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Jan. 22, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
53:22
1837 Nonviolent Communication (NVC) | The Roundtable Discussion
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Hi everybody, it's Stephen Molyneux from Freedom Made Radio.
I have on the line Wes Bertrand and Brett Venott, two exquisitely calibrated thinkers, and we're here to talk about nonviolent communication, which is a methodology for resolving human conflict by approaching needs rather than surface reactions.
And I have asked to be schooled, and these kind gentlemen who have more knowledge of it than I have agreed to help me understand a little bit more what it's about.
It was formalized by Marshall Rosenberg.
Did it come out in the 70s?
Looking from some of the YouTube haircuts on the videos I've seen, it does seem to be pretty 70s based.
It's been a while, right? So I was wondering, Wes, though I wouldn't count you as an accredited expert, you certainly know more than I do, I wonder if you could take us through some of the basics of nonviolent communications and then I'll have some questions to pepper you with.
Sure thing. Yeah, well, I do a podcast, Complete Liberty Podcast, and my website is completeliberty.com.
And I stumbled across this recently.
Just within the last few months, I really delved into it.
And my background is actually in psychotherapy, a master's degree in counseling psychology.
So I've been really looking for methods by which to help people become more in tune with themselves and to evolve to an enlightened state, if you will, to be happy, essentially.
I have another website, happinesscounseling.com, kind of oriented towards that.
My background has been kind of with self-esteem psychology.
Nathaniel Brandon has been a big influence on me.
Prior to him, Ayn Rand, of course, objectivism and so forth.
So I've been approaching the nature of human psychology from the standpoint of the six pillars of self-esteem.
Living consciously, self-acceptance, living purposefully, taking responsibility, self-assertiveness, and living with integrity.
Those are all the pillars, basically.
And, like I said, I came across Nonviolent Communication a few months ago and I actually heard about it about a year ago from my friend who actually attended a seminar retreat of sorts with Marshall Rosenberg about six years ago.
And I looked over the meet-up group that they have in San Diego and I had an eyebrow raised because it wasn't sort of red pill-ish, you know, they didn't come out explicitly against statism and all the other mythologies in our culture, but rather they were about communicating with people in a compassionate way,
which I think is great. But I set it aside because I really didn't think that it was of that much value, but then when I looked at the videos on YouTube, Rosenberg, as you say, looks from the 70s in that video, but it's a workshop that he does for three to four hours working with people.
Somebody videotaped it and threw it up on YouTube, and I think it's just a great resource for people because seeing is believing in this process by which you actually focus on the feelings and needs component of the communication process Rather than who's right, who's wrong, blaming, shaming, judging, criticizing, even diagnosing.
And from a psychotherapy point of view, there's a lot of diagnosing going on, right?
So it's been a challenge for me to come to terms with this.
Sorry, just so the audience understands. Diagnosing is, you're selfish, you're mean, you're cold, you're unfeeling, where you're basically putting a label on somebody else's personality and considering that some sort of step forward in the conversation when, of course, it's a step backward, right? Yeah, yeah.
Or even in the more formal terms, you're passive-aggressive, you're depressed, you're schizophrenic, you're attention deficit codependent, attention deficit disorder.
Brett knows all about that from the school angle.
So all that is really an inauthentic way to express what's truly alive in us, which is feelings and needs.
What we're feeling based on what needs are not being met and the various strategies by which we're meeting these needs or not, right?
Because I think we're good to go.
I think that he is completely aligned with the fact that people should be treating each other in a voluntary fashion, and they should be able to get all of their needs met from other people, not having to sacrifice their needs for justice, for autonomy, for independence, for choice to other people.
But because we live in this domination culture, people are oriented in this language, or steeped in this language of jackal, as he calls it, where people have very tragic, even suicidal ways of expressing their feelings and needs.
And when this process starts to happen, it's very easy to counterattack, to actually accuse the person, criticize them, and blame them and shame them and determine who's right and who's wrong.
And the whole sort of prescription of evil on people, which I'm very familiar with because of Ayn Rand's writings, Nathaniel Brandon said that he only knew maybe the high priest in the Middle Ages used the word evil so much as she did.
So, it's a very common thing, even with people that are aligned with the truth and with dispensing with mythologies and with accepting a voluntary perspective on our humanness.
So, basically, the four steps of NBC are observing what's happening, We're just stating the facts.
What has happened that is maybe causing feelings within a person because of the needs that aren't getting met.
So separating the observation from the evaluation of the other person or what's going on is really important.
And then the next step is, what am I feeling as a result of this?
And a lot of us Most of us, we're never trained with a vocabulary feeling that's distinguished from what other people are doing.
Usually, you know, people say, you disrespected me, you hurt me.
These kinds of things are mixed up with evaluations because it presupposes someone else doing something to us.
So it's not allowing us to take responsibility for our feelings and not allowing the other person to take responsibility for their feelings.
So once you've articulated just what you're feeling without evaluation, Then you go in to explain the needs that were not met within you that resulted in those feelings.
And that allows a free flow of compassionate connection to happen because the other person isn't feeling judged or criticized or blamed or deemed wrong in some way.
