Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2003 - 4:46 a.m.

Holding Hands While the Walls Come Tumbling Down

The following is my response to a questionnaire put out by the Strategic Planning Committee of the Center for Nonviolent Communication

Strategic Planning Questionnaire

1. The year is 2013 and CNVC is active in the world and meeting your needs fully. Please imagine: What would people be doing? What would people be saying about the organization?

People everywhere are talking about NVC. More importantly, a large minority of the population is PRACTICING NVC in their daily lives. NVC is going through a popular fad stage, like Transcendental Meditation did in the 1970s. Comedians tell jokes about NVC, and the audience knows what the comedian is referring to. NVC has a presence in the mass media, possibly including a printed magazine, call-in radio therapy shows, and live NVC empathy healings on television. Oprah tells her followers to learn NVC. But NVC is such a strong grassroots movement, it doesn’t need mass media exposure to thrive. NVC practice groups are flourishing in every neighborhood, and are all free of charge so that poor people can join them. Practice groups and empathy circles are becoming more than just places to learn and practice the language of NVC, but are also becoming the nuclei of communities of mutual aid. People who met through NVC are forming informal networks through which they help one another meet innumerable needs, especially physical needs for sustenance. Informal local NVC communities are providing material as well as emotional support, a role once filled by extended families, church communities, and secret societies.

People are saying that CNVC is doing a great job of fostering local NVC communities to the point where each community is entirely self-sustaining and no longer needs CNVC. In the United States, the NVC network is no longer made up primarily of liberal, white, middle class, middle aged women. The people in that demographic group are still present and valued, but now CNVC has a strong following among every demographic group, including poor blacks, hispanics, young people, and Christian conservatives in the South. This broader appeal is due to two factors:

1. In a dramatic shift, CNVC decided to stop marketing NVC as if it were just another self-help personal growth product on the bookshelf alongside all the other similar-looking products, and realized that NVC is a whole way of life, and needs to be promoted as such. With the consciousness that NVC is a way of life came the realization that NVC can be about more than just listening empathically and expressing honestly, but also about helping one another get our needs met in communities. Poor people started flocking to learn NVC from peers as word of mouth got around that NVC wasn’t just a feel-good thing for people of leisure, but a practical means to meet basic needs for sustenance in cooperation with fellow practitioners. NVC is fast becoming the most practical lifestyle option available.
2. A stylistic change accompanied this shift. Now there is no one NVC look and feel, but a diverse array of approaches designed to appeal to people in a wide variety of subcultures, designed by NVC practitioners in those subcultures.

2. The year is 2028 and CNVC has made a great impact on the world. Please imagine: What would be happening in the world? What role would CNVC play? What would the network look like? What would the headlines in the media read?

The United States government has dissolved. Once the majority of the population heard and understood Marshall’s critique of domination systems, they could no longer bear to support the biggest domination system of all, the global U.S. empire. Most people in the armed services were able to see through the amtssprache, and awoke to the reality that they’re making choices at every moment, so they mutinied and went A.W.O.L. American military bases have closed worldwide. The American people weren’t having their need for integrity met through their domestic domination system either, and after years of widespread refusal to pay taxes and mass absenteeism in government jobs, the federal government suddenly collapsed overnight. No one misses the demands of laws. Instead they honestly express, listen empathically, make clear and present requests, and find mutually satisfying strategies to meet their needs.

Similarly, other institutions of domination are falling by the wayside. Jails, and prisons, and psych wards are closing. Over the years, police forces suffered from attrition as more and more police were enticed away from their careers of making demands and enacting violence, and into the loving arms of the NVC network. School for children is no longer compulsory, and most learning now is from hands-on practical experience alongside adults.

People have stopped chasing the almighty dollar and started chasing what’s alive in them. As a result, almost everyone is unemployed. Traditional occupations have been largely abandoned, except in certain workplaces where workers decided to stop obeying bosses out of fear, and began managing their own affairs through compassionate consensus. There’s still a lot of productive activity going on, but almost none of it is for a wage. People are meeting their needs for autonomy, community, integrity, and contribution to life by working for themselves and helping one another meet their needs in the most direct ways possible. Thus, the few people still outside the network are having trouble finding people who are willing to take their money in exchange for goods and services.

People are less and less willing to compromise, less and less willing to self-sacrifice. The rallying cry of the day is, “how can we get ALL our needs met?”

A lot of gardening is going on. High technology still exists, but most people prefer a level of technology they can manage themselves, on an ecologically sustainable local level. Local self-sufficiency reigns.

Travel is now easier than ever among people in the network. People enjoy offering NVC travelers hospitality in their homes, so most hotels have gone out of business.

CNVC played virtually no role in any of this, except for all its years of painstakingly laying the cultural foundation for this seemingly sudden transformation. By now, NVC is so deeply integrated into the mainstream culture that there was no role left for CNVC and it dissolved, victorious.

