The Challenge of a One Nation Ideal–to the Left as much as the Right
by: Dave Belden on October 2nd, 2010 | 15 Comments »
On the way to the March this morning. From http://www.onenationworkingtogether.org/news/entry/the-blogmobile-arrives-in-dc
I hope this is one humongously large rally in Washington today. Nonetheless, and I know this will sound bizarre, I am personally more excited for the future of social change by a small conference call taking place tomorrow morning, to which you are invited, than I am by the One Nation March.
Curiously, the left online doesn’t seem very excited about the march either. There’s no mention of it on HuffPost’s front page as I write this morning. It’s not the top story on Alternet, and the headline isn’t “Huge Left Rally in DC” but “Anti-Tea Partiers Descend on Washington to Fight for a Stronger Economy,” which isn’t as anxious as Politico’s “Liberals hope rally rivals Beck’s” but similarly concedes that the Right has the initiative. Only The Nation leads with the story, titled “For Jobs, Justice and Education.” But not even The Nation uses the “One Nation” idea in a headline. Politico tells us:
Union organizers, environmentalists, educators, anti-war protesters and civil-rights and gay-rights groups say they’ve got 2,000 registered buses heading to Washington to reinvigorate a liberal base that has been apathetic at best and in some cases downright critical of President Barack Obama’s agenda.
So let’s hope this is big! Then maybe the left press will cheer up.
But what’s this apathy of the liberal base all about? Michael Lerner makes a strong point in his post of yesterday, that the Left and liberals actually need more than a shopping list of needed items — even ones as basic as jobs, education and justice — to get their energy up. The One Nation March leads off its pitch with these words:
We all deserve a just and fair chance to achieve the American Dream. Our national identity is rooted in the ideal that all people – regardless of race, class, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, heritage or ability – should have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
The American Dream: is that the goal? The movements that moved America and that pushed centrist politicians like FDR and LBJ to pass significant legislation (which did indeed make that dream more available to more Americans) actually had larger dreams in mind. The socialist dream was a utopian one of a society in which people acted unselfishly for the common good. In his famous Dream speech King said:
With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
I assume the theme of “One Nation” was an effort to get some of those “togethers,” some of that brotherhood and sisterhood, back into the liberal/left agenda. But it wasn’t spelled out, there was no prophetic call, and so the values of an individualistic, me-and-mine-first interpretation of the American Dream was not contradicted. Is this all about getting more of the wealth to trickle down, or is about creating a caring society? There is a great irony that initiatives that did enable major “trickle down” like Social Security or extensions of rights like the Civil Rights Act were in fact created by movements that dreamed of wildly bigger ideas, such as people loving their neighbors as themselves. Why has the left declined in its ability to voice this concept since King’s day?
It certainly stems partly from the Left’s religiophobia, and from its inability to generate functional replacements for the inspirational, communal, caring congregations that trained innumerable progressive activists in the possibilities of humanity. Sure, ditch beliefs you can’t believe in, but why ditch communities that strive to live out deep ideas of love, meaning, and mutuality?
For nonreligious people and those who find no congregation-type communities they would want to join, there isn’t much creative work going on to build alternatives. There are certainly plenty of people in their twenties creating food networks and informal community networks. But will these be more successful than the highly creative communes and collectives of the 1970s? A lot of people who threw themselves into those ended up leading more conventional lives. We gave up on the notion that community can be created, that brotherhood and sisterhood are viable ideals rather than old-fashioned dreams. We foundered on our own inabilities to create communities that nourished and drew people in more than they burned people out.
It was as if we fell in love, but couldn’t make the marriage work. We mastered our individual musical instruments but couldn’t come together to compose or play the symphony. But it was the techniques of “together” that were missing, not the heart and soul longing to be together. We didn’t have good marriage counseling, or any ability to agree who the conductor would be, or how to create beautiful music without a conductor. We had good will but not good methodologies.
