the quoted part (which is a sentiment I have seen pro-Circling and pro-NVC and pro-similar-things folks express quite a few times) is something which seems to me to be taking a view of relationships, and people, which is deeply mistaken, insofar as it fails to correctly describe how many (perhaps, even most) people operate.
I have seen this misunderstanding happen and result in a significant amount of misery. (That is, Bob viewed themselves as being treated unjustly by Alice, who cared about Bob’s suffering and was interested in understanding it, but a big part of Bob’s suffering was that Bob and Alice didn’t share a notion of ‘justice,’ and so they couldn’t agree on ‘what happened’ or ‘what mattered’ because they had different type signatures for them.) I was not able to bridge it that time, despite seeing both sides (I think).
what we are interested in discussing aren’t the sense-impressions—we care about the things themselves.
Where my attention is going at the moment is not the sense-impressions, or the things themselves, but the machinery that turns the sense-impressions into models of the things, and the machinery that refines that modeling machinery.
I think it’s difficult to keep one’s attention on that part of the process; seeing the lens instead of just seeing the object through the lens. I view “owning experience” as, among other things, an attempt to direct attention towards the lens using a rule that’s understandable even before you see the lens.
[I hope it’s clear, but it’s worth saying, Circling is a lot like meditation, and very little like courts. That is, I expect it to help you deepen your understanding of how you perceive the world and how others perceive the world, and for it to make difficult topics easier to navigate, but I expect it to sometimes do those things at the expense of figuring out object-level issues. As in this set of paragraphs, where I followed my attention from the object level case to the more abstract question of how we settle such cases.]
By all means, we can say “Bob, you think that Alice betrayed you, but consider that perhaps actually she didn’t?”. But any account of the situation, or any attempt to resolve the matter, that fails to refer primarily to the fact (or non-fact) of Alice’s betrayal will quite miss the point.
I do object here to some of the implications of saying “the point” instead of “Bob’s point.” (While thinking that it’s bad to miss Bob’s point.)
Like, given that Bob made the point, calling it ‘the’ point is probably legitimate, but it is interesting that in this situation Bob cares about this when Carl, put into the same situation, might not. The implication that I’m troubled by is the one where Bob is assuming a shared level of understanding or buy-in to their conception of where the importance is, while not seeing it as a choice out of many possible choices.
Like, in my mind it’s the difference between the judge, who orients around determining what The Law says about the case in front of them, and the legislator, who orients around determining which of many possible laws should be enacted. Or it’s mistaking the intersubjective and the objective, thinking that the rules of chess are inherent in mathematics instead of agreed on.
Where my attention is going at the moment is not the sense-impressions, or the things themselves, but the machinery that turns the sense-impressions into models of the things, and the machinery that refines that modeling machinery.
Indeed this is also fascinating and worth investigating, but: is Circling supposed to be for resolving conflicts and other object-level situations, or is Circling supposed to be for investigating this meta-level “how does the machinery operate” stuff? I’ve seen pro-Circling folks, you included, appear to vacillate between these two perspectives. (Perhaps it can be used for both? This would be surprising, and would increase the improbability of the pro-Circling position, but certainly cannot be ruled out a priori.) In any case, it seems to me to be an exceedingly poor idea to try to do both of these things, simultaneously. These two purposes can only be at odds, and it seems to me that trying to combine them is likely to do serious harm to both goals.
A similar point has to do with this bit:
I hope it’s clear, but it’s worth saying, Circling is a lot like meditation, and very little like courts.
Perhaps so, but it seems to me that this is all the more reason why Circling is an inappropriate tool with which to determine whether what you need is meditation, or a court[1].
Like, given that Bob made the point, calling it ‘the’ point is probably legitimate, but it is interesting that in this situation Bob cares about this when Carl, put into the same situation, might not. The implication that I’m troubled by is the one where Bob is assuming a shared level of understanding or buy-in to their conception of where the importance is, while not seeing it as a choice out of many possible choices.
That Bob and Carl would react differently may indeed be interesting. But as far as the troubling implication goes… all I can say is that “who agreed to what, with whom, and when”, and “what were everyone’s expectations”, and so on, are also facts. If Bob’s understanding was not shared by Alice… that, too, is a fact. It is not an easy one to establish… but in that it is not alone. Alice may say “I genuinely didn’t know that we were supposed to have had this agreement, Bob”, and Bob may believe her, or not, and they can figure out how to proceed from there. Nevertheless the discussion is still about what happened, not about how everyone currently feels about what happened.
