One major block to identifying the aspirations of the poor is that oppressed people, precisely because of the oppression that has destroyed their humanity, cannot identify their own aspirations. Therefore, before one can identify with the aspirations of the people, these same people must be helped to become aware of their aspirations. One approach to this problem is what activists call politicalization.
A world on conscientization. People are either objects or subjects. What does an object mean? I move this desk; it moves. I wrote on the board with a piece of chalk; the chalk moves. It moves because I manipulate it. It has no awareness of itself. Subject, on the otheer hand, applies to a person who is aware of his choices. He knows what he is doing, why he is doing it, etc.
When you look in our society, one of the main obstruction to any kind of organization is that a lot of people are objects, have become objects in the process of growing up. Call to mind how many parents make most of the decisions for their children- even when the children are capable of deciding for themselves. TV commercials are very instructive on this point. They are there because they do affect the buying habits of the consumer. A lot of them are insults to public mind but fortunately for the advertisers, objects are not susceptible to insults. Or we cannot avoid the commercials. "Do you want to become tunay na lalaki?" Drink Ginebra San Miguel. "Do you want to be respected?" Tanduay Rhum is the drink for the respectable. "How does get malakremang kutis?" Camay soap, of course. All these divert people from thinking where true manhood, respect, and beauty really reside. The result: people conform to whatever is the lastest craze in fashion, etc. They abdicated their own critical faculty. The outcome is people are more and more becoming objects manipulated by those who understand and are in a position to exploit their weakness. Like the chalk in my hands, they cannot resist. They have become objects.
To complete the tragedy of the situation, the manipulators in turn are objects driven by whatever forces are around- profits, power, respect through social status, not necessarily merit, etc. Having more of materials, they have become less human. Their possessions have possessed them. The master has become the slave. He has lost because he become an object. And the worts victims of this objectified man are the poor brcause they are made into objecs by people who themselves have become objects. A more sophisticated machine rules the less sophisticated one. But both are machines.
Another factor to consider with regard to change is that people fear change. There are several reasons for this: One is that change means moving from the known, the familiar, to unknown, the unfamiliar. For most people this can be very threatening indeed. The threat, and consequently the difficulties, increases the more deeply rooted historically and psychologically the structure that must be changed.
For example, introducing new farming methods to Filipino farmers runs into all kids of difficulties. Historically, the farming methods are centuries old. It is the method they and their ancestors are familiar with. Psychologically, there is fear of being criticized and ostracized by the community. then there is the embarassent of failure- more acute in smaller communities where everyone knows everyone else.
The role of social organization in this context is to make people aware of these forces through dialogue. Dialogue is also the process by which people move from mere objects resigned to their fate subjects willing to change the status qou of their situations.
A second role will be the grouping together of people who individually are held back by such obstacle that can be overcome only by banding together. This accomplish two things: it enables each individual to overcome the only thing men most fear: aloneness. The group also enables people to act effectively since the sense of the powerlessness paralyzes people into inaction, if not outright surrender to their fate. this phenomenon explains the rise of Hitler. The loss monarchy (the psychological ballast), the inflation of 1923 and the depression of 1929 (economic dislocation), and the political weariness of the various groups presented Hitler with a vacuum which he so ably exploited. The people felt alone and powerless. Hitler gave them a national purpose that gave both a sense of power and dispelled the threat of aloneness.