We were not missing the recognition of the Other at some deep spiritual level — we got stoned together and felt the love, after all. What we were missing was how to do it day to day, how to listen to each other, how to identify and talk about our needs and the others’ needs, how to distribute leadership and all take and share responsibility. We rejected charismatic leaders and top down hierarchies, but we didn’t know how to make alternatives work well, because all our relational modes had been learned in top down families, schools and organizations. This is deeply difficult stuff, combining the smallest details about the ways we relate to each other with the grandest dreams of social change. As Miki Kashtan wrote here about some of the challenges of togetherness:
Working our way out of charismatic leadership will require us to work with others who are not members of our specific movement. As we reach out to create such connection, we will encounter people who will agree with us on some bits and not on others. And we will still need to work with them. If we are to be truly effective, we will need to work with people who are far from our positions. We cannot make significant change without connecting with people who are in fundamental opposition to what we are proposing (if we even propose anything rather than simply protesting). The Department of Peace Campaign has been working hard for some years now to support the establishment of a federal level Department of Peace in the US government. As of a few months ago, they still hadn’t crossed the Democrat/Republican divide. There will be no Department of Peace Legislation for as long as that divide is not crossed in the constituency that operates the campaign.
Efforts to create One Nation and to “transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood” and sisterhood depend on much more than goodwill or spiritual epiphany.
This is why a lot of us are attracted to people who claim to teach relational methodologies. Imagine a continuum from individualistic to communitarian. A society of atomized individuals is at one end and a fully functioning, satisfying, caring community is at the other end: where no one is homeless, hungry, abandoned and all have access to love, joy, meaning and purpose. In our time, as we try to move from our dysfunctional society to a caring society, our methods also line up on that spectrum. Personal therapy and spirituality (praying alone, for example) are at one end and communal rituals may be at the other end. Couples and family counseling are further towards the middle than is personal therapy, because they involve more than one person. The biggest thing that is missing in our toolbox for social transformation, is how to do relational dynamics in organizations, from small to large. If you acquire power, how do you wield it non-coercively?
I find these to be the central questions for social activists today. That’s what we will be discussing on Miki Kashtan’s conference call tomorrow morning, to which she invites us all. Miki Kashtan is one of the leading teachers of relational dynamics in our time, using Nonviolent Communications (NVC), and she is one who truly gets the link to major utopian social change. She has just completed a set of eight fairly short posts here on the topic of personal growth and social change, and in the last writes:
Writing about personal growth and social change within an NVC perspective has been a two-month endeavor that I truly enjoyed. If you found the ideas intriguing, and/or if you want to connect with me and others who are passionate about principled nonviolence as a way of living, I invite you to come and participate in a conference call that I am setting up for this coming Sunday at 9:30 – 11:00 am Pacific Time.
The agenda is emergent. For right now what I have thought about including are questions and comments about anything that’s been part of this mini-series, and small group interactions about these topics for part of the time (the conference technology for this call – maestro conferencing – allows for that). I have no idea how many people might sign up, so it’s hard for me to plan beyond this. I hope you will join by following this link: bit.ly/9abV2H. I am also planning on writing about the call after it’s complete.
The One Nation March is — I hope — a strong expression of the place the liberal broad left has got itself to over the last generation. But to get further we need to, first, recall the spiritual and utopian ideals of the Kings of the past, and second, do what they really didn’t get to, which is to work at the relational dynamics that make their ideals of togetherness possible, liberating, joyful and successful. They didn’t focus on that or go there very much. They were in many ways using the social capital of a functional hierarchical past in which mostly straight male leaders rallied the faithful and the dreamers. That social capital has eroded and it’s not bad that it has — unless we fail to create the necessary new social capital, which is what people like Miki Kashtan are pioneering. This is central work. It has the potential to change far more than the One Nation March can change.
Links to Miki Kashtan’s mini series “Personal Growth and Social Change”: Parts One, Two, Three, Response to a comment on Part 3,Four, Five, Six, and Seven.
‘See you on the conference call later on.!
I think your criticism of the One Nation approach above is very strong, Dave. It deserves being said again and again that the American dream, conceived of as a challenge for people to “make it” on their own, is not the American dream of a society based on genuine caring for each other and the earth, and it only that second dream that spiritual progressives should be backing.