So it basically allows a compassionate connection, as Rosenberg says.
It's a language of life where we can describe what's alive in us and understand where the other person is coming from.
That would be the request.
So once you've articulated the observation, the feelings, the needs, then you make a request of what you would like to see done specifically in order to get your needs met or in order for the other person to get their needs met.
Right. So let's just take it through a typical sort of example where, you know, a wife comes in and the husband's sitting on the couch and the house is messy.
And she says, you're lazy and you're selfish.
You never help out around here.
So she's expressing a feeling.
Now, if he responds to that insult as if it's really directed at him and an objective, rational evaluation of him, then he's going to say, well, I'm not selfish.
I'm not lazy. I did all this stuff yesterday or whatever.
And they end up not talking about their needs.
Whereas if he says something like, I get that you're feeling kind of overwhelmed and frustrated.
You know, tell me more about that without taking the quote insult personally.
And then she can talk about how she's feeling, the overwhelmed and frustrated.
And then she can, either of them can make a specific request.
So she can say, look, I need you to do the dishes if I have to go out after dinner or whatever.
And so that something practical can come out of it, rather than fighting over words and judgments and evaluations and criticisms, they can actually get to the need that's not being satisfied, and then they can come up with specific steps by which that need is going to be satisfied, hopefully, in a win-win situation.
Is that a fair way to summarize a very basic example?
Exactly, yes.
And that connection to the feelings connected to the needs is a really critical part of that process.
And, of course, we're all familiar with real-time relationships, right?
And what you've just articulated has many components of that.
Wait, wait, that rings a bell.
Hang on, let me check my bookshelf.
Sorry, go ahead. Exactly, yeah.
Check the bookshelf over there.
But that met my need for a lot of clarity, reading that book of yours.
This adds in the component of connecting to the needs specifically in that person that are not getting met And that process leads to the solution procedure with the people.
Because Rosenberg has said, he's had people from the audience, who's had the longest standing conflict in their relationship?
And there was a couple that said, 39 years, Marshall.
You'll never be able to help us with this one.
We've been out of each other's throats on this one for 39 years.
And he basically said, well, I can guarantee you that within 20 minutes of you, each of you being able to articulate what the other person is feeling and needing, you'll find a solution.
And that's what happened. So, once people understand that it's really about the feelings and the unmet needs, and thereby understanding that the other person has needs that need to get met as well, and that there are strategies that we can use to meet each other's needs, then there's no more conflict, essentially.
And he's worked with people that have been at each other's throats, literally, like warring tribes in Africa.
And the tribal chiefs told him after a couple hours when he was working with them, it took them a few months to get them together because there was so much enemy imagery between the two.
But the tribal chief said to Rosenberg, Marshall, if we would have known how to speak to each other like this, we wouldn't have had to kill each other.
Right, right. And that's pretty profound.
And Brett, what's your experience been with the NPC? Well, my attraction to it has been, can it build upon or relate to or strengthen what I'm trying to do with School Sucks, which is a podcast and a website.
And I think that dialogue that you started out with when you're talking about this wife coming home and saying you're a slob to her husband, I think Rosenberg would say that a lot of our communication is these Tragic expressions of unmet needs.
And so much of what people want to really say to others is, please, like, I have a need, or thank you, that need is met.
And all of this sort of jackal language that we learn through what Wes described or Rosenberg describes as the domination culture kind of masks that or clouds that or covers that over.
When I think about childhood or going to school or going to church, boy, we don't get a lot of practice expressing feelings or voicing observations or certainly, you know, asking.
It's not appropriate for us to ask.
To have our needs met.
So, as adults, most people have virtually no training, no experience, and no comfort with this strategy for communication and just perpetuates the domination culture.
And just so people know, the jackal language is the domination language where you're trying to, in a sense, bully or diminish someone in order to get your way.
To push them aside, to almost erase them, to charge through to get what you want.
Not always out of negative or malicious intent, but just because there's no other way that you know how to get what you want.
Rosenberg calls that the jackal language.
He contrasts it with the giraffe language, but he calls it giraffe language because the giraffe has the largest heart of any land mammal.
So these are the two ways.
And there is, when you look at human relationships, this endless tragedy.
It reminds me of that old Greek myth of Sisyphus, you know, he rolls the boulder up the hill only to have it fall back down and roll it up again.
Because people will attempt to use aggression to get what they want.
They may get short-term compliance, but they build long-term resistance in.
So aggression is kind of like a drug in terms of happiness.
You may get a short-term hit, but it creates many more problems down the road.
So the waifu comes in and says, You're a lazy slob.
You never lift a hand to help out around here and so on.
She may get the husband to grudgingly do the dishes that night but she's building in non-compliance and a repetition if not an escalation of the conflict and it truly is tragic the degree to which people just have this default position of aggression And despite the fact that in the long run it does not get their needs met, and in fact it gets them more and more frustrated, they simply don't have any other tools or ways of approaching these conflicts, and that's just an awful thing to see over and over again.
Yes, and the fact is that that woman probably didn't get her need for empathy met as a child.
Like, she wasn't trained in the skills by which to connect with her own feelings and needs, so all she really knows is to dominate, to attack, to criticize.