Or, to be more precise, “something like a court”—that is, a stance where you take seriously that some accusation has been made, some alleged transgression, and attempt to determine the facts of the matter, etc. This need not be formal, of course, much less actually involve the legal system.
is Circling supposed to be for resolving conflicts and other object-level situations, or is Circling supposed to be for investigating this meta-level “how does the machinery operate” stuff? I’ve seen pro-Circling folks, you included, appear to vacillate between these two perspectives.
I think ‘better Circling’ involves leaning towards investigating the meta-level. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone’s first Circle be about exploring a dispute they’re involved in; that seems like it would be likely to go poorly. In situations that seem high-stakes, it’s better to understand the norms you’re operating under than not understand them!
Perhaps it can be used for both? This would be surprising, and would increase the improbability of the pro-Circling position, but certainly cannot be ruled out a priori.
I think it helps you understand conflicts, and that sometimes resolves them, and sometimes doesn’t. If Alice thinks meat should be served at an event, and Bob thinks the event should be vegan, a Circle that includes Alice and Bob and is about that issue might end up with them understanding more why they think and feel the way they do, and how their dynamic of coming to a decision together works. But they’re still going to come to the decision using whatever dynamic they use.
To the extent people think Circling is useful for mediation or other sorts of resolution, I think that’s mostly informed by a belief that a very large fraction of conflicts have misunderstandings at their root, or that investigating the generators is more fruitful than dealing with a particular instance.
Perhaps so, but it seems to me that this is all the more reason why Circling is an inappropriate tool with which to determine whether what you need is meditation, or a court.
I’m confused by this, because it seems to me to imply that I thought or argued that Circling was the tool you would use to determine how to resolve an issue. What gave you that impression?
I’m confused by this, because it seems to me to imply that I thought or argued that Circling was the tool you would use to determine how to resolve an issue. What gave you that impression?
Yes, that was inaccurate phrasing on my part, my apologies. I do stand by the idea I was trying to express, but am unsure how to concisely express it more accurately than I did… I will try again, in any case. So, here’s an example, from this very comment of yours:
I think [Circling] helps you understand conflicts, and that sometimes resolves them, and sometimes doesn’t.
So my question is: can Circling tell you “actually, what you need is not Circling but something else [like a (metaphorical) ‘court’]”? Or, to put it another way: when should you not use Circling, but instead use some ‘court-like’ approach?
My impression from your comments is that the answers given by the pro-Circling perspective are “no” and “never”, respectively. Now, if that impression is inaccurate—fair enough (but in that case I have further questions, concerning the meaning of the comments that gave me said impression). However, supposing that my impression is (at least mostly) accurate, then it does seem reasonable to say that Circling (if not the actual act of Circling, then the “pro-Circling perspective”, as I’ve been putting it) takes the function of determining what tool you should use (and answers “Circling, that’s what!” every time).
Or, to put it yet another way: are there situations of the same category as those which Circling is meant to handle (whether that be “interpersonal conflicts”, or any other kind of thing that you would assert Circling is appropriate for), but in which Circling is not appropriate, and a more ‘court-like’ method is better? If so, then: how do you determine this to be the case?
Now, all of this aside, and re: the rest of your comment: I confess I still do not know whether you think (and/or claim) that Circling is supposed to be used for object-level conflict resolution, or not. I think that this is important; in fact, I don’t know how much more progress can be made without getting clear on this point.
So my question is: can Circling tell you “actually, what you need is not Circling but something else [like a (metaphorical) ‘court’]”? Or, to put it another way: when should you not use Circling, but instead use some ‘court-like’ approach?
My first reaction is to pick apart the question, which suggests to me we have some sort of conceptual mismatch. But before I try to pick it apart, I’ll try to answer it.
I think Circling won’t “tell you” anything about that, except in the most metaphorical of senses. That is, suppose you’re not bought into using Circling for resolving issue X; Circling will likely bring that to conscious attention, and then you might realize “ah, what I really want to do instead is settle this another way.” But the judgment is yours, not Circling’s, because Circling isn’t trying to generate judgments. (I should note that it could be the case that the other participants either notice their own resistance to using the Circle in that way, or might notice your resistance before you do and bring that up, so I mean “yours” in the ‘final judgment’ sense as opposed to the ‘original thinking’ sense; you can end up agreeing to things you wouldn’t imagine.)
