Mere minutes after finishing a 5 week course on Embodiment and Risk with Centre for Leadership and Learning in Risk (CLLR), this arrives (see below)
PHSCON 2025 mail out
More about this promo later.
When Social Psychology of Risk talks about ‘Persons’ and Personhood?’
Here is a definition as understood by SPoR
‘… an identifiable, embodied individual human with social being, self-understanding/reflection, self- consciousness (awareness) and agentive capability. Being connotes a compelling self comprehension of oneself in the world with significance and a phenomenal sense of the present, an unconscious and transcendence. Agency refers to reflective capability, deliberative action in accordance with an ideology, desires, care about the world and beliefs.
But let’s not stop there, we can refer to p.30 SPoR Handbook (available free from here https://www.humandymensions.com/product/the-social-psychology-of-risk-handbook/ )
- A person is first and foremost a social subject. Personhood can only be understood in relation to others socially and psychologically. We participate in Socialitie (the holistic resonance of all humans with other humans ) and can only be defined intercorporeally (Fuchs).
- As embodied persons we are affected by all that happens in, to, around and for us. Interaffectivity, (Fuchs) determines all our actions and limits any sense of autonomy. Whilst human persons have a degree of autonomy this is incomplete and relative to identity, context and the collective unconscious. Individuality is only confirmed in relation to Socialitie.
- As embodied persons we act as agents in decision making. Most human decisions affect others and involve a degree of self-consciousness, however, this is not complete either.
- Humans are conscious, subconscious (deficit – Freud), non-conscious (Damasio) and unconscious (positive – Jung).
- As self conscious knowers we don’t know all things, humans are fallible and limited as agents. In this sense, persons are unable to anticipate all things (mortal) and so cannot anticipate many consequences of their limited ability to choose (finite). Yet despite this, as embodied persons, humans possess an essential unity. Human persons are identified with their body and their soul/spirit/personality.
- Humans are not just rational beings but also moral, emotional and unconscious beings. They are not objects nor machines in a system, they are participants in their own ecology.
- As self-conscious limited agents humans discover, imagine and create not just physically but semiotically, in language, discourse, sign systems, metaphor, poetics, aesthetics and creation of meaning and purpose (semiosis).
- As choosers human persons are valuers, for to chose is to value. Most importantly, human persons dream and enter into knowing unconsciously including, the creation of music, art, dance, religion and poetics.
- A critical capability of personhood is the making of meaning and purpose through language and semiotics (sign and symbols systems).
- Personhood is strongly anchored to feelings and e-motions and these are expressed through language, semiotics, reasoning, metaphor and moral action. Persons are able to discover, initiate, create and initiate language and behaviours with and without determination/necessity.
- All of these qualities and capabilities mean that a human person lives and acts in dialectic with their environment, culture, embodiment and fallibility.
- Persons cannot sit at anytime in absolutes neither can they know perfection. Everything persons do is contingent on their sociliatie and humanity. A critical aspect of human personhood is coming to grips with fallibility, vulnerability and uncertainty and the nature of learning, development and risk.
- Persons are also teleological, that is, they are shaped and formed by their ends. Humans know that when they bury their dead they are viewing their own death and so this facilitates the creation of meaning, even religious meaning in living.
This list is not complete but it is a good start.
We never know everything about a subject, in fact we know more than we can say (Polanyi)
Below is our white board of reflections of the five weeks of learning that we discussed today.
It would be rare to see any of this language or focus in any discussion in Risk or Safety. Yet all of this is central to the challenge of helping people tackle risk. So, back to the VIP Dinner.
What makes a Person a ‘Very Important Person’?
Apparently $400.00
This is transactional, not relational, not social. And at all these dinners, it’s always an ethic of utility. What can I get out of attending? Networking is not about engaging others but looking for opportunities to ‘sell’ or ‘tell’. And, usually the only thing that moves (learns), is the bank balance of the organisers.
In SPoR we talk about meeting, the dialectic, the tension between two points, or as Buber frames it – ‘ i-thou ’.
In i-thou we relinquish power to the other, and this brings understanding through listening. And when we do this, we begin to engage with their Personhood.
If ever there was a time when we should stop treating persons as objects or a ‘means to an end’, it is now.
This year, Social Psychology of Risk comes to the USA.
If any of this Resonates with you, we would love to see you in Houston in May 2025.
Registration Here: https://linktr.ee/SPoR.USA.may2025
Matt Thorne
Latest posts by Matt Thorne (see all)
- VIP, Just pay at the door! - March 4, 2025
- Resonance and Risk - February 18, 2025
- In 2022 The world economic forum predicted this - January 14, 2025
- Social Psychology of Risk comes to the USA - December 31, 2024
- What is your Risk iCue?- Houston May 2025 - November 14, 2024
Rob Long says
Funny, in Sydney the notion of VIP is used for a gambling venue. The idea is you will be treated specially by some machine that is most likely to rob you blind. But hey, you’re gonna feel good while your wallet empties. Such is the mythology of VIP language we market to suckers who believe the hype and propaganda.