Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/author/a_kashtanm/)
Miki Kashtan, certified NVC trainer (cnvc.org) and cofounder of Bay Area NVC (baynvc.org), teaches and works with organizations, visionary leaders, activists, and others to support the transition to a world that works for all.
For as long as there are “bad guys”, wars will continue. War, as I understand it, is a state of collective active willingness to kill or be killed using arms. For every war, some identify with one side, some with the other side, and some mourn there being war at all and want solutions that care for everyone’s needs.
In 2020, when Emma Quayle and I started vagabonding in earnest, one of our criteria for what we wanted our next steps to be as we journeyed further was “unmasking the impact of patriarchy and allowing us to experience first-hand the intensity of its manifestation.”
Observations, feelings, needs, and requests, which many of us within the NVC network end up referring to as OFNR, are some of the most basic building blocks of NVC. Within the circles of people who study and practice NVC, a divergence exists about whether these elements are enough
The overall phenomenon is the way that so many of us relate to pockets of high capacity and of leadership as being at odds with co-creation.
I want to speak of the difference between “no exit” and “trap”. No exit is organic and part of life, born of the reality of being social animals.
For the most part, almost everywhere and every time, I have found conversations across power differences repeatedly unsuccessful.
In this third part, I want to look more clearly and fully at what we can do, both individually and as groups, communities, and organizations.
Many people, even those who live fully within the exchange paradigm and don’t ever think about maternal gifting, prefer going to a farmers’ market, if one exists where they live, or to a local store, rather than to a supermarket. Sometimes they prefer it enough that they are even willing to pay more money. There is a reason for it.
I […] looked up economics, and discovered, with anguished relief, that scarcity was baked into the very definition of economics. The one I found at the time was “the study of the allocation of scarce resources.”
In patriarchal social orders, we are socialized out of our biology, domesticated into a patriarchal existence of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness. Where control is a primary mode of functioning, mistrust is rampant, and generosity seems foolish.
Finding our way back to flow means walking back, upstream and uphill.
For some time, many in the global north have lived well. Miki direct our attention to a world increasingly near where this shift. What will we turn to, and what are our strengths?
In an oversimplified way, when flow is interrupted, we need to activate either the decision-making system or the conflict system.
States are a patriarchal invention, not a natural given about humans. They were created early on within the establishment of patriarchal forms.
Mourning is an act of softening. It supports us in softly closing the gap between what we want, envision, or long for, and what actually exists.
In contemporary, patriarchal societies, mothering often leads to mothers giving up on their own needs, because of the lack of a communal context of togetherness and support. One of the results of this is that, as children, we don’t learn about the needs of others as an organic limit we bump up against and within which we weave the unfolding of life.