“We were not meant to succumb to the dictates of should and have to, whether they come from outside or inside of ourselves. And if we do yield and submit to these demands, our actions arise from an energy that is devoid of life-giving joy.”
“After we gain clarity regarding the need being served by our actions, we can experience those actions as play even when they involve hard work, challenge, or frustration.”
~Marshall Rosenberg
Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent communication reframes face-to-face human interaction, seeking to replace
domination with empathy and compassion. The more intimately I connect
to a person, the more I can gain from using NVC. I want to make requests,
not demands, and when others make demands I want to hear requests.
How can we scale this up to the level of a large organization, a society or polity?
How can we scale this up to the level of a large organization, a society or polity?
The CEO of a large firm can’t negotiate with every individual supplier,
employee and customer. Ideally, organizational
structures could encourage empathy and communication among all
participants, aligning organizational strategy with the needs of participating groups. But this provides a serious communication and organizational
challenge. Does this make success more or less likely? Does it change the criteria for success? Why has
the existing system evolved to favor domination so strongly? Are there
any good examples of organizations that have evaded this problem?
We can see domination even more clearly when we look at the state. State agents make demands. They threaten to punish those that disobey their commands. I can imagine a legal system that allows dissidents to say no to social customs. But I think it stretches the concept of a nation state to imagine a state that makes only requests. If I can refuse a state command without getting threatened with punishment, I think we are discussing a different sort of organization.
Does Rosenberg manage to hear state demands as requests that he can always grant willingly? He came close to answering this question when he described how his father and grandfather paid taxes with enthusiasm because they “were desirous supporting a government they believed was protecting people in a way the czar had not. Imagining the many people whose welfare was being served by their tax money, they felt earnest pleasure as they sent their checks to the US government.” What about the taxes they paid to the czar before they emigrated? What need do I fulfill when I obey the commands of state agents? How do I find the fun in that? Even if they mean well, how can such a one-sided negotiation represent anything but domination? Can the state somehow restore the life-giving joy to an act motivated primarily by my desire to escape punishment?
Maybe Rosenberg's NVC idea applies only in face-to-face relationships and not in large-scale market transactions or nation-wide coordination efforts. How do we scale it up? Does he have an interpretation of his theory that translates state coercion into empathy? Or does his work offer a method to replace the demands inherent in the current workings of the state?
We can see domination even more clearly when we look at the state. State agents make demands. They threaten to punish those that disobey their commands. I can imagine a legal system that allows dissidents to say no to social customs. But I think it stretches the concept of a nation state to imagine a state that makes only requests. If I can refuse a state command without getting threatened with punishment, I think we are discussing a different sort of organization.
Does Rosenberg manage to hear state demands as requests that he can always grant willingly? He came close to answering this question when he described how his father and grandfather paid taxes with enthusiasm because they “were desirous supporting a government they believed was protecting people in a way the czar had not. Imagining the many people whose welfare was being served by their tax money, they felt earnest pleasure as they sent their checks to the US government.” What about the taxes they paid to the czar before they emigrated? What need do I fulfill when I obey the commands of state agents? How do I find the fun in that? Even if they mean well, how can such a one-sided negotiation represent anything but domination? Can the state somehow restore the life-giving joy to an act motivated primarily by my desire to escape punishment?
Maybe Rosenberg's NVC idea applies only in face-to-face relationships and not in large-scale market transactions or nation-wide coordination efforts. How do we scale it up? Does he have an interpretation of his theory that translates state coercion into empathy? Or does his work offer a method to replace the demands inherent in the current workings of the state?
Perhaps Rosenberg's insight applies only to small-scale interaction. Or maybe it points to the possibility of different forms of organization capable of coordinating people’s actions without using threats. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
