The Curriculum
Ingredient 1 - The Invisible Slip ‘n Slide
(Participant Card Number One - handed out to an Individual in the rotation)
“Let’s look around at each other and have empathy for each other because.”
(Class All Together please - using Participation Card number two for Ingredient 1.)
“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”
Discussion: Using the lists we made for Bigger vs Smaller people, ask students to think about and discuss experiences that might cause a person to move from bigger to smaller, to move from positive to negative, from hopeful to worried, from happy to depressed, from accepting and open minded to closed minded, to become jaded, fearful, bitter, resentful, jealous and hateful.
Supplemental guidance for facilitators to be considered and offered at their discretion.
(Consider using Participant Cards here: rotating individual participants, please have them speak loudly and clearly)
Life throws at us great challenges and disappointing life experiences, which are hard to overcome.
Not being cared for properly or loved the way we were meant to be can change us.
Being unheard, disrespected, rejected ,or victimized can change us.
Seeing bad things happen to good people can change us.
Seeing acts of pure evil in the world can change us.
It can cause us to move from trusting to distrusting, from compassionate to resentful, from happy to sad, from positive to negative, from loving to bitter and hateful.
Poor Parenting, Trauma - Discuss: Do you think this is a factor?
(Consider writing this sub-ingredient on a slot on the Ingredient Wheel if you believe this is a major factor in how and why people detach from their natural born optimism and hope.)
Unwanted Negative Thoughts and Anxiety - Is this a factor?
(Consider including this sensitive - but true topic - as a sub-ingredient on the Ingredient Wheel):
Facilitate a discussion about naturally occurring negative thoughts and anxiety: A certain amount of anxiety exists in each of us. It’s built into our nervous systems and is completely normal. This naturally occurring anxiety includes unwanted negative thoughts, worry, and irrational fears that we don’t ask for. Unwanted anxiety and negative thoughts hurt and confuse millions of Americans. We have to work very hard to overcome our negative thoughts.
“Fight or Flight” - Primal Instincts
(Consider discussion this sensitive - but true- sub-ingredient on the Ingredient Wheel as you continue to discuss the Invisible Slip and Slide from natural born capacity for goodness and virtue)
Certain primal instincts, which were useful years ago, when we were hunters and gatherers, but not so much today -are still ingrained inside a part of our brain.
Our “fight or flight” instincts cause us to fear other people in irrational ways, to adopt strong defense systems to counter the exaggerated risk we feel.
Our primal instincts make us obsessively concerned with creating a meaningful identity, to be seen, heard, to feel important.
All Together Participation Card: “If we are not careful, we can attach to a dark path, and become a smaller person with as much passion as we can for being a larger person.”
There is a reason why we use four slots on the Ingredient Wheel for the Invisible Slip and Slide, because cognitive distortions, including loss of balanced thinking, loss of humility, and loss of virtue, are all impairments found in the human mind, which are highly complex. They cause us to falter and lack the courage and strength to stay on the natural path.
(Participant Card here)
These human impairments make up a high percentage of what causes individuals to detach from virtue and a society only unravels after individuals unravel.
(All together Participation please: )
The people who suffer these impairments and these conditions are human like us, and it most often at no fault of their own.
Let’s discuss the following quotations:
(Participant Card)
“Once a human mind closes, it's very hard to open.”
“When we don’t use our gifts, or we lose them.”
When we are born, there are no bad people. There are only people who lose their way, and most often it is at no fault of their own.
The slide is often gradual, and invisible, and it’s a matter of degrees - We all slide away from our higher girts, to one extent or the other. We often learn too late the truth about the difficulties of just being human. However, what we know for sure about American society is that the work of maintaining a positive outlook, the disposition and temperament to do the work of democracy, has become a test that many of us fail.
Nobody knows why staying emotionally well enough to do the work of democracy and live in harmony with other people is such hard work.
But it is not easy work. Staying confident, compassionate, kind, and courteous, and having the temperament to put up with different opinions that we deem are a threat to our very way of life, is hard - It’s a lifetime pursuit, but it can be done.
In the last few years, there have been revolutionary breakthroughs about how the human mind works, which we never had before!
Today, our society has the tools and practices to teach people how to bring out their best and limit their worst.
Recommended Reading and Resources:
Awareness and empathy of the human condition: Letters To Mikey, Chapters 3, 7, and 10.
Re anxiety, which occurs in all of us: “Thriving With Anxiety”, by David Rosman.
The field of Positive Psychology. Writings of Dr. Martin Seligman. Dr. Jonathan Haight.
(Note: This section concerns the issue of keeping people well enough to handle the vigors of a complex world. The foregoing is geared to help provide kids with the perspective they need. However, this course is not intended to offer medical advice, rather only to start the process of awareness, through a lens of understanding our human nature, and having empathy for it.)