I mean, there's constant criticism that goes on in many relationships.
The henpecking that goes on, right?
And these are all just tragic ways to express the Please, please help me meet this need, essentially.
But, like you say, they don't have the vocabulary.
They don't have the skills.
And Rosenberg talks about the four Ds, the life-alienating communication, this jackal language.
And this causes disconnection from feelings and needs.
Diagnosis, judgments, analysis, criticism, comparison, denial of responsibility, demands, and deserve-oriented language.
I mean... How many people are told that they deserve things or they don't deserve things?
I mean, the whole educational process, Brett, is oriented around this.
You know, lockstep grades and tests and graduation.
It's just immersed in it.
Yeah, and it pretty much, that was another thing that, you know, as it relates to school staff, it is very much, Rosenberg points out the whole punishments and rewards, much like school does, that most of these interactions, most of this communication is, you know, the punishment in this game of who's right, that's win-lose.
The punishments are shame and guilt, and the only reward It's like self-righteousness.
So everybody loses, pretty much.
And what really sort of hit home for me is the main point of this is honest self-expression.
So certainly It makes you question your own motives.
It's not just about winning political arguments.
It's really about looking at your own motives for Why you choose this kind of communication, these kinds of people, these kinds of topics.
And it's very, very hard to connect with anybody else on an empathic level if you don't even know why you're talking to them or what your goals are.
And that's something that I've had a real problem with personally figuring out.
So it really was attractive to me for that reason as well.
So, Wes, I thought it might be fun to try a little roleplay.
Sure. I'm going to throw on my Sheila the SS. This is our last show.
Oh, fantastic. Okay. Well, do you have a scenario, and I have a couple of scenarios in mind, or if there's anything that you wanted to take.
I can play the bad guy, or I can play the jackal, and you can play the giraffe if there's a scenario you wanted to try.
That's fine. I'll go with one of your scenarios.
Okay, well, let's try the one that I talked about earlier.
I'll be the snitchy wife, and you can be the ball-scratching husband lacing around with bonbons on the couch when I come home.
Alright, so I come home.
Do you need to scratch to get into character?
Just in case you need to, just let me know.
Yeah, let me go run around the house for a second.
Splash some water in my face.
All right, so the scenario is I took the kids out grocery shopping and the house is a mess and I come home and so on, right?
And I'm like, I can't believe that you're sitting on the couch doing nothing, watching TV. This is so frustrating.
You just never lift a finger around here.
You're lazy. I mean, this is ridiculous.
I take the kids out to get some groceries.
I come home and the house looks like a bomb and hit it.
Honey, I see you're feeling really upset, right?
You're feeling angry right now.
Yes. Yes. Well, congratulations on pointing out the obvious.
Now, what about the house that needs to be cleaned?
Well, you definitely are showing me that you have a need for the house to be cleaned, right?
That you wanted me to get the house cleaned.
Of course. I asked you to clean the house.
I mean, when I go out. I mean, so, yes.
So, are you feeling frustrated now because you have a need for clarity, that you want me to understand what you're saying, that you want me to grasp the nature of your needs to get this house cleaned?
Well, when I say, would you clean the house while we're gone, yes, I would assume that you understood that, so I don't know that that's terribly complicated to figure out.
Yes. So, are you feeling upset because you have a need for me to communicate with you in a way that gets your needs met?
No, I have a need for you to clean the house when I'm out of the house.
Okay. So what I can do specifically to help you get that need met is to clean the house now.
It turns out I had some projects to do, and it was on my list of things to do, but I didn't get it done.
So I'd like to help you get that need met.
So you're going to clean the house now?
Yes. See, this is tough because the scenario is set up that I have not been meeting your needs for probably quite a while, right?
So this is just a manifestation of a deeper problem and a lack of communication, of respectful dialogue, right?
And because in your queries, there was a bit of irritation going on.
You're feeling irritated because what you were saying to me wasn't really sinking in, it seemed.
I'm still irritated. And even if I say that I'm going to clean the house, perhaps there's a disbelief in that.
Well, yeah, I would sort of say, well, okay, so you think of these big projects.
And the other thing, too, we have set it up that you've been kind of lazy.
So, I mean, you're sitting on the couch or whatever, right?
So you're definitely in a losing position, and it's tough to defend that.
But certainly, what's good is that you obviously didn't raise...
To the bait and say, well, I'm not selfish.
I took the kids all yesterday.
We went to the mall or whatever.
And so you didn't sort of battle statistics back and forth, which is a tragic thing that happens in relationships.
Somebody will slam an absolute down on someone else and they'll try and wriggle out with some statistics about some counter behavior that they've done in the past and so on.
And then they just... Battles of self-worth kind of thing.
Right, right. Well, yeah, okay.
So, like, shoot me for spending an hour on the couch.
I bring home twice the income.
That never gets counted for anything.
Oh, whatever, right? Like, that's the way they start measuring up.
They start piling up the bricks.
That's not being met. Yeah.
And as Rosenberg says, never put a butt in the face of an angry jackal.
So, to give these excuses, right, is not going to help diminish the conflict.
Definitely. Right, right.
