No Compassion

Marshall Rosenberg is the discoverer of Nonviolent Communication, a set of beliefs and practices supposedly designed to improve human interaction.  Organizationally, NVC resembles a commercial enterprise--putting on workshops, hiring itself out for consulting and publishing uncheap textbooks. 

I'm currently taking part in a multisessioned NVC course at a local Catholic church.  NVC's supreme wisdom is taken as a given, but after several chapters the conscious reader takes note:  Rosenberg is a shitty writer and NVC is a hodgepodge of stilted do-gooderisms, a Rosenberg self-promotion vehicle. 

Like The Power of Now or anything by Deepak Chopra:  A book which coos seductively to the gullible reader, 'You, reader, are morally superior to everyone else!'

Be a little more selfish, it might do you some good.

I mention I would prefer others not use NVC in their dealings with me, as I don't feel much need for a ratcheting up in middle class America's euphemism reliance.  Our leader chides:  'That's so beginnerish!'  Don't criticize NVC:  These pacifists will mow you down.

All participants are assumed obedient 'non-idiots' and therefore keen on implementing NVC's ideological program within their lives.  But why?

There are rules and there are metarules, as Slavoj Žižek says:  There are formal rules and then there are [generally undiscussed] 'rules on how to implement the rules'.  In Žižek's example, a suicidally brave audience member stands up and plangently abuses Josef Stalin--and we all know the result:  The guy's a dead man. 

But what if--as the ballsy heckler pauses--another audience member stands up and shouts, 'Hey!  In this country, we don't criticize comrade Stalin!'  Žižek argues that Dude #2 gets vaporized just as fast as Dude #1:  Violating the metarule can be every bit as dangerous as violating the rule itself.

Questioning metarules--an entirely noble life project--I ask our NVC leader whether a good, well-informed person can believe that NVC is unworthy of adoption.  A metarule reveals itself.