Really enjoyed reading this. It reminded me that compassion is not just a way of speaking, it’s a way of structuring how we live together. Thank you for writing this piece.
How wonderfully expressed!! Thank you Will for your seemingly endless passion to look for more and more ways to describe in simple and clear concepts what is a normal and real human way of relating.
What struck me is that both the compassionate communication and the practice of commitment pooling are an expression of a certain state of mind based on the realization of deep interconnectedness. Radical in a way, but also totally human and ordinary.
Lovely, Will! Thanks for sharing this so beautifully. We had a surprise chat at the r3.0 conference a few months back about the the maternal gift economy (as experimented by the Nonviolent Global Liberation Community -- deep students of Ghandi and Rosenberg) and commitment pooling, and I thought you spoke well to the importance of, and inescapability from, the social ledger -- and how that is always stored in bodies, minds, and hearts regardless of what framework, cultural protocols, or technology is used.
Shared this with them and am curious to hear how it lands!
Having gone through many nonviolence trainings myself, and being arrested for civil disobedience at various locations -- anti-apartheid demonstrations at UC campuses in the 1980s (we won), protesting on Nagasaki day against the nuclear weapons lab at Berkeley (we lost), and a few others, I can agree with much of this. BUT:
1. There is a vast literature on "the violence of the text" and "the violence of hate speech" and so on. Once you start to say that non-violence is about a state of mind, it begins to blur the line, and justifies censorship and left-wing authoritarianism. So much of non-violence training is physical! I cannot stress that enough.
2. The physical part is in some ways about how your physical body movements can calm a situation and de-escalate. For example, public protests sometimes draw crazy folks living on the street (esp. in California). Crazy people often need space. Their "personal space bubble" can be 10x larger than yours, so even if your instinct or training tells you to go speak to them calmly, from their POV you are screaming in their face.
3. People can't fight when they are eating. We once prevented a violent riot at a benefit concert: the skin heads were edging their way towards the peace punks, so we sent the free food cart to the space between the two.
So yes becoming more humane again, but so much of that is about learning how to re-inhabit our bodies. If I was going to draw an analogy to commitment pools, perhaps the way that physicality can be important there too. Perhaps a future blog post topic?
Thank you for sharing your frontline experience. I agree: nonviolent protest is a physical discipline for public confrontation; my piece is about the other end of the spectrum ... growing compassion over time. I focus on Compassionate Communication and Commitment Pooling as everyday practices: naming observations/feelings/needs/requests and making voluntary, clear commitments that build trust. .... cultivating a commons of care.
Doing this in the middle of mental or physical conflict is more like Tai Chi than talk .. it takes muscle memory. We build that muscle in small daily reps: pause to observe, name a feeling, sense the need, make a clear request, and honor limits and exchanges we’ve agreed to in the pool.
right - it is better described as compassionate - for me non violent was always assuming violence when often it was simply lacking compassion not violent AND reading it is like - ohhhh you mean returning to our state as Human(e) KIND ....
Really enjoyed reading this. It reminded me that compassion is not just a way of speaking, it’s a way of structuring how we live together. Thank you for writing this piece.
How wonderfully expressed!! Thank you Will for your seemingly endless passion to look for more and more ways to describe in simple and clear concepts what is a normal and real human way of relating.
What struck me is that both the compassionate communication and the practice of commitment pooling are an expression of a certain state of mind based on the realization of deep interconnectedness. Radical in a way, but also totally human and ordinary.
Thank you! I love how you put it...
both Compassionate Communication and Commitment Pooling feel radical to me as well .... because they’re so ordinary.
When the obvious becomes explicit we can practice it together.
I like the term ... radical ordinary
... a kind of science of the obvious
noticing, naming, and coordinating what humans already do when we care.
Lovely, Will! Thanks for sharing this so beautifully. We had a surprise chat at the r3.0 conference a few months back about the the maternal gift economy (as experimented by the Nonviolent Global Liberation Community -- deep students of Ghandi and Rosenberg) and commitment pooling, and I thought you spoke well to the importance of, and inescapability from, the social ledger -- and how that is always stored in bodies, minds, and hearts regardless of what framework, cultural protocols, or technology is used.
Shared this with them and am curious to hear how it lands!
Having gone through many nonviolence trainings myself, and being arrested for civil disobedience at various locations -- anti-apartheid demonstrations at UC campuses in the 1980s (we won), protesting on Nagasaki day against the nuclear weapons lab at Berkeley (we lost), and a few others, I can agree with much of this. BUT:
1. There is a vast literature on "the violence of the text" and "the violence of hate speech" and so on. Once you start to say that non-violence is about a state of mind, it begins to blur the line, and justifies censorship and left-wing authoritarianism. So much of non-violence training is physical! I cannot stress that enough.
2. The physical part is in some ways about how your physical body movements can calm a situation and de-escalate. For example, public protests sometimes draw crazy folks living on the street (esp. in California). Crazy people often need space. Their "personal space bubble" can be 10x larger than yours, so even if your instinct or training tells you to go speak to them calmly, from their POV you are screaming in their face.
3. People can't fight when they are eating. We once prevented a violent riot at a benefit concert: the skin heads were edging their way towards the peace punks, so we sent the free food cart to the space between the two.
So yes becoming more humane again, but so much of that is about learning how to re-inhabit our bodies. If I was going to draw an analogy to commitment pools, perhaps the way that physicality can be important there too. Perhaps a future blog post topic?
Thank you for sharing your frontline experience. I agree: nonviolent protest is a physical discipline for public confrontation; my piece is about the other end of the spectrum ... growing compassion over time. I focus on Compassionate Communication and Commitment Pooling as everyday practices: naming observations/feelings/needs/requests and making voluntary, clear commitments that build trust. .... cultivating a commons of care.
Doing this in the middle of mental or physical conflict is more like Tai Chi than talk .. it takes muscle memory. We build that muscle in small daily reps: pause to observe, name a feeling, sense the need, make a clear request, and honor limits and exchanges we’ve agreed to in the pool.
right - it is better described as compassionate - for me non violent was always assuming violence when often it was simply lacking compassion not violent AND reading it is like - ohhhh you mean returning to our state as Human(e) KIND ....
https://mxtm.substack.com/p/the-art-of-peace
I would love to know how that is working for you.
🥋 THE WAY OF THE NINJA YOGA
A survival dharma for the age of collapse.
https://mxtm.substack.com/p/the-way-of-the-ninja-yoga
Compassion: Compass, passion.