But you could also just say—for example—that it’s language that “disconnects people from an awareness of their needs”, or something similar. And that would have a more compassionate vibe than saying that people are behaving violently, and (I expect) would be less likely to get them to police other people’s language.
You could, and it might have that effect. But I think that’d be missing a lot of what is descriptively accurate about the “violent” descriptor.
The reason it’s accurate is that “All laws are enforced at gunpoint, and social shame too”. Use “Violent” language enough, and someone is gonna stop getting invited to parties. If that person keeps showing up anyway, eventually so do men with guns.
The reason is matters is that “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and social power too”. The person who can successfully wield Violent language gains power. If we don’t understand these dynamics, then we’re not going to understand the problem we’re trying to solve and will struggle to solve it.
I don’t think we can avoid tackling the question of why we should care, unless we accept that people are going to fill in their own incomplete and distorted answers there.
Call it “violent” and leave it at that, and people will notice the relevance. They’ll also be prone to relate to it the way they already relate to violence, which is often violent.
Try to strip away any reference to violence with language like “Disconnects people from an awareness of their needs”, then you take away that failure mode, but you also disconnect it from a recognition of what it is and reason for people to care. “I don’t need to be ‘connected’ to my needs in some sort of gay soccer mom buddhist sort of way, I need people to actually treat me right dammit!”.
This is getting slightly separate from the point in the post, but I don’t really think that NVC is correct with regard to everything that it classes under violence. [...]E.g. the way that it claims that interpersonal feelings like “I feel betrayed” aren’t really feelings and that you should rephrase them as something like “I feel disappointed”. And as a conflict-resolution technique that can be a useful move since it avoids the implicit accusation of “you betrayed me” and makes your conversational partner less likely to get defensive.
Yeah, I’m with you here. I don’t think I don’t think policing what is a “real” feeling/”totally objective observation” and what is a “totally subjective judgement” is the right way to do it.
The way I see it, they’re trying to strip down to observables that cannot be disagreed on so that nothing that is said can be the focus of a (potentially hostile) disagreement. But this doesn’t entirely work because no matter what you do there will be implications. “How dare you call me a disappointment!”.
And we also don’t need to avoid things, because often people can accept “Kaj feels betrayed” or even “I betrayed Kaj”. Like, “Okay, you’re upset because in your perspective I betrayed you like an evil jackass. I hear you. And yeah, that sucks to have your best friends betray you like an evil jack ass. What exactly did I do that you interpret in this way?”
I’d rather track “What ideas will threaten this person” directly rather than conflating NVCs rubric with reality itself, and track what is actually meant/likely-to-be-taken as (threat of) violence. I could totally snarl through NVC patter if I wanted to :p
Ah yeah, if NVC said that it’s sometimes fine to choose violence (or “violent” language), then that’d make it a lot better.
I’m pretty sure you’ve read a lot more NVC than me, so correct me if I’m wrong, but the impression that I get is that it doesn’t really say a whole lot either way? Like, it just says “this is violent” and “look how much better things can go when not violent” and leaves the is to ought conversion implicit?
I pulled on that thread and wrote about it here. The analogy I like is that an inclination towards “doing NVC” is like neutron dampers between fissile sources throwing off violent neutrons. There are some cases where a little bit of damping is absolutely critical, and also cases outside that band where it’s either insufficient or unnecessary (and potentially counterproductive).
But I think I wasn’t trying to understand their rationale very deeply. Like, I encountered a claim A that rested on premises B, C, and D, and then thought “well B and C make sense but D is wrong”. And then I just decided that therefore A must be wrong, without investing any energy into checking whether I might be mistaken about D being wrong, or whether it might be meant in a different sense than what my first impression was.
I think that is also potentially completely reasonable though.
For example: A) You should walk to the car wash because B) it’s only a quarter mile away and C) exercise is good for you and D) it’s not like there are any other reasons to drive.
It’s not arrogant to notice that this is stupid because you need your car there to wash it.
Before tarring you as “arrogant” I’d want to see that you chose not to invest more energy because you were flinching from the truth rather than just because you knew what’s there.
Maybe you were flinching a bit, I dunno. Arrogance happens. But I’m generally more suspicious of arrogance on the part of the person who cries “arrogance!” without first distinguishing it from truth. Often accusations are more descriptive of the accuser than the accused (“You’re trying to gaslight me!”).
One thing I notice across these: the right-wing examples tend to involve the corruption of frameworks that were originally critical of power — Mill questioning social conformity, Young warning about meritocratic elites, evo psych insisting on the naturalistic fallacy — into frameworks that defend existing arrangements. The left-wing examples tend to involve the corruption of frameworks for self-examination into tools for controlling others.
Hm, I think I see a few patterns.