As mentioned before, if you’re not an experienced Circler, I wouldn’t use it as a conflict-resolution mechanism, and I would be suspicious of someone who was an experienced Circler trying to immediately jump to conflict-resolution with someone new to Circling. If you have a conflict where everyone thinks everyone understands the issue, and yet there’s still a conflict, I don’t think Circling will point towards a resolution.
in that case I have further questions, concerning the meaning of the comments that gave me said impression
I would be interested in seeing the things that gave you this impression.
I confess I still do not know whether you think (and/or claim) that Circling is supposed to be used for object-level conflict resolution, or not. I think that this is important; in fact, I don’t know how much more progress can be made without getting clear on this point.
I agree that settling that seems useful. I think your question attempts to be “yes xor no” but the answer to the question as written is “yes and no,” and so I responded with a question-substitution to try to identify the thing that I think divides the cases more cleanly.
That is, I claim that Circling can help people understand each other (and their way of interacting) better. Separately, I observe that many conflicts have, at their root, a misunderstanding. This generates the hypothesis that Circling would resolve many conflicts by knocking out the root misunderstanding generating them, or by transforming them from “two people trying to solve two problems” to “two people trying to solve one problem,” which may do most of the work of resolution.
Of course, not all conflicts have a misunderstanding at the root; sometimes only one of us gets to win the chess game, or decide what restaurant we go to, or whatever. For such conflicts, there’s no strong reason to think Circling would help. (There are weak reasons, like an outside-view guess that “if you think there are no misunderstandings, this is nevertheless sometimes a thing you think where there are misunderstandings,” but I wouldn’t want to make a strong case on weak reasons.)
This generates the hypothesis that Circling would resolve many conflicts by knocking out the root misunderstanding generating them …
So, wait. Have you ever used Circling to resolve conflicts? Or, seen it used this way? Or, know anyone (whose word you trust) who has used it this way?
So, wait. Have you ever used Circling to resolve conflicts? Or, seen it used this way? Or, know anyone (whose word you trust) who has used it this way?
I have seen… maybe a dozen attempts to use it this way that I can remember (at least vaguely). Some of them were successful, some weren’t; many had the flavor of “well, we haven’t resolved anything yet but we know a lot more now”. (Also I’m not counting conflicts about where the group attention should be going, which are happen pretty frequently.)
Some of the conflicts were quite serious / high-stakes; described somewhat vaguely, I remember one where a wife was trying to ‘save her marriage’ (the husband was also in the Circle), and over the course of an hour or so we got to the label of her felt sense of what was happening, figured out an “if X, then Y” belief that she had so deeply she hadn’t ever looked at it, and then when she asked the question “is that true?” it dissolved and she was able to look at the situation with fresh eyes.
I don’t remember being one of the primary parties for any of those conflicts; the closest was when I organized a Circle focused on me to work through my stance towards someone in my life that I was having a conflict with who wasn’t present. (I thought that was helpful, but it’s only sort of related.)
Also, I noticed a day or two ago that maybe I should back up a bit: when I’m talking about “resolving conflicts,” I mean something closer to “do work towards a resolution” than “conflict goes in, result comes out.” Like, if we think about democracy, there’s a way in which candidate debates help resolve an election, but they aren’t the election itself.
There’s not an arbitration thing going on, where you take a conflict to the Circle, talk about it for a while, and then the facilitator or the group as a whole or whatever says “well, this is what I think” and then that’s the ruling. Instead it’s much closer to Alice and Bob relating to each other in a way that conflicts, and that getting explored, and then sometimes Alice and Bob end up relating to each other in a way they agree on, and sometimes they don’t.
There’s also a clear way in which Circles are a conflict-generating mechanism, in that Alice and Bob can be unaware that they disagree on a topic until it comes up, and now they can see their disagreement clearly.
I have seen this misunderstanding happen and result in a significant amount of misery. (That is, Bob viewed themselves as being treated unjustly by Alice, who cared about Bob’s suffering and was interested in understanding it, but a big part of Bob’s suffering was that Bob and Alice didn’t share a notion of ‘justice,’ and so they couldn’t agree on ‘what happened’ or ‘what mattered’ because they had different type signatures for them.) I was not able to bridge it that time, despite seeing both sides (I think).
Where my attention is going at the moment is not the sense-impressions, or the things themselves, but the machinery that turns the sense-impressions into models of the things, and the machinery that refines that modeling machinery.
I think it’s difficult to keep one’s attention on that part of the process; seeing the lens instead of just seeing the object through the lens. I view “owning experience” as, among other things, an attempt to direct attention towards the lens using a rule that’s understandable even before you see the lens.