But that explains why I’m not interested in an approach to politics which puts cooperation and unity above articulation of a coherent and spiritually and ethically and environmentally deep worldview. It’s one thing to say, as I have been doing for the past 35 years at least, that there are many people who have been attracted to the Right who could be spoken to by a progressive worldview if that worldview incorporated a spiritual dimension, avoided the implicit put down inherent in the capitalist notion that we live in a meritocracy and that anyone can make it if they really try, avoided the religio-phobia that is still pervasive (though often unconscious) in the practitioners of progressive social change movements, and spoke not only to the head but to the heart, and spoke with passion and not only with the discourse of technocratic rationality, spoke to awe and wonder and the mystery of being and not only as though the earth and human beings were “resources” to be used appropriately by rational liberal government bureaucrats or by corporate investors. But saying this is very different from saying that we need to “cross the Democratic/Republican divide” in “the constituency which runs the campaign.” That latter position can mean what I mean, but it can also mean what Obama took it to mean: namely, trying to frame your ideas in ways that would appeal to the Republican leadership, or bringing the Republican leadership into the framing of your programs from the very git-go. Now that is a huge mistake, as Obama’s first two years in office has demonstrated. You can’t rally people around the kind of mush that emerges from such a set of compromises.
So, the path forward is not to try to incorporate a common ground between a spiritual progressive and a right-wing worldview, but to formulate a coherent spiritual progressive worldview and then find ways of talking about it and ways of communicating to people about that worldview so that they can hear it. The goal is to win people to a worldview that we hold to be ethically and spiritually coherent and capable of saving the planet from environmental destruction, endless wars, starvation and other manifestations of poverty, and from the ethos of selfishness and materialism that has done so much to undermine loving relationships and trust among individuals and nations.
This is why I see Non Violent Communication as a stumbling block–they seem to think that the communication style is an end in itself. Unfortunately, NVC is compatible with what others have called “friendly fascism,” the kind of fascism likely to emerge in the U.S. Here we can have a global system that is destroying the environment of the entire planet, and that wages wars like those now taking place in Afghanistan, Iraq (still, despite the fanfare of withdrawal), and Pakistan, have huge numbers of people being thrown out of their homes or facing crippling unemployment, and still have millions of Americans who have very good values spending their energies learning how to better communicate but not how to change the system as a whole or even how to communicate with others effectively about what is wrong with this system and what our alternative vision is. It’s not that NVC is bad or wrong, anymore than it would have been wrong for people to go to church (as they did in the millions) during the Nazi extermination of Jews. But to the extent that NVC doesn’t try to teach and how to convince others to adopt a spiritually progressive worldview, it becomes alternatively either a useful side-show to distract attention from the pain our system is inflicting on others and ourselves, or worse, a way of people fooling themselves into believing that the real problem is communication when in fact the real problem is a society based on selfishness and materialism and desperately needing the New Bottom Line that guides our Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the US Constitution and our Global Marshall Plan and our Spiritual Covenant with America. If only NVC and people with the obvious talents of Miki Kashtan could direct their wisdom to how to get people organized and effective around these projects, we would be making much greater impact on the society.
Agree completely. Well said.
Readers, please note that Miki Kashtan penned a response to this comment of Michael’s at http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2010/10/06/how-nvc-can-help-progressive-politics/, which Michael wrote that he mostly agreed with. So there are very different understandings of what NVC is, what effects it can have, and what it’s potential may be, even within that movement. Some in NVC see it as a tool or foundational basis for radical social change, others haven’t got that far yet. which means it is no surprise that activists outside it may get different impressions as Michael and I have done.
Dave Beldon and Rabbi Michael Lerner debate the merits of progressive movements, their needs of communication, organizing, leadership and management.
As a young student, I learned what was described as, New Math. Properties of finding the solutions to mathematic equations were divided into categories to be utilized in first disseminating the values of
components of equations, then, after simplifying the terms of the equation, were used to find the answer.
Complex equations are more easily solved by useing such methods to understand the nature of numerical values, their relationships in terms of application of symbols such as Plus, minus, times or “by”, that describe the action to be taken with the values in equations to achieve the CORRECT result of the problem.
The associative, distributive, communicative additive properties are used to simplify values, clarify terms,describe function and apply values to numbers to arrive at accurate conclusions. In math their is one correct answer but many ways to arrive at that answer, This is the language of modern math.
The language of social modeling is perhaps more complex, but similar tactical approaches can be applied useing the same properties of deduction, first we simplfy the values, then apply the correct property of deduction.
Finding common cause from such a diverse national identity pool, we know that no single solution will be satisfactory to all involved parties until all parties agree on their common values.
