Paulo Freire, born on the 19th of September in 1921, was a Brazilian philosopher and radical pedagogue most known for his 1968 work Pedagogy of the Oppressed. "Language is never neutral."

Paulo was born in Recife, the capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco. Initially affluent, his family experienced hardship during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and Freire's education suffered due to his own experiences with poverty and hunger.

Freire began working as a schoolteacher in the 1940s, beginning to serve as the director of the Pernambuco Department of Education and Culture in 1946. Due to the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, where a military dictatorship was put in place with the support of the United States, Paulo Freire was exiled from his home country, an exile that lasted 16 years.

Freire then worked in Chile, until April 1969 when he accepted a temporary position at Harvard University. It was during this period, in 1968, that Freire published his most famous work, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed".

In this text, Freire criticizes what he calls the "banking method" of education, wherein a teacher "deposits" knowledge into an empty vessel, the student, or "bank". Instead, Freire calls upon teacher to engage in a more dialog-centric or creative education, one in which the suppressed experiences of the oppressed help create knowledge, fostering a social reality in which the marginalized are humanized.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed has since become the third most cited book in the social sciences, according to Elliott D. Green. As of 2000, the book had sold over 750,000 copies worldwide.

"Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination."

Paulo Freire

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  • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
    ·
    2 months ago

    How does anyone quit smoking cigarettes?

    (I have never intentionally smoked nicotine I'm not asking for advice)

    I can barely manage my THC consumption enough to keep it relatively stable and i don't have to fight the urge to buy it every time I buy gas or groceries.

    Anyone who has quit any drug that's actually hardcore addictive with serious withdrawals too, I can't even imagine the willpower.

    If you've got that much control over your mind and body you're basically a superhero to me

      • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Is it because of how readily available tobacco is or because of the chemical itself? A secret third factor?

        • anonochronomus [comrade/them, she/her]
          ·
          2 months ago

          Most likely a little column A, a little column B. Plus addicts love ritual. The act of fixing up your junk before you use it can be just as addictive as the substance itself. For example, I've known people who quit smack but kept shooting up water just because they were addicted to the needle and the rituals around using. I feel like smoking is the same way, regardless of the nicotine there's some relief in satisfying the craving.

    • Iwishiwasntthisway
      ·
      2 months ago

      I quit a number of times. You just stop cold turkey and then hate everyone and everything for 3-5 days and then you're good until you start again

      • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Right it's the 3-5 days where you don't succumb to the "who cares fuck it" impulse that astonishes me

    • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      The way I did it was to start vaping with non-nicotine vape juice while tapering off smokes. The vape slowly took the place of the psychological need for the action of smoking while the physical need for nicotine was lowered. I also started mixing my own vape flavors because it is way cheaper than buying it. Then I ran out of smokes I just didn't buy any more. I kept vaping for a few months and when I ran out of ingredients to make more vape juice I just kinda gave up.

      • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
        ·
        2 months ago

        I can see that, just a gradual separation from everything tying you to the cigarettes