[I hope it’s clear, but it’s worth saying, Circling is a lot like meditation, and very little like courts. That is, I expect it to help you deepen your understanding of how you perceive the world and how others perceive the world, and for it to make difficult topics easier to navigate, but I expect it to sometimes do those things at the expense of figuring out object-level issues. As in this set of paragraphs, where I followed my attention from the object level case to the more abstract question of how we settle such cases.]
I do object here to some of the implications of saying “the point” instead of “Bob’s point.” (While thinking that it’s bad to miss Bob’s point.)
Like, given that Bob made the point, calling it ‘the’ point is probably legitimate, but it is interesting that in this situation Bob cares about this when Carl, put into the same situation, might not. The implication that I’m troubled by is the one where Bob is assuming a shared level of understanding or buy-in to their conception of where the importance is, while not seeing it as a choice out of many possible choices.
Like, in my mind it’s the difference between the judge, who orients around determining what The Law says about the case in front of them, and the legislator, who orients around determining which of many possible laws should be enacted. Or it’s mistaking the intersubjective and the objective, thinking that the rules of chess are inherent in mathematics instead of agreed on.
Indeed this is also fascinating and worth investigating, but: is Circling supposed to be for resolving conflicts and other object-level situations, or is Circling supposed to be for investigating this meta-level “how does the machinery operate” stuff? I’ve seen pro-Circling folks, you included, appear to vacillate between these two perspectives. (Perhaps it can be used for both? This would be surprising, and would increase the improbability of the pro-Circling position, but certainly cannot be ruled out a priori.) In any case, it seems to me to be an exceedingly poor idea to try to do both of these things, simultaneously. These two purposes can only be at odds, and it seems to me that trying to combine them is likely to do serious harm to both goals.
A similar point has to do with this bit:
Perhaps so, but it seems to me that this is all the more reason why Circling is an inappropriate tool with which to determine whether what you need is meditation, or a court[1].
That Bob and Carl would react differently may indeed be interesting. But as far as the troubling implication goes… all I can say is that “who agreed to what, with whom, and when”, and “what were everyone’s expectations”, and so on, are also facts. If Bob’s understanding was not shared by Alice… that, too, is a fact. It is not an easy one to establish… but in that it is not alone. Alice may say “I genuinely didn’t know that we were supposed to have had this agreement, Bob”, and Bob may believe her, or not, and they can figure out how to proceed from there. Nevertheless the discussion is still about what happened, not about how everyone currently feels about what happened.
Or, to be more precise, “something like a court”—that is, a stance where you take seriously that some accusation has been made, some alleged transgression, and attempt to determine the facts of the matter, etc. This need not be formal, of course, much less actually involve the legal system.
I think ‘better Circling’ involves leaning towards investigating the meta-level. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone’s first Circle be about exploring a dispute they’re involved in; that seems like it would be likely to go poorly. In situations that seem high-stakes, it’s better to understand the norms you’re operating under than not understand them!
I think it helps you understand conflicts, and that sometimes resolves them, and sometimes doesn’t. If Alice thinks meat should be served at an event, and Bob thinks the event should be vegan, a Circle that includes Alice and Bob and is about that issue might end up with them understanding more why they think and feel the way they do, and how their dynamic of coming to a decision together works. But they’re still going to come to the decision using whatever dynamic they use.
To the extent people think Circling is useful for mediation or other sorts of resolution, I think that’s mostly informed by a belief that a very large fraction of conflicts have misunderstandings at their root, or that investigating the generators is more fruitful than dealing with a particular instance.
I’m confused by this, because it seems to me to imply that I thought or argued that Circling was the tool you would use to determine how to resolve an issue. What gave you that impression?
Yes, that was inaccurate phrasing on my part, my apologies. I do stand by the idea I was trying to express, but am unsure how to concisely express it more accurately than I did… I will try again, in any case. So, here’s an example, from this very comment of yours:
So my question is: can Circling tell you “actually, what you need is not Circling but something else [like a (metaphorical) ‘court’]”? Or, to put it another way: when should you not use Circling, but instead use some ‘court-like’ approach?
My impression from your comments is that the answers given by the pro-Circling perspective are “no” and “never”, respectively. Now, if that impression is inaccurate—fair enough (but in that case I have further questions, concerning the meaning of the comments that gave me said impression). However, supposing that my impression is (at least mostly) accurate, then it does seem reasonable to say that Circling (if not the actual act of Circling, then the “pro-Circling perspective”, as I’ve been putting it) takes the function of determining what tool you should use (and answers “Circling, that’s what!” every time).