And all you're doing is you're saying that the other person is wrong.
Yes, yes. It's a challenge to do this on the fly, and that's the common theme you see in this workshop.
The people in the audience are like, wow, this doesn't seem natural.
This seems very difficult to do.
Even connecting with what they're feeling based on what they're needing is a really difficult process.
So on CNBC.org, Center for Nonviolent Communication.org, I have some...
I wouldn't say criticisms, but I have some questions about the...
The boundaries of nonviolent communication and also some questions about the science behind it, if that's alright.
We like science.
So the first thing that set off a couple of alarm bells in me was his mysticism, his spiritualism, for want of a better phrase.
He talks about the advent of Christ consciousness over the last 8,000 years.
He talks about referring to theologians, and he believes that there's a golden age in the past where human beings communicated much better, which is quite typical of religious people because if we're emerging from the swamps and religion is sort of back in a negative or limited mindset, there usually needs to be a golden age, a Garden of Eden in the past, if you're religious to some degree.
And he also talks about, I think, wanting to merge with the divine consciousness, and there seems to be a lot of Buddhistic elements to his philosophy.
Now, that doesn't make anything that he says wrong.
I mean, my dentist can be a Buddhist and still be a great dentist, but it does raise some alarm bells, and the main reason that it raises alarm bells for me is that I'm very skeptical of philosophies of human interaction that rely on anything to do with the spirit.
The reason being that Spirit being something non-material that is within the human being that is eternal, because he certainly does believe in that kind of stuff, right?
That there's a spirit, there's a universal oneness and all that kind of stuff.
Not necessarily mind, though.
Spirit isn't equated to mind.
It's more of the disconnection, the soul-body dichotomy kind of thing.
Yeah, but he certainly does believe that there's more to human consciousness or the human being than material, than the mere matter, right?
He does believe that there is a sort of spirit or soul or some sort of immaterial aspect to consciousness, at least according to the stuff that I've read.
And the issue that I have with that is that certainly over the past decade or two, there's been a lot of brain research that's done, which I talk about in my Balm of the Brain series on YouTube, that there are physical Problems, for want of a better phrase, they're physical deformities or problems that occur to a mind, to a brain rather, through the experience of child abuse.
And if there is a perception of a sort of perfect soul within, then I think the challenge is that people then believe that you can sort of reach through this problematic brain and find this better soul within.
And I don't Yeah, again, to me, it's sort of like, you know, that they used to do this horrible foot binding in China a century or so ago, where they would get these women's feet when they were children, children's feet, and curl them back inwards and underneath, so they'd become these little balls of just gristle, and it was horrible.
And I don't believe that if you look at that, that that's a foot, right?
There's no perfect foot somewhere in there that you can reach in and find.
The foot has simply been distorted and mutated.
And to me, this is when you're dealing with a situation where somebody has been abused as a child, The brain itself has developed in a way where there's impulse control problems, where there is a loss of memory about early experiences.
There is a lack of development of the empathy centers in the brain.
Mirror neurons don't seem to have developed nearly as much.
So you are dealing with kind of like a different brain when you're dealing with somebody who's very aggressive and very abusive.
I'm concerned about the limits to which nonviolent communication can work.
He seems to say that it can work in every situation.
Each and every time that it's practiced consistently, yeah, it works.
This is the thing. Now, the question is well put about...
Does it work in perpetuity?
Does it just work in the moment and then the person defaults back to the habitual ways of interacting with people?
I would say probably so.
Unless you're able to use NBC with this person on a continual basis, they're always going to be somewhat disconnected from their feelings and needs and they're going to be resorting to strategies that have been ingrained From childhood.
And I think, yeah, in terms of brain research, I've studied the brain quite a bit, and I was actually looking forward to doing a PhD in brain research.
So it's a really big value for me to understand what it is, the difference between what's happening in the brain versus in the mind.
And I think if we use the analogy of computer hardware versus software, essentially what's being asked is, can we instantiate a different A different software into this brain, into this hardware, so that they can use different strategies to get their needs met in a wholesome, life-enriching way. And I think it comports with brain science, the fact that we are really a massively parallel processing system that is capable of doing lots of reconfiguring.
And lots of rewiring that can happen.
That's not to say that damage isn't still there, but I think the more people speak this language of life to those people that have been damaged in those ways and traumatized as children, the much better chance it is that they're going to be able to be rewired in a sense so that they can start thinking and speaking in a way that is really from a true self-orientation.
That's my thoughts.
I think so, and I want to get Brett's opinion on this as well.
But I think that certainly my experience in years of therapy was, again, to continue the metaphor of the bound feet.
You could, through years of difficult and painful physical therapy, you may be able to straighten that foot out to some degree or another.
But that's not something that someone else can do for you.
That's something you need to internalize as a desire of your own.
So I think that nonviolent communication is a great opportunity, obviously, for diffusing an escalation of a futile conflict in the moment.
I would be concerned about the degree to which it's not internalized by the other person and that they make that commitment to start working on their issues, but rather than rely on the other person to continue to de-escalate the conflict without internalizing that.
And then I think you're just playing a sort of game of merry-go-round where the other person has, in a sense, become responsible for the management of your responses.