Commonality then is subjective to several factors; religion, race, economic strata, local culture, political affinity and personality, which describes quite a conundrum to sociologists attempting to bridge gaps in diverse concepts while searching for common ground, which is why many anthropologists survey previous models looking for clues as to which model has been successful in the highest degree of diversity for the greatest duration of time, which is a good metric for reasoning success.
Today, we are apprised of quite a diverse spectrum of past failures and also some modicum of representation of success in social administrative models. If we study the past in correlation to todays problems in particular but also look toward tomorrow for possible glitches which may be solved before errors cause trouble, we are naturally using tools of good governance to the best possible outcomes for all parties as they exist and also thoughtfully foreseeing changes which, if made always for the better,need to be accounted for in our model which is progressive.
Such study as Dave Miki and Michael undertake has been undertaken before, actually many times and we do have the evidence of these studies to draw on for todays model of better governance than we have now.
Ted Kennedy understood this political concept and if we can accept Barack Obama’s earnest interview in Rolling Stone as his best thinking, we see this additive property that takes the steps most prudently available today and communicate the lack of perfection in each step, which is vigilance, and that always thoughtful of the intention of restorative social modeling, to make life better for all with a pragmatic approach that evaluates the values of intentions and translates these intentions by making steps toward that goal, which is progressive pragmatism, which seems to leave some lefties pretty dry and disenfranchised .
To alleviate our left leaning angst over such compromised legislation and outcomes, we protest by communicative means which is heard by both our supporters and their detractors and elicits a reaction, maybe a negative one, which is instructive. We learn opposing points of view and discuss them to understand others thinking, which if near to our we accept, if not we reject and either compromise or stagnate in derision, which is not progressive so Obama is correct, we have flawed bills but my son will be covered by my insurance soon which makes me happy in one personal regard but unhappy in my activist regards which represent a larger body of witness than myself, which is spiritually progressive, I seek to make life better for others as well as my family .
Privileged access to money, health care and entitlements of one class must be re-mediated to solve the problems of a lessor under privileged class. I have insurance through my wifes employer, many do not, their sons will have to buy coverage which cost them more to be covered that it costs me, so further legislative action will be needed to make sure that fairness to all is the outcome of the intention of this bill. What is good for some, may hurt others, so Dave understands that Miki is on the right track toward communication as a key to arriving at intended outcomes for all peoples, while Michael sees the inherent problems in trying to please so wide a constituency that some will always feel ostracized and left unattended by their governance, which takes us to the homogenization of ideals, which he espouses as progressive, our ideals which if imposed create the correct ideological model that God would approve if presiding over our lives, which God does, so we need to be attentive to this ideal and yet make provision for every station of spirituality and also every station of actuality, we are who we are but intend to be better is what this means, and Rabbi Lerner is absolutely correct in this regard, it is good to assimilate, good to communicate, good to distribute and associate, but if we are wise we must also pontificate what we see as the best model for every creature under the sun.
A party ,in US verbiage espouses it’s ideals to constituents in clear and concise fashion. The din of need for a lefty party is reaching deafening crescendo in American politics, we are Not democrats, we are spiritual progressives in a network of diverse backgrounds with shared ideals, first we communicate whom we are, what we believe and how to effect these platforms pragmatically, then we distribute our findings, associate with every type of party and add our ideals to theirs ,demonstrably seeking approval. Should we skip the step of demonstrating our platforms before communicating with others, we water down the beauty of our vision by seeking acceptance from those with whom we disagree.
Look closely at the troubles in middle east peace negotiations, see the way that no true spoken view is achieved save for that of Israel and their backers and understand that what is lacking there is that clear and concise voice for Palestine. If that voice were to speak from the heart of it’s constituency , at the very least we would know what is sought by the people, not their dubious reps, but what the people involved want for themselves . Spiritual progressives cannot end up as Abbas, compromised so much so that he gets zilch for the lack of a clear and concise voice for all of his peoples needs from their heart, not his.
Rising up does not mean violently, we rise up by showing how we truly feel first, then take baby steps if needed to begin our trek to betterment of the world around us by communicating.
A good lawyer states the case for their client, then grapples with dissenting argument, then convinces the jury that his clients case is made honestly, correctly and will not be comprimised by falsehood or pragmatism. The law is the law.