Or, to put it yet another way: are there situations of the same category as those which Circling is meant to handle (whether that be “interpersonal conflicts”, or any other kind of thing that you would assert Circling is appropriate for), but in which Circling is not appropriate, and a more ‘court-like’ method is better? If so, then: how do you determine this to be the case?
Now, all of this aside, and re: the rest of your comment: I confess I still do not know whether you think (and/or claim) that Circling is supposed to be used for object-level conflict resolution, or not. I think that this is important; in fact, I don’t know how much more progress can be made without getting clear on this point.
My first reaction is to pick apart the question, which suggests to me we have some sort of conceptual mismatch. But before I try to pick it apart, I’ll try to answer it.
I think Circling won’t “tell you” anything about that, except in the most metaphorical of senses. That is, suppose you’re not bought into using Circling for resolving issue X; Circling will likely bring that to conscious attention, and then you might realize “ah, what I really want to do instead is settle this another way.” But the judgment is yours, not Circling’s, because Circling isn’t trying to generate judgments. (I should note that it could be the case that the other participants either notice their own resistance to using the Circle in that way, or might notice your resistance before you do and bring that up, so I mean “yours” in the ‘final judgment’ sense as opposed to the ‘original thinking’ sense; you can end up agreeing to things you wouldn’t imagine.)
As mentioned before, if you’re not an experienced Circler, I wouldn’t use it as a conflict-resolution mechanism, and I would be suspicious of someone who was an experienced Circler trying to immediately jump to conflict-resolution with someone new to Circling. If you have a conflict where everyone thinks everyone understands the issue, and yet there’s still a conflict, I don’t think Circling will point towards a resolution.
I would be interested in seeing the things that gave you this impression.
I agree that settling that seems useful. I think your question attempts to be “yes xor no” but the answer to the question as written is “yes and no,” and so I responded with a question-substitution to try to identify the thing that I think divides the cases more cleanly.
That is, I claim that Circling can help people understand each other (and their way of interacting) better. Separately, I observe that many conflicts have, at their root, a misunderstanding. This generates the hypothesis that Circling would resolve many conflicts by knocking out the root misunderstanding generating them, or by transforming them from “two people trying to solve two problems” to “two people trying to solve one problem,” which may do most of the work of resolution.
Of course, not all conflicts have a misunderstanding at the root; sometimes only one of us gets to win the chess game, or decide what restaurant we go to, or whatever. For such conflicts, there’s no strong reason to think Circling would help. (There are weak reasons, like an outside-view guess that “if you think there are no misunderstandings, this is nevertheless sometimes a thing you think where there are misunderstandings,” but I wouldn’t want to make a strong case on weak reasons.)
So, wait. Have you ever used Circling to resolve conflicts? Or, seen it used this way? Or, know anyone (whose word you trust) who has used it this way?
I have seen… maybe a dozen attempts to use it this way that I can remember (at least vaguely). Some of them were successful, some weren’t; many had the flavor of “well, we haven’t resolved anything yet but we know a lot more now”. (Also I’m not counting conflicts about where the group attention should be going, which are happen pretty frequently.)
Some of the conflicts were quite serious / high-stakes; described somewhat vaguely, I remember one where a wife was trying to ‘save her marriage’ (the husband was also in the Circle), and over the course of an hour or so we got to the label of her felt sense of what was happening, figured out an “if X, then Y” belief that she had so deeply she hadn’t ever looked at it, and then when she asked the question “is that true?” it dissolved and she was able to look at the situation with fresh eyes.
I don’t remember being one of the primary parties for any of those conflicts; the closest was when I organized a Circle focused on me to work through my stance towards someone in my life that I was having a conflict with who wasn’t present. (I thought that was helpful, but it’s only sort of related.)
Also, I noticed a day or two ago that maybe I should back up a bit: when I’m talking about “resolving conflicts,” I mean something closer to “do work towards a resolution” than “conflict goes in, result comes out.” Like, if we think about democracy, there’s a way in which candidate debates help resolve an election, but they aren’t the election itself.
There’s not an arbitration thing going on, where you take a conflict to the Circle, talk about it for a while, and then the facilitator or the group as a whole or whatever says “well, this is what I think” and then that’s the ruling. Instead it’s much closer to Alice and Bob relating to each other in a way that conflicts, and that getting explored, and then sometimes Alice and Bob end up relating to each other in a way they agree on, and sometimes they don’t.
There’s also a clear way in which Circles are a conflict-generating mechanism, in that Alice and Bob can be unaware that they disagree on a topic until it comes up, and now they can see their disagreement clearly.