Does that make any sense? Well, I think the process of empathic connection with that person, I mean, how many times in this person's life have they had someone genuinely interested in their feelings and needs?
Very, very seldom, if at all.
Because most people are going to be, like, blindsided by this way of interacting that doesn't involve any antagonism, but rather is trying to empathetically connect with that true self within that person.
What's alive in them, and what could make their world more wonderful?
And I think that process gives them a sort of shining star to reach towards.
And I agree that I think that this is the first step.
This is the process to connect with what's alive in a person so that they do develop that intrinsic motivation by which to delve into the self and go through that discovery process.
And I would recommend to everybody The Art of Self-Discovery by Nathaniel Brannon because it's really comprehensive in using these sentence completions to delve into all the facets of our subconscious that have We have these ingrained strategies by which to get some needs met, usually at the expense of other needs.
You know, all these bad habits that people have, or should we say non-life-enriching habits.
Because the judgment of good and bad sets up this process of...
Of self-guilt, of self-blame, of shame, and so forth.
And Rosenberg really stresses that whenever someone is acting out of shame and blame and guilt, it's not really intrinsically motivated, right?
It's like from the superego thing.
This domination culture is still within their mind.
So they're not acting out of genuine remorse and connecting with the needs that they did not meet, but rather not fulfilling someone else's expectations, perhaps.
Right. So it's like, I'll be good, so I'll get into heaven and not go to hell.
That's not an internalized motivation for the thing itself.
That's, you know, a fork in the road, reward punishment system.
Yeah. Now, Brett, you've been trying this...
Approved of by others. I'm sorry, go ahead.
Or I'll be approved of by others.
Right. Then I'll be good. Right.
And then that also gives you the right to withhold approval from others when they are bad, and that doesn't help your relationships in the long run.
Brett, you've been trying some of this stuff with people around you.
Is that right? A little bit.
I've been feeling it out. And really, my goal or part of my attraction was it seems like a softer touch than what I had been using previously.
So that's why I started to try and integrate it into the conversations that I've been having with friends, family.
How's that been going? I'm kind of concerned that...
The more aggressive strategies that I've used in the past might have sabotaged future opportunities where, you know...
Like the habits of interaction are so ingrained that it's really like a train jump in the tracks kind of thing?
Yeah, and I'd like to think that that could change, and there's a way to work our way out of that, but I'm worried that it might be difficult.
And I remember you used a metaphor a long time ago, you know, people walk through this minefield and pretend it's not a minefield, and, you know, I used Minesweeper, the little computer game, where You know, people, they learn how to, like, flag off certain parts of the conversation and just steer right around that or not land there or not click there because they know what happens when they do.
And I always really interpreted this evasion as people just basically, oh, you're just really admitting that I'm correct and you can't argue against me.
And I think that that was really an arrogant mindset.
And when I... When I went back after taking some time off from having these discussions, period, and tried to We tried to use this more tactful and empathetic approach.
I realized that, first of all, the philosophy of liberty, the idea of a voluntary society, these people, especially people who are a little bit, you know, up in their years, when they hear these ideas or when they hear these conversations, I think it's fair to say that they have a need for certainty and security that is not being met by the things that we discuss.
But, you know, I think another problem too, and I've certainly been susceptible to myself in the past, this myself in the past, You know, people have a real need for meaning, for knowledge, for understanding, and the more comfortable they become with a way of thinking and feeling and sort of a dogma that helps them understand the world, when you try to go in and aggressively disrupt all of that, of course you're going to get evasion.
And, you know, so that need for meaning It is really interrupted by the communication strategies that I've used in the past.
I'm trying to be more understanding of that.
That was a fabulously generalized answer, and I really appreciate the theory.
Have you had any sort of specific successes with people that you've tried this approach with?
I mean, I have a little anecdote that I've been sort of trying some different approaches, but I really wanted to give you a chance to...
Because I really love the theory, and I think that's great, but I'm just wondering if you had anything more specific in terms of what's actually occurred.
Ooh, way to put you on the spot.
I really... Yeah, I really can't...
I really can't share at this point a great success story.
I noticed that the tone of the conversation changed.
Again, that's very general, but it felt more constructive and it was able to remain peaceful for a longer period of time.
But at this point, no, I can't really say that I've had Great success stories where I'm taking out the old approach, putting in NVC, and suddenly everything has changed.
It's not to that point yet.
Brett, do you think that this process of empathy with these folks is going to open up new avenues by which they may become more curious about your point of view and about the truth that you've been elucidating to them?
Because I think that is the biggest thing of diminishing or dissolving the resistance In that process of communication.
I think that this is certainly a more inviting approach, and when I first understood years ago the MAP, or when I first familiarized myself with the argument from morality, that was just, that was like the ultimate weapon.
I felt. And, you know, the question that I have and the thing that I worry about is if you think about, again, the way that we're raised, the way that we go through school or church or how most families function, when people hear these moral arguments, how might they misinterpret that as what we would call an argument from authority?
Because, oh, I've been talked to this way before.
So I'm going to categorize you with all these other people that I kind of just placated but I was able to push myself away from.