Dear Rabbi Lerner,
I hear your concern, that people will use the study of communication, as either a way to distract themselves from the urgent things that need to be done, or else a way of misunderstanding what the fundamental problems are, that need to be addressed.
Truly, if our culture’s learning and knowledge about communication — our collective research and study about the conditions in which, people are most able to take in new information, explore new perspectives, and explore challenging issues — were to be used as a distraction or as a decoy from the critical issues our world is facing, that would be extremely painful.
Yet I would hesitate to claim that because any knowledge can be misapplied, that makes it inherently dangerous. However, even as I write that, I realize that maybe that’s actually true. And still, just because knowledge may be inherently dangerous, does not mean we should not study, in order to use it to good ends…
Clearly it’s true, that the bulk of knowledge about how to communicate effectively, is used for unhelpful ends… whether it’s the advertising industry, or even organization development efforts to make corporations “gentler and kinder” places in which to work… so much of this does NOT address the root causes, or worse yet, can even be harmful…
and yet… there are a lot of good people, who are attempting to bring all of this knowledge about communication, specifically to the realm of our public life, for the purposes of helping people have more productive conversations about these challenging issues. I am thinking here for example, of the work of the many members of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation….
I also want to say, that I think there is often a misunderstanding about this kind of work… a mistaken assumption that people who are focused on communication, may be somehow trying to “dampen the fire” or the passion that fuels activism. Unfortunately i think there is sometimes a grain of truth to this unfortunate idea… some people who advocate “civil dialogue”, seem to feel we should all be sitting around a table having a quiet and demure intellectual conversation, while all around us, the world is burning…
I’d like to offer another perspective… as I see it, the true purpose of applying our knowledge about communication, is to create containers where each person’s passionate concern, can be fully heard in a way that allows that passion to shed more light, rather than adding to the heat of confusion and misunderstanding…
Your passionate advocacy and insight is very much appreciated, dear Rebbe. And, may I suggest that we need to be applying our knowledge, toward creating the kind of “listening containers” within which people will be better able to hear all of what you are offering… because they, too, are being deeply heard.
with all best wishes,
Rosa
I’m new to NVC, and Rabbi Lerner’s critique that NVC practitioners “seem to think that the communication style is an end in itself” may be an accurate observation for all I know, but where I see potential for its use is by progressives in bridging the gap with white working class voters (as were my parents) in getting over the “What’s the Matter with Kansas” effect of people voting against their economic interests and in favor of the plutocrats.
The working class voter I’m now most frequently in contact with is a woman in her 40s who recently voted for a Republican Tea Party candidate despite having difficulty paying her mortgage and keeping up with health insurance payments. She is exactly the person who Democrats should be attracting, yet she fears the Democrats are not looking out for her.
I think it is all about empathy. People don’t understand economics (I’m not sure Larry Summers does either) so in voting, they tend to support the candidate who appears to be friendly to them and not one who condescends to them.
This has been part of Rabbi Lerner’s messge all along, so I’m surprised to learn of his issues with NVC. Perhaps it’s a matter of something going wrong from theory to practice. As I read it, NVC is not just about being nice and letting people walk over you, any more than Gandhi was about that.
There is this issue, however, of the media giving angry voices a megaphone and compassionate voices being ignored. I don’t know how to solve that.
I understand your fear, Michael, that NVC practice could drain the passion and advocacy out of a movement for social change.
I have another fear, that presenting utopian ideas and a coherent worldview alone is no longer enough to create a movement, and that we need a great deal more practical teaching about how to relate with each other in a movement for it to become viral and strong. The ethos of the Left in our time has been against traditional forms of leadership. But new forms of capacity-based or distributed leadership, and new social contracts among activists that enable us to enjoy and celebrate accountable leadership have not developed well enough. We have rejected old ways without adequately developing new ones.
A related issue is that the Left has been famous for its splits, its differences, its argumentative certainties that it has the right worldview and policy proposals. It is less famous for hearing what the needs of working class people are. The training is all about advocacy, and very little about listening. This greatly restricts the number of people who want to join in left movements, or who get to feel a sense of ownership within them.