The network is nearly everybody, everywhere. NVC prevailed because it presented a lifestyle that met more needs, more often, than any other lifestyle. After the network grew to a certain critical size, it quickly pulled in nearly everyone else, because the status quo alternatives were so bleak. The deep satisfaction expressed by NVC practitioners was an irresistible beacon to the rest of the population. Since the NVC way of life was cheaper, more empowering, and more fun, it’s inevitable that it would have won out in the marketplace of ideas.

Headlines read:

• Congress Calls It Quits: Speaker of the House Says, “No One Was Obeying Us Anyway”

• New York Stock Exchange Closes for Good, Traders Needing Meaning

• These New Strategies Might Meet Your Needs

3. What actions does the central serving team of CNVC need to take now to make the dreams for 2013 and 2028 a reality? How could the central serving team of CNVC use its resources (funds, energy, Marshall's time, other trainers' time, staff time, volunteer time, Board time) in a way that you couldn't resist supporting?

Follow Marshall’s suggestion and make all NVC events 100% free of charge, and raise all money through voluntary donations.

Follow the successful example of Falun Dafa (Falun Gong), a movement that has millions of adherents after just a decade: Make all NVC books, audio, and videos available for free download on the internet. Remove the copyrights and replace them with Copyleft, GNU Public License, or Anti-Copyright. Charge only for the cost of physical reproduction of the media when people buy physical books, cd’s and videocassettes.

Start an NVC magazine, and distribute it widely. Make it accessible to the lay public.

Give fewer live trainings, and popularize NVC by getting regular shows on radio and television. Marshall could reach so many more people if he had a TV show. As much as I love meeting him in person, I’d rather see his message get to millions instead of hundreds. I think his time and talent are wasted on live audiences. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive. He could be professionally videotaped and broadcast via satellite at every stop on his traveling tour. Use public access TV if no network will take the show.

Each of the 130 Certified Trainers could get a call-in radio program, each in a different city. Listeners could call in to get empathy, unlike what they get from Dr. Laura.

For the live trainings that remain, find free venues for them. Request donations of space, and then there will be no need to raise funds to rent that space. Even a farmer donating the use of a barn would do. In some parts of the world, it reliably does not rain all summer. In these regions, have trainings outdoors in parks or National Forests. Provide free transportation so that poor people can come. Eliminate sliding scales, work exchanges, and scholarships. I think most poor people are deterred by that because they see it as begging for special favors.

Encourage local practice group organizers to make their groups free out of the joy of giving. If a host of a practice group is needing sustenance, let him or her make a clear and present request instead of just demanding money at the door.

Research what tends to keep youth, nonwhites, conservatives, poor people, and men away from NVC. Experiment with diverse approaches to court these potential audiences. Training seminars may not be a format that speaks to everyone.

Encourage people to form practice groups for the purpose not of just practicing the language, but of helping one another with material needs too.

Change the focus of CNVC from training people in the NVC language to using the NVC language to meet physical needs.

4. In an effort to support the central serving team in becoming more life-serving in its functioning, we would value your responses to the following set of questions.

- What needs of yours would you like the CNVC network to meet? Which of those has been met or unmet so far? What requests do you have of the CNVC central serving team to meet those needs better?

All of them, by fostering local NVC communities in which members strive to meet all the needs of fellow members.

Met needs: learning, humor, hope, inspiration

Unmet needs: consideration (of the poor, and unreached demographics), effectiveness (in changing the culture fast enough and broadly enough), ease (the cost of trainings and materials), sustainability (of Marshall’s breakneck schedule and of volunteers who burn out from organizing big events), hope and inspiration (when I see trainings attended almost entirely by the same old demographic group)

Requests: see my answers to #3

- What steps could the CNVC central serving team take to become more life-serving in its functioning?

The central serving team could try to enact what I wrote for #3.

5. What question are you dying to be asked that you didn't see in this list? And what would your answer be?

Question: Should CNVC take a stand by officially denouncing institutions of domination such as government, compulsory schooling, most organized religions, police, prisons, armed forces, most employment situations, etc.?

Answer: No, but use the Socratic method to encourage people to reach that conclusion on their own. Marshall comes very, very close to making these denunciations, which makes me feel joyful and hopeful because my needs for clarity, consciousness, and purpose are met, but then Marshall stops just short of a denunciation, which then does not meet the needs I just listed. Then, I think that leaves the door open efforts to try to reform intrinsically domination-oriented institutions with NVC window-dressing. I fear that that approach will not meet my need for effectiveness in fundamentally transforming our culture to be life-serving. I’d hate to see a President who TALKS about his feelings and needs, while still using his authority to make demands on underlings and still having his finger on the nuclear button. That would not meet my need for congruence. I think it’s vital that when talking about institutions of domination, we are careful that people who are parts of those institutions don’t hear any blame, shame, or derogatory labels. So I think an effective strategy might be to explain the differences between the dominator paradigm and the partnership paradigm, and then ask leading questions about which existing features of modern society embody which paradigm. People won’t react as negatively if they reach those conclusions on their own, but they may need empathy if they have jackal ears facing inward.

6. Please indicate your nationality, and the number of people who participated in this response.

I reside in a territory dominated by what Marshall would call a, “gang” that refers to itself as the United States of America.

I completed this by myself.

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