to live, freedom is only pretended to them. A servant, for example, has to remain a servant all his life; he cannot marry, cannot start a family, because he is a servant. But when the president or leader calls, he cannot say NO. He could say, “But I have nothing, therefore I have nothing to defend!”

“Freedom” is to be understood in the sense that people have their security and do not have to beg. Let us imagine the principle of freedom in such a way that every working person knows that if he can no longer work, for example if he falls ill or becomes old, that he will then have the same opportunity to live, that he will continue to receive the wage he has today, that he can keep his flat and possibly his little house and that he can continue to live. In the capitalist system, people have no peace and no security. They would have that in a free society.

Man is a harmless being after all – especially the one in today’s capitalist society. He is attuned to work. He would be happy for a little freedom. Even the sick would be dealt with, they would not be a nuisance. If mentally ill people find a different society, a different situation, a different moral conception, then they become healthy and behave differently.

Let people be free, don’t demand anything from them. They will gladly accept it. Let us associate with people, let us believe in them, let us empathise with them and appeal to them. The other person wants to live as well as I do. Then he will join in. We don’t have to be afraid of our fellow human beings.

Appealing to people and letting them decide freely

People are programmed by all institutions – starting with education at home and in school and going all the way up to recruit school – so that they usually do whatever those in power ask them to do. That is programme, that is conscious. And they are kept in this mood all their lives – both so-called intellectuals and the mass of the population. So today, young as well as older “mobile phone addicts” are completely surrendering themselves to the values of big, mean-spirited tech giants.

But at the same time, we can see that both young people and older citizens are more than willing to engage in a face-to-face conversation in a coffee shop or on the bus, if you don’t come across as a know-it-all who already knows when you are really interested in their personal problems and choose a way of expressing yourself that everyone can understand. It is very important to appeal only to them and let them decide freely.

In written statements, too, it is a matter of conveying even the most difficult depth psychological insights and findings in a language that can be understood not only by the expert but also by the interested layperson.

The question posed at the beginning remains how to reach as many fellow human beings as possible intellectually and emotionally so that they will one day stand up against injustice – intellectually, emotionally and politically.

Grassroots or grassroots movements emerge from the grassroots of the population

The interesting idea of creating a grassroots movement was voiced by a friend during an international webinar debate.

According to “Wikipedia”, a grassroots movement is a social initiative or movement that emerges from the grassroots of the population:

“Grassroots movements typically have grassroots democratic and consensus-based structures, as they seek to bypass the usual lobbying or party-political opinion-forming process. Change is to be achieved through committed articulation of citizens’ interests (…). (…).

The aim of some grassroots initiatives is to build social alternatives to the existing, up to the revolutionary claim of bringing about fundamental systemic changes. In doing so, they rely both on the long-term development of networks and on spectacular individual actions, which are primarily intended to create publicity. Not infrequently, the methods of civil disobedience are used.” (3)

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel holds a doctorate in education (Dr. paed.) and a degree in psychology (Dipl.-Psych.). For many decades he was a teacher (headmaster) and trained educational professionals. As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice.

Notes

(1) https://de.rt.com/kurzclips/video/156642-putin-bedrohung-atomkrieges-waechst-russischer/

(2) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=28358; https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-with-whom-can-we-reorganise-society/5800536

(3) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graswurzelbewegung

Featured image is from The Free Farm