thread: 2005-05-16 : Violence
On 2005-05-17, Ed H wrote:
Xenopulse—
I'm not sure that covers it, for me.
I'm interested in a communicative practice called "nonviolent communication," that seeks to find ways to *communicate* nonviolently, where communicative "violence" includes things like labeling people, making moralizing judgements, manipulating with guilt or fear, the whole shebang. Gandhi for example considered "violence" to be something which originated in the mind, in ways of treating people and thinking about people. Fist impact to nose was only the logical conclusion of "violent" thought and social structures.
Nonviolence = noncoercion = nonmanipulation.
Even "influence" is potentially violent when it seeks to manipulate, rather than appeal.
"Holy crap, man, so EVERYTHING is violent! If you want to be nonviolent you have to roll over and play dead!"
Not really. Because part of nonviolence is not *accepting* violence. And if violence includes manipulation, that includes not *letting* yourself be manipulated. What's good for them is good for you: you don't hit them, and you don't let them hit you. (Or if you can't stop them from hitting you, you don't let the fact that they are willing to hit you make you compromise your integrity.)
That's where the empowerment comes in—empowering nonviolence has to go both ways. It may incidentally "manipulate" and "influence" people if you act with integrity, but manipulation is not the purpose. It will be a side effect of the fact that people have basic decency and integrity and when presented with decency and integrity they tend to respond to it and return it.
All "IMHO" and "as I understand it at this point" of course.
pete_darby:
I despair of understanding what Ron is talking about much of the time. Wouldn't be suprised in the least if it turned out that he doesn't mean at all what his words seem clearly and unambiguously to mean to me on first reading. It's my own fault for not cross-referencing discussions in about a hundred and forty different forge threads and performing an exegesis of the GNS essays, I guess. Whoops, did I say that out loud? :)
