Do you mean that saying "my method of communication is non-violent communication" implies that everyone else is communicating violently? [...] To be clear, I don't mean to imply that, and I don't subscribe to the interpretation that people who don't use NVC are being violent in any sense. I also think that attempts to police other people's language by saying things like "you must always use NVC" are going against the spirit of the original.
I'll bite that bullet. People who aren't communicating in the spirit of NVC are "communicating violently". Not in the sense of "Words are literal violence!" because "sticks and stones", but in the sense that "If you don't give me what I want I will use sticks and stones to break your bones" is "communicating violently".
NVC points at the important insight that much of what passes for "normal communication" is actually subtle and implicit threats, which can and do escalate to real physical harm and literal violence. "Why are you being so mean?" doesn't pass for NVC, and that's not unrelated to the fact that it can be used to recruit someone to do violence on your behalf against the person who you accuse of doing you wrong. It doesn't usually get that far, in the same way that parking tickets aren't usually enforced with guns drawn, but there's a reason that libertarians like to point out that all laws are ultimately enforced at gunpoint and the same thing applies here.
That doesn't mean that we should "must" at people who aren't communicating in the spirit of NVC, because as you point out, that would be violating the spirit of NVC. But I do think the term fits, and the way to get around the hubris of saying "my method of communication is nonviolent communication!" is to 1) point out how the term "violence" is actually legit and doesn't just mean "offensive", 2) don't run around claiming that you actually succeed at doing it more than you do, and 3) point out how "nonviolent" isn't even the goal to aspire to 100% of the time and definitely not synonymous with "good".
Good question, and good observation. My answer, in short, is that NVC is about credibly removing (or diminishing) threat of conflict.
If you step on my toes it very well might be an accident. If it's an accident, and I know it's an accident, there's no reason for me to attack you for it because as soon as you see that I don't like what you're doing you'll stop on your own. In that case, "Hey man, you're on my toes" isn't an attack, and there's no reason to treat it like it must be an attack just because I didn't like my toes getting stepped on.
However, if you start adding additional pieces to the picture, then the story changes. If I'm "stating an observation" through clenched teeth and with clenched fists, it's starting to seem a lot more likely that I'm adding a layer of interpretation that is calling for conflict -- even if I don't verbalize the interpretation explicitly.
In the latter case, "nonviolent language" isn't gonna work because people are generally smart enough to see the incongruence and prefer to trust the body language over the words which are easier to fake. But it's also not easy to simultaneously hold onto that sense of righteous anger while saying the words that point out the facts which show the anger to not fit.
So if you were to hold yourself to saying "I know you don't mean to hurt me and aren't doing it on purpose, but it is very physically painful when you step on my toes, and I worry that bearing so much concentrated weight might even damage them. Can you please gently step back?", and you know that "you don't mean to hurt me and aren't doing it on purpose" is true, then it's a lot harder to keep doing anger at that person, and even if you're a bit clenched it's going to come off more like "this person is overwhelmed and trying to keep it together because they recognize we're on the same side" than "this person is threatening me".
No matter what harm this emotion may cause, it may also cause a lot of good, like getting up, being friendly to coworkers or being productive. Basically, every emotion is a motivation towards something, the outcome may be predictable, it will vary for the individual and it will affect peers or groups.
Fear isn't a motivation towards something, it's a motivation away from something. It's not that it's impossible to use fear productively, and Richard even touches on that.
It's that constraining your response to fear to be only productive is fighting against entropy in the same way that pushing rope is fighting against entropy. Speaking of "fear of getting fired", a friend of mine was in that boat recently, and while her fear did keep her from doing some things which would have gotten her fired, it also motivated her to refuse to look at the reality of the situation she was in -- because that is an equally effective way of getting away from the experience of fear!
As a result, she wasn't able to update her perspectives in the ways that would have been needed in order to keep the job, and so she lost that job. All of the things you list as potential good things that can come from fear are things that can come more fluidly from excitement. People who are friendly because they are afraid of what will happen if they aren't friendly tend to come off more stilted and insecure than people who are just genuinely looking forward to seeing what they can create with you.
Adding onto this, an important difference between "anxiety" and "heightened attentiveness" is that anxiety has a lot to do with not knowing what to do. If you have a lot of experience driving cars and losing traction, and life or death scenarios, then when it happens you know what to do and just focus on doing it. If you're full of anxiety, it's likely that you don't actually have any good responses ready if the tires do lose traction, and beyond not having a good response to enact you can't even focus on performing the best response you do have because your attention is also being tugged towards "I don't have a good way to respond and this is a problem!".
It's not that it's "necessarily good and something you should act on" just because that's what you feel, it's that it's not "necessarily bad and something you shouldn't feel" just because that's what you think. Maybe, and maybe, but you're always going to be fallible on both fronts so it makes sense to check.