I have not seen NVC yet as a major source of useful thinking about policy proposals or advocacy. I disagree with its reluctance to engage in political conflict. But I do see it as a major resource for helping people in an advocacy movement to work together, to develop new leadership styles, to listen to the base and draw them, to listen to rivals on the Left and work with them, and to listen to political opponents to enable better advocacy. I am looking to see how the worldview and advocacy of Tikkun can be merged with the relational skills of groups like NVC, without either one being weakened, but both being strengthened. That’s exciting to me.
I think many people simply don’t think a caring society is possible, because whatever left movement or project they joined to try to create it, was not itself experienced by them as a caring society in microcosm. If we can’t do it in small ways, how are we going to do it big ways? People start thinking it’s not human nature to be empathic or cooperative, if even the lefties who believe in it can’t actually do it. NVC has rather specific practices and techniques for teaching people the skills of empathy and cooperation that can enable us to build more caring movements, organizations, families and so on. I think the Left, including the spiritual Left, and NVC need each other more than either realizes.
I agree with you that “The goal is to win people to a worldview that we hold to be ethically and spiritually coherent and capable of saving the planet from environmental destruction, endless wars, starvation and other manifestations of poverty, and from the ethos of selfishness and materialism that has done so much to undermine loving relationships and trust among individuals and nations” but I focus more on that word “capable.” For a worldview to be capable of doing these things it must be practiced by people who are capable of working together, developing their own leaders, supporting each other, listening to each other and to those they need to work with and against. NVC might not like that word “against” but then I have argued a number of times in Tikkun Daily for nonviolent conflict, which is what Gandhi and MLK were doing, and not just for nonviolent communication.
Dear Dave and Rabbi Michael –
Thank you for your insightful interchange!
I agree with you both that “The goal is to win people to a worldview that we hold to be ethically and spiritually coherent and capable of saving the planet from environmental destruction, endless wars, starvation and other manifestations of poverty, [as well as] from the ethos of selfishness and materialism that has done so much to undermine loving relationships and trust among individuals and nations.”
Dave, I appreciate your testimony: “For a worldview to be capable of doing these things it must be practiced by people who are capable of working together, developing their own leaders, supporting each other, listening to each other and to those they need to work with and against.”
It seems to me that we could really get somewhere if we brought together both non-violent communication and non-violent non-cooperation, as King and Ghandi so beautifully did.
One simple, profound and high-leverage way for us to do that would be to build, join, advocate for and advance a movement for non-violent non-cooperation with banks. How many of us still have our money in the Chase-BofA-WellsFargo’s of our country? There our money gives legitimacy and power to those who make billions from trading, speculation and usurious Credit Card interest rates – instead of in the credit unions that support the real work and real goods of our communities?
Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives can be a place that brings people together who are so committed to building our capacity to create the kind of world that works for all that we are willing to change our own chronic habits of self-centeredness and learn new ways both to communicate and to live so that together we can create the beauty that we want to see in the world.
To do this requires all of the spiritual resource that we can muster – so let’s keep each other in prayer, hold each other with compassion, and inspire each other with the expressions of our deepest desires for our common life!
Thanks again, to you both, for giving yourselves to us and to our shared hope for love to prevail.
I have been thinking about this for a while but I really believe that the energized political right that we see manifest (i.e. Tea Party) have the near idealogical rigidity of a die-hard Marxist. They are fervent, uncompromising believers in capitalism/free markets and in minimal government placed somewhere in the context of American exceptionalism. These right wing activists have always been around. The Cold War has now been replaced by the War on Terror. And like the Cold War, the War on Terror has “enemies” both domestic and internationally. This is what has energized the political right. The events of 9/11 and American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan allowed the neoconservative agenda, who tend to have a more internationalist outlook, to become reality. Now Iraq has started to wind down with Afghanistan soon to follow. Now the Great Recession joins the War on Terror. Good bye neoconservative and hello Tea Party. Americans are experiencing both pain and fear. And the political right is offering nothing but lies and more lies. I think the poltical left needs to get more creative and pragmatic. The news isn’t all bad. The Republicans will pick up additional seats in the House of Representatives and Senate, but not enough to take control of Congress. The best news of all is that – if current polls are correct – California will probably elect Jerry Brown as its next governor and reject Meg Whitman’s $120 million attempt to buy votes.