And I'm not really going to take the things that you're saying seriously because people have only ever used what they call moral arguments on me.
And I'm not falling for that anymore.
Right. So they say that morality is a jackal language, that morality is used to dominate and control and bully and shame.
And so when you bring up a universal moral argument, you're like that finger-wagging, rhinestone-glassed kindergarten teacher who's castigating them for insignificant things.
And they do kind of have a few thousand years of history to back them up, right?
Because it's the moral arguments.
You know, when you say, Steph, that this is a tool that might be valuable for these arguments that we're trying to make, yeah, historically, empirically, it certainly worked beautifully for, like, the worst people who ever lived for, like, what, 30, 40 centuries?
So, but I worry that that's, with a lot of people, that's a, sorry, I froze there, a communication breakdown.
Basically, it's not an invitation, it's them, they want to turn and run away from that, based on prior experience, based on childhood experience.
So, yeah. The judgments of good and bad.
Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.
And I will say, Stefan, that one of the biggest challenges for me with this, because I come from the objectivist background, which is steeped in moral condemnation.
I mean, Ayn Rand's basic moral precept was judge and be prepared to be judged, right?
So you better have your shit together.
You better look at your values and virtues.
Although she herself was not very prepared to be judged in reality, but anyway, go on.
Well, she probably saw those judgments as non-objective.
Of course, of course, absolutely.
Yeah, so coming from that perspective of moral analysis of something, NDC was a splash of water to the face saying, wow, okay, I can see how doing more of what doesn't work doesn't work so much because I've been in this sort of orientation of objectivism for almost two decades, and I haven't seen it working so much.
I mean, we've all... We looked at the culture and seen that there's only a small percentage of the population that is really curious, that we can, in a sense, feed ideas to, like transmit these stellar ideas about, you know, dispensing with mythology and embracing truth and virtue and so forth, and they're received in an enthusiastic, curious fashion.
For the bulk of humankind, that is not the case.
And it's for precisely the reason that Brett's articulating that people have been traumatized as children.
They've developed these really costly strategies by which to get needs met, and they've never really been empathized with in a way that they can understand what they're feeling and needing, and therefore realize that everyone can get their needs met.
We don't have to sacrifice anyone's needs.
And the language of giraffe, obviously, is not a nice language in that sense.
We don't just roll over and are all just warm and fuzzy and empathetic with the person to the point where we don't get our needs met.
Because that's the ultimate goal here, is to get our needs met.
And I wouldn't be embracing this so wholeheartedly unless I knew that it would get these needs met for autonomy, especially in the political realm.
Okay, so this is where I guess the issue in terms of limitations for me is.
I think that if you took NVC as it works everywhere, you just have to keep doing it.
To me, this is a recipe for potential exploitation because there's not the standard of reciprocity that I think is necessary in every relationship that is going to be sustained and long-lasting.
Sorry to be redundant again.
So I guess my question is in terms of, so okay, the difference with RTR is RTR says, at least my approach is, you self-empathize and you honestly express your experience of the other person without jumping to conclusions about what they're doing and Throwing judgments at them and burying them under condemnation or anything, but you say, you know, the husband whose wife comes home and says, you're selfish and lazy.
It's like, oh my God, that really hurts.
I mean, I really feel upset by that.
I'm not saying it's you. I'm just saying that when you said this, I, oh man, I just, I felt terrible.
And you should feel terrible.
Oh my God, now you're saying that I feel evil.
I feel guilt. I feel shame.
I feel, oh, I feel toxic.
I feel really bad.
I feel like I've done something really terrible.
You know, you just continue to talk about your own experiences.
It's different from trying to empathize with another person.
I think it's tough to empathize with someone who's not self-empathizing.
I think it's tough to jump out of your own reactions and empathize with someone who's attacking you.
Of course, I'm sure Rosenberg would say, it is tough and that's why you need to practice and that's why you need to study it and so on.
For me, I think it's easier and more productive to stay with your own feelings and express those.
But my concern is, if you focus on meeting the other person's needs, at what point does reciprocity enter into it, where you have the legitimate right to say, okay, now we've talked about your needs, here's what my needs are.
And what happens if the person doesn't respond to your needs?
That is a challenge, right?
Yes, it is. It's the biggest challenge, I think, because The enemy imagery that we may have within us about those other people not meeting our needs, or that person doing things that we don't approve of, that, in the language of nonviolent communication, doesn't enrich our lives in any way.
So instead of seeing this person as immoral or evil, perhaps, we see that what they're doing is basically tragically expressing unmet needs.
And the only way, really, that we can get our needs met by such a person We're good to go.
This is about getting our needs met from those people.
Now the question is, do we want to get our needs met from such people?
On a personal level, do we go down to the crack house and try to get our friendship needs met?
No, no, sorry. Let's take something a little more realistic, which let's just say that somebody has a mean Aunt Tina, right?
So Aunt Tina, every time you go to her house, she's just, she puts you down, she insults you in subtle ways, she's mean, she's cold, and you sort of sit down.
My approach would be, you know, sit down and say, you know, I feel this reluctance to come and visit you because my experience, I'm not saying it's what you're doing, but my experience is There are these negative things.