And that is actually how you can make sure to "not feel" this kind of inappropriate feeling, by the way. The mental move of "I don't want to feel this. I shouldn't feel this" is the very mental move that leads people to be stuck with feelings which don't make sense, since it is an avoidance of bringing them into contact with reality.
If you find yourself stuck with an "irrational" fear, and go to a therapist saying "I shouldn't feel afraid of dogs", they're likely to suggest "exposure therapy" which is basically a nice way of saying "Lol at your idea that you shouldn't feel this, how about we do the exact opposite, make you feel it more, and refrain from trying not to?". In order to do exposure therapy, you have to set aside your preconceived ideas about whether the fear is appropriate and actually find out. When the dog visibly isn't threatening you, and you're actually looking at the fact that there's nothing scary, then you tend to start feeling less afraid. That's really all there is to it, and so if you can maintain a response to fear of "Oh wow, this is scary. I wonder if it's actually dangerous?" even as you feel fear, then you never develop a divergence between your feelings and what you feel is appropriate to feel, and therefore no problem that calls for a therapist or "shoulding" at yourself.
It's easier said than done, of course, but the point is that "I shouldn't feel this" doesn't actually work either instrumentally or epistemically.
- Yes, Jimmy was either projecting (filling in unspecified details with dysfunction, where function would also fit) or making an unjustified claim (that any gym matching your description must be dysfunctional). I think projection is more likely. Neither of these options is great.
FWIW, that is a claim I'm fully willing and able to justify. It's hard to disclaim all the possible misinterpretations in a brief comment (e.g. "deeply" != "very"), but I do stand by a pretty strong interpretation of what I said as being true, justifiable, important, and relevant.
There's a difference between "hey, I want to understand the underpinnings of this" and the thing I described, which is hostile to the point of "why are you even here, then?"
Yes, and that's why I described the attitude as "dysfunctionally dissonant" (emphasis in original). It's not a good way of challenging the instructors, and not the way I recommend behaving.
What I'm talking about is how a healthy gym environment is robust to this sort of dysfunctional dissonance, and how to productively relate to unskilled dissonance by practicing skillfully enough yourself that the system's combined dysfunction never becomes supercritical and instead decays towards productive cooperation.
it's way overconfident/projection-y to extrapolate "deeply dysfunctional" from what I said.
That's certainly one possibility. But isn't it also conceivable though that I simply see underlying dynamics (and lack thereof) which you don't see, and which justify the confidence level I display?
It certainly makes sense to track the hypothesis that I am overconfident here, but ironically it strikes me as overconfident to be asserting that I am being overconfident without first checking things like "Can I pass his ITT"/"Can I point to a flaw in his argument that makes him stutter if not change his mind"/etc.
To be clear, my view here is based on years of thinking about this kind of problem and practicing my proposed solutions with success, including in a literal martial arts gym for the last eight years. Perhaps I should have written more about these things on LW so my confidence doesn't appear to come out of nowhere, but I do believe I am able to justify what I'm saying very well and won't hesitate to do so if anyone wants further explanation or sees something which doesn't seem to fit. And hey, if it turns out I'm wrong about how well supported my perspective is, I promise not to be a poor sport about it.
jimmy above is exhibiting actually bad reasoning (à la representativeness)
In absence of an object level counterargument, this is textbook ad hominem. I won't argue that there isn't a place for that (or that it's impossible that my reasoning is flawed), but I think it's hard to argue that it isn't premature here. As a general rule, anyone that disagrees with anyone can come up with a million accusations of this sort, and it isn't uncommon for some of it to be right to an extent, but it's really hard to have a productive conversation if such accusations are used as a first resort rather than as a last resort. Especially when they aren't well substantiated.
I see that you've deactivated your account now so it might be too late, but I want to point out explicitly that I actively want you to stick around and feel comfortable contributing here. I'm pushing back against some of the things you're saying because I think that it's important to do so, but I do not harbor any ill will towards you nor do I think what you said was "ridiculous". I hope you come back.
A thing that is quite important to me is that users feel comfortable ignoring Said if they don’t think he’s productive to engage with. (See below for more thoughts on this). One reason this is difficult is that it’s hard to establish common knowledge about it among authors. Another reason is that I think Said’s conversational patterns have the effect of making authors and other commenters feel obliged to engage with him (but, this is pretty hard to judge in a clear-cut way)
It seems like the natural solution here would be something that establishes this common knowledge. Something like the twitter "community notes" being attached to relevant comments that says something like "There is no obligation to respond to this comment, please feel comfortable ignoring this user if you don't feel he will productive to engage with. Discussion here"
You're describing a deeply dysfunctional gym, and then implying that the problem lies with the attitude of this one character rather than the dysfunction that allows such an attitude to be disruptive.
The way to jam with such a character is to bet you can tap him with the move of the day, and find out if you're right. If you can, and he gets tapped 10 times in a row with the move he just scoffed at every day he does it, then it becomes increasingly difficult for him to scoff the next time, and increasingly funny and entertaining for everyone else. If you can't, and no one can, then he might have a point, and the gym gets to learn something new.
