Violently Happy

The sessions follow a set of texts by Marshall Rosenberg; we watch a video in which the author lectures on--and practices--heretofore redundant-sounding non-violent communication.  The group rapport is extremely good; I try not to radiate ideological chafing. 

What is the problem that NVC is attempting to respond to?  When we discuss the practice, participants produce examples involving an inferior--often adult-child interactions.  Our unexamined, inherited communication style is supposedly too brutal and foisting.  We need to be a lot more careful--ostensibly--about what we say and how we say it. 

Does NVC presuppose an prehistoric utopia, before human communication got fucked up?  (Perhaps I will have to read the book.)

IOW, I'm ambivalent with--opposed to, perhaps--both the diagnosis and the prescription, though the sessions are unexpectedly fun and present a rare opportunity to get to know people I'd otherwise never meet.  As with 12-step meetings, you learn a lot just from hearing others tell their anguished, funny stories.

In the wider world, people sometimes engage in rhetorical head-conking; perhaps somewhere off in the fading mists your blogger once perpetrated such a crime.  But one must oppose collective punishment and defend the legitimacy of occasional unadorned verbal exchange.  (Jesus left the jugular vulnerable for a reason.)  Excessive politeness and our culture's current delusion concerning the definition and importance of civility are often deadly impediments to honest intercourse. 

Given the Romish setting, I'm happy to report cosmological dogmatism all but non-existent.  People are mutually-respectful--affectionate, even--and don't assume high orthodoxy or hyper-spiritualism in others.  Lapsed Catholics are often as unaware as observant ones just how heterodox everyone's views are.  The revolution in the ever-sparser pews is going to be continuing, I prophecy.