I feel this, I feel that, and so on.
You know, what can we do?
What's your experience of having me over?
That would be sort of my approach.
And to work at trying to set self-empathy, because what you want to do is not just as a strategy, but demonstrate self-empathy so the other person can internalize self-empathy.
And I would wait for the other person to express some sort of So some sort of expression of feeling that or experience that they've occurred I wouldn't try and guess necessarily what the other person was feeling and I know Rosenberg wouldn't say guess but you know when you you can make a pretty informed guess a guess he does say guess okay, but he says you know It's it should be a sort of informed guess like I think you shouldn't say somebody who's laughing.
I think you're feeling depressed. I mean not random, but Well, he also says the good thing about the jackal is that it will always tell you what you're doing wrong, right?
No. Yeah, so they'll correct you if you're wrong Right, so I would try and have that conversation, and I've had a number of these conversations with people in my life, and this would be a conversation we would have on numerous occasions, really trying to improve the quality of the interaction to the point where there was a genuine desire to see the other person, and not just coming out of history or obligation or habit or fear of the disapproval of people who say, what, you haven't gone to visit your aunt Tina?
That's terrible, blah, blah, blah. I would really work to try and create a relationship Based on my own honesty and commitment to integrity, so that I would want to go and see that person.
Maybe we could have a different kind of relationship.
And that would be me attempting to get my needs met within the confines of the relationship.
What I don't see, and I'm certainly no expert, and maybe you know, what I don't see is the disconnect switch, right?
So at what point do you say, look, I have tried now for two months.
I've had a dozen conversations with this person.
I just feel worse and worse.
I'm done. Instead of trying to turn other people into people that I want to spend time with, why don't I just spend time with people who are already down this road, who aren't opposing me, who aren't making me feel bad, who aren't making me feel worse?
Why don't I just find people of like mind and work to have an enjoyable life that way, rather than attempting to change the relationships that may be accidental or may be coincidental or may be historical or whatever?
That disconnect Algorithm is, I think, something I don't see, and that's where I think the infinite power of the NVC comes into question for me.
This is just my thoughts, so tell me what you think about that.
Well, I think that Aunt Tina is going to have a really hard time empathizing with your feelings if she's terribly disconnected from her feelings and needs, and it sounds like she is.
So the purpose of this compassionate communication is to get her in touch with those feelings and needs, to actually see the true self in her, so she can see it within herself, and therefore want to meet your needs.
I agree that if we just express what we're feeling and our discontent over this and the lack of getting our needs met, it's very unlikely that we're going to be able to change much, and therefore we should seek out relationships that are wholesome and life-enriching and so forth.
But I think in the wider context, if we want to live in a society in which Everyone is oriented towards their feelings and needs and ultimately this is what we want, right?
This is what we want people to be true selves, like they were as little children until they were traumatized and abused and dominated and their wills were essentially pushed around from, you know, the family to the school to the state.
We want people to be connected with their feelings and needs so that they can get those needs met, that they can assert their need for autonomy.
Because everyone has the same needs, and Aunt Tina has the same needs.
It's just that, what are the strategies she's been using to try to get those needs met?
And obviously, she's not aware of many of the needs that she's sacrificing in that process.
So not only communication is the way to bring her level of awareness up to To that level, so that she can see that, hey, this should be a win-win interaction, rather than always having to essentially help this person trying to get to the place where we want them to be, to have a good, life-enriching relationship.
Okay. And this falls back to this question of the true self, right?
Which is a very powerful phrase.
But if, you know, if the brain science is right, and, you know, me and Aunt Tina was, you know, abused as a kid and maybe in turn became an abuser and somebody who's been a negative influence, she's going to have a different brain.
She's got a physically different organ than somebody who has not been through those experiences or who's done a lot of self-work and so on.
So I guess my question is, and it's a genuine question, I don't know the answer, is there scientific evidence?
Is there anything that we know about this true self, right?
The un...
Because it seems to me that there's a brain that has been traumatized, that has developed in a different way, that has bits missing, that has an excess of things like, you know, stimulus coming up from the fight or flight mechanism, a deficiency on other things at a physical level, which is, you know, neofrontal cortex restraint mechanisms.
Aren't we just dealing with a different brain and that there's not An original self.
Like if some guy smoked for 40 years and his lungs are diseased with lung cancer, there's no healthy lung in there somewhere that we can get through.
It's just, it's diseased.
And I know that's a strong metaphor, but that's the question I have, is what is the evidence for the true self other than spiritualism and wishful thinking, which I'm not putting you in that category.
This is more, I think, coming out of what I've read from Rosenberg.
What is the evidence that we can reach through to somebody that's more than anecdotal?
Well... I just had a thought that pertained to your last comment about the spirituality element that he engages in some sort of mysticism, I guess, and looking back, I think, what is it, Walter Wink, the theologian that he refers to, who has a much different interpretation of Christianity than I think is historical or factual,
although I can see where he's getting his His interpretations of it to align itself with nonviolent communication, but the anthropological evidence is there with tribes that have actually spoken the language of life to people.
For example, even Brandon mentions in one of his books that when someone in a village in this one tribe...