If your gym knows how to jam with and incorporate dissonance without perceiving it as a threat, then not only are such expressions of distrust/disrespect not corrosive, they're an active part of the productive collaboration, and serve as opportunities to form the trust and mutual respect which clearly weren't there in the first place. It's definitely more challenging to jam with dissonant characters like that (especially if they're dysfunctionally dissonant, as your description implies), and no one wants to train at a gym which fails to form trust and mutual respect, but it's important to realize that the problem isn't so much the difficulty as the inability to overcome the difficulty, because the solutions to each are very different.
I see where you're coming from, but it doesn't actually work except for in the egregious cases and NVC highlights a more complete picture that includes the non-egregious cases. If you can't say "I think maybe we should get pizza" without Bob explicitly threatening to punch you in the face, then yes, that is a serious problem and it is crucial that Bob gets shut down.
However, there are two important points here.
One is that even if people respond in the way you prescribe, the person being threatened probably doesn't want to be punched in the face before you haul Bob off, and will likely be swayed by the threat anyway. If you try to pretend this doesn't exist, and say "Oh no, Bob isn't threatening because if he did that would be bad and we'd respond then", then Bob gets to say "Oh yeah, totally not threatening. Would be a shame if someone punched you in the face for suggesting we get pizza. Wink wink." and carry out his coercion while getting off scot free. This isn't good. In order to stop this, you have to make sure Bob feels punished for communicating the threat, even though the threat was "just words".
The second one, which gets at the heart of the issue, is that your prescribed response to Bob threatening violence is to threaten counterviolence (and in the spirit of this conversation, I'll explicitly disclaim here that I'm not saying this is "bad"). It's important that people feel free to express their values and beliefs without fearing violence for contributing to the cooperative endeavor, but "No risk to threatening violence" can't work and is the opposite of what you are trying to do with Bob "speaking up" about what he will do to anyone who suggests getting pizza.
Most real world conflicts aren't so egregious as "I will punch anyone who suggests getting pizza". Usually it's something like Adam lightly bumps into Bob, and Bob says "Watch where you're going, jerk", Adam says "Don't call me a jerk, asshole", Bob says "Call me an asshole again and see what happens", Adam says "If you touch me I'll kill you" and then eventually someone throws the first punch. Literally everything said here is said from a place of "I'm only threatening violence to suppress that guy's unjustified violence", and the "initial aggression" -- if there was any -- was simply not being careful enough not to bump into someone else. And "How careful is "careful enough?" isn't the kind of question we can agree on with enough fidelity and reliability to keep these unstable systems from flying off the rails.
The idea that "Unprovoked violence should be suppressed with zero tolerance [backed by willingness to use violence]" immediately explodes if "microaggressions" are counted as "violence", and so given that policy there's reason to push back applying the term "violent" to smaller infractions. However, that's just because it's a bad policy. Smaller levels of aggression still exist, and if you have to pretend to not see them then you de facto have infinite tolerance for anti-social behavior just below threshold, and clever Bobs will exploit this and provoke their victims into crossing the line while playing innocent. It's a pattern that comes up a lot.
The idea of NVC is to respond to threats of violence with less threat of violence, so that violent tension can fizzle out rather than going super-critial. That doesn't mean you let Bob threaten to punch people who express a liking for pizza, but it does mean that you recognize "Watch where you're going, jerk" as the first step of escalation and recognize that if you do that -- or if you respond to a line like that with "Don't call me a jerk, asshole" -- you may get punched and you will have contributed (avoidably) to that outcome.
Seems to, yes. But that "seems" is coming from preexisting ideas about "who to blame", and NVC's whole idea is that maybe we should just do less of that in the first place.
The question is "How much do we want to avoid speaking truth so as to avoid people jumping to wrong conclusions when they combine the new truth with other false beliefs of theirs?". Sometimes we're kinda stuck choosing which falsehood for people to believe, but a lot of times we can just speak the truth, and then when people jump to the wrong conclusions, speak more truth.
Yes, there's something "violent" about a lot of incautious communication. No, that does not call for further aggression, physical or otherwise. Quite the opposite.
Provocation isn't a bad thing in general though, and doesn't necessarily contain threat of violence. Provocation can be done playfully and cooperatively even when not playful, and is critically important whenever the truth happens to be uncomfortable to anyone involved. Heck, NVC can be quite provocative at times.
"Nonthreatening communication" would be a better fit, IMO. Or "Nonadversarial". "Collaborative communication" works too, but kinda hides what makes it different so I do like the "define by saying what it isn't" kind of name in this case.
That is a great use case, heh. But that undersells the utility among people who aren't uncivilized or dangerously prone to violence, and obscures why it works with those who are.
I guess I'm less worried about that. I'd prefer those misunderstandings have a chance to surface and be dealt with, because without that it's hard to actually convey the important insights behind NVC.