Nonviolent Communication is About Needs Not Demonsing Others
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing, and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. –Rumi
Wikipedia describes Marshall Rosenberg, a leading light for nonviolence in the world. First is a Wikipedia overview of his work and beneath is a video of him talking about his teaching of nonviolence. If only warring parties could listen to this?
Imagine everyone learned nonviolent communication instead of control and power over communications.
Marshall Rosenberg (born October 6, 1934) is an American psychologist and the creator of Nonviolent Communication, a communication process that helps people to exchange the information necessary to resolve conflicts and differences peacefully. He is the founder and former Director of Educational Services for the Center for Nonviolent Communication, an international non-profit organization.
In 1961, Rosenberg received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he studied under Carl Rogers[1] and in 1966 was awarded Diplomate status in clinical psychology from the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the Center for Nonviolent Communication’s office is located. While Rosenberg is most well known for his work with conflict resolution through his system of “life-serving” Nonviolent Communication (NVC), he has also made education reform a major component of his work. Building on the ideas of Carl Rogers, Neil Postman, Riane Eisler, Walter Wink, and others, Rosenberg’s contribution to this field involves reforming schools into “Life-Enriching” organizations, with the following characteristics:[2]
- The people are empathically connected to what each is feeling and needing—-they do not blame themselves or let judgments implying wrongness obscure this connection to each other.
- The people are aware of the interdependent nature of their relationships and value the others’ needs being fulfilled equally to their own needs being fulfilled—-they know that their needs cannot be met at someone else’s expense.
- The people take care of themselves and each other with the sole intention of enriching their lives—they are not motivated by, nor do they use coercion in the form of guilt, shame, duty, obligation, fear of punishment, or hope for extrinsic rewards.
The goals of such schools being
- make life more wonderful
- get everyone’s needs met
- connect with self and others
- motivate through the joy of natural giving, i.e., contributing to the well-being of others
- learning how to receive freely from others
This is in contrast with traditional “domination culture” schools which
- prove who’s right and who’s wrong (e.g., grades)
- teach students how to obey authority
- dispense labels, evaluations, diagnoses, and moralistic judgements (e.g., Learning disabled, Special Needs, Emotionally disturbed, Culturally disadvantaged, Hyperactive, ADD, etc.)
- Motivate desired behavior through punishment, reward, guilt, shame, duty, or obligation.[3]
Rosenberg borrows the phrase “Dominator Culture” from Riane Eisler and builds upon Walter Wink‘s theory that we have lived under a domination-culture paradigm for about 8,000 years. Rosenberg says this culture utilizes a specialized language and system of education to allow a small minority to rule over the vast majority of the people, so that the majority is not serving their own life-needs, but serving their masters’.[4]