Humanity and Unfinishedness

Freire’s work in “Pedagogy of Freedom” brings up many interesting viewpoints on human nature. The point that I feel that he is trying to drive home early in the chapter is the fact that as humans, we are unfinished. We are born, but not yet living. We merely exist at that point. By going through life and learning about the world around us, we then start living. Even at that point, we are still unfinished. Freire (p.54) states, “The invention of our existence developed through our interaction with the material world at our disposal, creating a life support in which life…became sustainable.” I feel that in our lifetimes, we are born existing, and by going through life, we are working towards self completion. We are never truly finished, but we are consistently building upon ourselves to reach it.

Freire goes on and begins talking about conditioning ourselves. He states, “Yet conscious of such condition, I know that I can go beyond it, which is the essential difference between conditioned and determined existence.” By accepting that we are unfinished, we can develop ourselves. We are not on a one track path of existence. The world is an open canvas for us to fill over our lifetime. This concept of being unfinished is a wonderful idea. It knocks people who are up on their pedestal down a few notches while it brings those who think lowly of themselves a hope to grow and make progress in their lives.

In our class last Wednesday, we had a discussion with two speakers. In this discussion, we learned about how our premonitions and perceptions of different people affect our judgments. We also learned that we are not free of preconceived notions from other people. In the current state of the world, we will all be subject to prejudices based on our race, culture, gender, along with many other social factors. It made me think about how different people treat others along with me based on these factors. However, it is these factors that allow us to take shape in the world. Gender, race, and culture are only a few of the myriad of various factors we are born with that shape us from amorphous blobs to individual people.

Understanding these traits will help us attain a better grasp on the world around us. As Freire (p. 62), “Good sense leads into critical epistemology, without which good sense is likely to lead to erroneous conclusions.” By using good sense, we can think critically about people, situations, and ideas. However, without critical thinking, it can lead us astray into faulty conclusions or half baked ideas. Prejudices and false perceptions is the fruit of the absence of critical thinking. It is not enough to know the facts. We must also understand them and apply them to our world.

Being an unfinished human myself, I agree with Freire. People are never finished growing. The world is always evolving and because of this, humans should always be keeping up. There is no complete, because if there were, there is no longer room to grow. By saying that you are complete, you are putting a capacity on yourself which you have already filled. The idea that we are always unfinished is saying that there is limitless potential and growth.