Brett, maybe you remember the name of it.
I think we forgot it once already.
We forgot it twice.
Yeah, this is factual. If a person actually steals something from someone in the tribe, It's a totally different orientation than our domination-punishment culture.
And I think that process, a lot of this is more or less the way we're trained rather than the brain structures.
Because I think, once again, we can load a different app onto this brain.
It may be more difficult It may require more repetition, perhaps.
I mean, obviously we can choose uphill battles with people, and I intend to do this with...
Police officers, right?
When I moved to Keene, finally, I intend to practice non-violent communication with these individuals so that all of us can meet our needs for autonomy and respect and so forth.
So this, I mean, obviously if you're choosing a cop, they've gone down a path developmentally and they've experienced a lot of things as children that are kind of foreign to us, perhaps.
But if we practice nonviolent communication, at least we're able to connect with what's really alive in them and the true self, the best within them in a sense, so that they get a glimmer at least.
Otherwise, what are they going to have?
They're going to continue their patterns over and over again, and no one's going to get their needs met.
So I think that it is possible for the brain to be resilient enough to really hear the message of empathy that's happening in that process.
And that's what I've seen with Rosenberg's anecdotal evidence, of course.
Which is obviously not scientific and a bit self-selecting, right?
Like he's not going to tell you where it didn't work, right?
My guess. I don't know the guy.
Maybe he's got the integrity, but all I've heard from him is anecdotal evidence about where things work.
But anecdotal evidence is not science, right?
And again, look, I have a theory of relationships out there.
I don't have the science behind it either, so I'm in a glass house and I'm perfectly aware of that.
But I just wanted to point, I have some skepticism around the true self notion, which, you know, if you come across research or know more about it, I would be happy to talk with subject matter experts further.
But it's pretty key, because if you believe there is a true self that you can reach, then in a sense you're going into a dangerous mind to find the gold.
And if there's gold down there, it may be worth doing that.
If there is no gold down there, then it may not be worth going in.
I think it's an important distinction that I think remains scientifically, the evidence seems against it.
Because of the physical brain changes that occur through not just being abused, but perhaps being an abuser as well.
But I think that's a key element in the decision-making process around nonviolent communication, which again, I hugely applaud.
And I'm trying to sort of put it into practice in some interactions which we can talk about perhaps another time.
But I am still...
Aware that the issue of the true self and reaching the true self in others remains unproven, except anecdotally, which obviously, if we believed in anecdotes, we might be, you know, Hare Krishnas, right?
But that's sort of my question around this.
This true self thing remains a very, very important thing.
If there is true selves in there, absolutely.
If there's gold in the mine, let's go in, even though it's creaking and we're like Indiana Jones running in front of a boulder.
But if the true self is not accessible to somebody outside, if it requires maybe some stimulation, then a huge amount of work from someone inside.
If the true self can't be accessed through external means, then there is a cutoff point, I think, in attempting to repair relationships that are dysfunctional.
That's my only caveat.
And again, I say that not being an expert in any of this stuff.
That's just my caveat from what I've read.
Yeah, I would say from my perspective, the brain research shows the other perspective, that there is the process of volitional functioning is still intact in that individual, and it's just a matter of overcoming those subconscious integrations that are, again, really ingrained and need to be ferreted out.
And the great thing about non-vailing communication is it only requires one person to speak it for it to be effective.
So, one giraffe in a room full of jackals can do a lot of good, in a sense.
It can help people connect with what's alive in them, because there's not that superficial antagonism and the battles of the wills and the self-worth issues that happen pretty frequently.
Well, that's fantastic. I think, given the interest of time, let's cut it off here.
Perhaps we can reconvene when we've had some more, you know, having just scorned anecdotes, let's get together and talk about some more anecdotes if we get a chance.
Yeah, yeah, you know, we don't have the resources that Rosenberg does, but we can at least talk about some...
Anecdotes have value, they're just not conclusive.
I'm certainly in the process of doing some of this approach in what it is that I'm doing, and thank you so much, both of you, for giving me the information about this, and I will certainly get back to you about what's happening.
I'm keeping pretty close track on what's happening in that stuff.
And maybe, Brett, you have some more specific stuff to talk about in terms of what's happened in your approach.
Wes, I'm sure you have stuff that's been pretty powerful for you.
So maybe we can do a sort of follow-up, which is, you know, when the dust settles, how does the landscape look when you've taken this different approach?
Yeah, yeah, that would be great.
And Brett, was there anything? Sorry, we did just sort of have you doze off a little bit there.
Is there anything else you wanted to add?
You didn't give your website, so make sure that people who are watching this get that.
My website is schoolsucksproject.com and you'll find the podcast there.
We have forums, there's a chat feature, a blog.
So I encourage people to go check it out.
And of course, they can find the show on iTunes or on the Liberty Radio Network.
Well, thanks so much, guys.
I really appreciate it. It was a really enjoyable chat and I'll talk to you guys soon.
Yes. Thanks for meeting my needs for understanding and clarity and considerations, Stefan.
Thank you for sharing with me some fantastic new tools for communication and I really appreciate it.
Most welcome. Bye.
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