One is “Everything exists on one dimension. The opposite extreme has bad stuff in there, so don’t do that extreme [do this extreme instead]”. Left and right just pick opposite extremes to notice/not-notice the horror of.
Another is “Here’s a thing You should do” → “Ah, great ideas for what You should do! I shall begin informing all the Yous of what they should do!”
But then some of them look like “I’m just gonna use this to justify what I already believe”.
The NVC example arguably hits all of these. Still thinking about what the best way is to minimize these failure modes. Some of it seems motivated, but a lot of it also seems downstream of simply not understanding. Like, I think people genuinely don’t understand “how a framework that dictates how I ought to behave can apply to me and not other people”. That might be an interesting post to write.
You could, and it might have that effect. But I think that’d be missing a lot of what is descriptively accurate about the “violent” descriptor.
The reason it’s accurate is that “All laws are enforced at gunpoint, and social shame too”. Use “Violent” language enough, and someone is gonna stop getting invited to parties. If that person keeps showing up anyway, eventually so do men with guns.
The reason is matters is that “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and social power too”. The person who can successfully wield Violent language gains power. If we don’t understand these dynamics, then we’re not going to understand the problem we’re trying to solve and will struggle to solve it.
I don’t think we can avoid tackling the question of why we should care, unless we accept that people are going to fill in their own incomplete and distorted answers there.
Call it “violent” and leave it at that, and people will notice the relevance. They’ll also be prone to relate to it the way they already relate to violence, which is often violent.
Try to strip away any reference to violence with language like “Disconnects people from an awareness of their needs”, then you take away that failure mode, but you also disconnect it from a recognition of what it is and reason for people to care. “I don’t need to be ‘connected’ to my needs in some sort of gay soccer mom buddhist sort of way, I need people to actually treat me right dammit!”.
Yeah, I’m with you here. I don’t think I don’t think policing what is a “real” feeling/”totally objective observation” and what is a “totally subjective judgement” is the right way to do it.
The way I see it, they’re trying to strip down to observables that cannot be disagreed on so that nothing that is said can be the focus of a (potentially hostile) disagreement. But this doesn’t entirely work because no matter what you do there will be implications. “How dare you call me a disappointment!”.
And we also don’t need to avoid things, because often people can accept “Kaj feels betrayed” or even “I betrayed Kaj”. Like, “Okay, you’re upset because in your perspective I betrayed you like an evil jackass. I hear you. And yeah, that sucks to have your best friends betray you like an evil jack ass. What exactly did I do that you interpret in this way?”
I’d rather track “What ideas will threaten this person” directly rather than conflating NVCs rubric with reality itself, and track what is actually meant/likely-to-be-taken as (threat of) violence. I could totally snarl through NVC patter if I wanted to :p
I’m pretty sure you’ve read a lot more NVC than me, so correct me if I’m wrong, but the impression that I get is that it doesn’t really say a whole lot either way? Like, it just says “this is violent” and “look how much better things can go when not violent” and leaves the is to ought conversion implicit?
I pulled on that thread and wrote about it here. The analogy I like is that an inclination towards “doing NVC” is like neutron dampers between fissile sources throwing off violent neutrons. There are some cases where a little bit of damping is absolutely critical, and also cases outside that band where it’s either insufficient or unnecessary (and potentially counterproductive).
I think that is also potentially completely reasonable though.
For example: A) You should walk to the car wash because B) it’s only a quarter mile away and C) exercise is good for you and D) it’s not like there are any other reasons to drive.
It’s not arrogant to notice that this is stupid because you need your car there to wash it.
Before tarring you as “arrogant” I’d want to see that you chose not to invest more energy because you were flinching from the truth rather than just because you knew what’s there.
Maybe you were flinching a bit, I dunno. Arrogance happens. But I’m generally more suspicious of arrogance on the part of the person who cries “arrogance!” without first distinguishing it from truth. Often accusations are more descriptive of the accuser than the accused (“You’re trying to gaslight me!”).
Hm, I think I see a few patterns.
One is “Everything exists on one dimension. The opposite extreme has bad stuff in there, so don’t do that extreme [do this extreme instead]”. Left and right just pick opposite extremes to notice/not-notice the horror of.
Another is “Here’s a thing You should do” → “Ah, great ideas for what You should do! I shall begin informing all the Yous of what they should do!”
But then some of them look like “I’m just gonna use this to justify what I already believe”.
The NVC example arguably hits all of these. Still thinking about what the best way is to minimize these failure modes. Some of it seems motivated, but a lot of it also seems downstream of simply not understanding. Like, I think people genuinely don’t understand “how a framework that dictates how I ought to behave can apply to me and not other people”. That might be an interesting post to write.