Hi Dave,
I was glad to see you write so eloquently about the following difficulty:
“A related issue is that the Left has been famous for its splits, its differences, its argumentative certainties that it has the right worldview and policy proposals. It is less famous for hearing what the needs of working class people are. The training is all about advocacy, and very little about listening. This greatly restricts the number of people who want to join in left movements, or who get to feel a sense of ownership within them.”
My own experience has been that the challenge of learning to work well with diverse perspectives, is NOT just restricted to learning to bridge the “great divides” (right vs left, etc….) but ALSO, the “smaller” differences that plague ANY group of people, no matter how “homogenous” their intent was in initially coming together.
I wish you all the best with your project of “helping people in an advocacy movement to work together, to develop new leadership styles, to listen to the base and draw them, to listen to rivals on the Left and work with them, and to listen to political opponents to enable better advocacy.”
And I fully agree with you that for any movement to be strong, it needs to learn how to be “more capable of working together, developing their own leaders, supporting one another, listening to one another and to those they need to work with and against.”
Again, best wishes with your project of bringing together the best of listening, and the best of advocacy…
I feel strongly that this is something we ALL need in our world today.
There’s a lot wrapped up in this conversation. Just a few initial thoughts.
Michael’s call for an articulation of a coherent vision that is based on deeper underlying values is critical. It’s been my view that one of the major problems with the 60′s movements was that no such vision was created. People want/need/desire/deserve a sense of clarity of where they are going.
For me, Michael’s vision of a society of caring, love, generosity, awe, wonder and radical amazement, boils down to one word, and that’s empathy. That’s why I am working on Building a Culture of Empathy. From my understanding, it is the experience of empathy that connects us. Without it we would be like an Iguana lizard that only had a lizard/amygdala brain. It’s once we can connect with others, see through each others’ eyes, feel what others feel, that we can have the caring, compassion, kindness, and generosity, etc. So empathy is like a first step that leads to the other values.
For me, NVC is just one (but very important) method for deepening empathy. So it is a part of the overall vision of creating a culture of empathy.
I just created a new Facebook webpage with the goal of finding 1 million people who want to build a culture of Empathy and Compassion. I invite you to join it and pass on the word. The most recent post there is from an interview that I did with Sura Hart, a school teacher and NVC trainer. She’s a real practical, down to earth, type person and she has some great suggestions for how to build that culture. She goes way beyond just talking about communication styles.
If you check the home page of my website, there’s many videos about the nature of empathy. A very relevant one is from Matthew Taylor, where he talks about Empathy as the foundation of a New 21st Century Enlightenment.
best
Edwin
The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
A portal for resources and information about the values of empathy and compassion.
http://CultureOfEmpathy.com
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eye for an instant?
Henry David Thoreau
Reply to Michael Lerner’s comments about NVC:
1. Rabbi Lerner links “crossing the Democratic/Republican divide” as “mush” and “compromises.” I’m guessing this comes from a strong concern related to wanting clarity of thought and effective action? I share these concerns and needs. I view “crossing the divide” as connecting with people so as to have a conversation. Without connection and conversation, I see no hope of people who think differently from me ever hearing me (or vice versa) and thus doubt there will be any effective change in the status quo. With connection, I have some hope that creative new strategies could emerge that would take into account our common needs.
2. He writes: “”the path forward is not to try to incorporate a common ground between a spiritual progressive and a right-wing worldview, but to formulate a coherent spiritual progressive worldview and then find ways of talking about it and ways of communicating to people about that worldview so that they can hear it.” I fear there is a false dichotomy here between finding a common ground and finding ways of talking about a spiritual progressive worldview so others can hear it. My thought is that finding common ground is the exact and only way of communicating so others can hear me. Otherwise, I imagine people with opposing positions (strategies) shouting their world views at each other, with no hearing going on at all.
3. “The goal is to win people to a worldview that we hold to be ethically and spiritually coherent and capable of saving the planet from environmental destruction, endless wars, starvation and other manifestations of poverty, and from the ethos of selfishness and materialism that has done so much to undermine loving relationships and trust among individuals and nations.” I share the longing for a world that is environmentally healthy and sustainable and at peace, where loving and trusting relationships exist among people and nations. For me, that world is the goal – not winning anyone to a worldview. If there can be a way of getting to that world view by connecting with people who hold different ideas from me about how to get there, then I’m all for it.
4. I fear there is a lack of clarity about what Nonviolent Communication is as compared to the people who practice it or how/when/where they practice it and/or the organizations that may be associated with it. He writes: “I see Non Violent Communication as a stumbling block-they seem to think that the communication style is an end in itself.” Who is “they”? And what is the basis for this conclusion? Nonviolent Communication is not the people who practice it. As I understand it, NVC is both a set of concrete communication tools as well as a consciousness or attitude underlying how it is used. I do not remember hearing any practitioner of NVC say that the communication style is an end in itself, and that would not be true for me. I see NVC as a tool for creating connection, harmony, peace, and effectiveness in hearing and being heard. I also see it as offering a way to talk with people so both parties needs are surfaced, thus increasing the likelihood that everyone’s needs will be addressed. I see it as embodying the very “power-with” dynamics that for me are part of a spiritual progressive worldview. It is not about giving in or forcing anyone to do anything; it is about co-creating something new.
5. As far as NVC being compatible with “friendly fascism” – I am mystified by this comment and don’t understand what it means at all. Yes, there are huge issues of war, unemployment and poverty, and environmental degradation and there are lots of people focusing on inner work and not doing the outer work of affecting the world. (I realizing I’m actually uncomfortable with this dualism, as I see them as two sides of the same thing – the outer work inevitably affects the inner world and the inner work the outer.) But to say that people are “learning how to better communicate but not . . . how to communicate with others effectively about what is wrong” is making an assumption that there is an either/or here. I would like to suggest more of a both/and: As people learn how to better communicate in general, they will perhaps also be better able to communicate with others about how to create the very world we are both longing for.
6. The part about NVC becoming a “useful sideshow” to distract from pain or “a way of people fooling themselves into believing that the real problem is communication” – this stirs up a lot in me. As I’ve said, I share the longing for peace and all the rest of the worldview NSP espouses. At the same time, NVC is very dear to my heart as a way of life – I see it as a practice that I will seek to embody more and more fully over time. I see NVC consciousness as being the same attitude of nonviolence that flows throughout the great social change movements of history, and I see the skills as ways of embodying it, along with the many other ways that nonviolence can be manifest in the world. NVC is teaching me how to be present with the pain, not to distract from it. I believe that learning how to stay present and to mourn is a key piece of doing social change work. I agree with you that it’s important to identify “the real problem.” My own take on it is that the “real problem” is that we forgot who we are and we forgot that we are all “part of one another.” For me, NVC helps me remember my commonality and oneness with other people and is thus the starting point for everything else. I cannot organize effectively if I view people with different viewpoints as “other” and have “enemy images” about them. NVC provides me a way of working with all that. I agree that I’d like to see the broader social issues addressed more explicitly by practitioners of NVC – for sure! Including myself! I would say there are lots of “if only’s” that could be identified – eg., if only spiritual progressives would communicate more effectively with people who have different worldviews, we would make a bigger impact. I feel sad even writing this, though, as it is incompatible with how I want to be in the world. I’d rather move beyond anything that looks like blame into a place of honoring that we’re doing what we can figure out how to do in any given moment, with lots of room for learning and growth. I celebrate the dialogue! Thank you for your commitment and dedication to articulating and working for a healthy, safe, loving world. Let’s work together
In regards to what NVC addresses or accomplishes, my understanding of it is that it is all about action and passion; expressing whatever is “alive” for you (your passion), while also being fully present to the feelings and needs (the passion) of others. It’s not about being a peace-nik, being overly kind to everyone, lengthy contemplation of your personal problems. It’s about showing up in each new moment, and engaging in a compassionate dialogue with another person or persons, no matter what situation you find yourself in. To me, NVC is the most activist model I know. It’s true that it can take years of practice and experience to fully understand its underlying premises and to employ NVC with a high degree of efficacy, but once learned, the potential for spiritual and political engagement in a truly connected way with others is greatly enhanced.
Jean strikes at the core of it for me:
“…the ‘real problem’ is that we forgot who we are and we forgot that we are all ‘part of one another.’ ”
There are many ways to remember who we are and that we are all part of one another. Let’s not confuse the process with the form. If NVC helps you remember, great! If not, then do something else! If you are still seeing “the other” in your quest – dig deeper!
The results of our work are infused with the consciousness with which we do it