Peace Talk — Winter 2005-06
The Quarterly Newsletter of Peace Action MaineGandhi’s challenge to us, “Be the change you want for the world” is sometimes a gift we would rather not have. He lived nonviolence as both an active practice of passive resistance and an active practice of transforming enemy images. Within the domination paradigm in which we live, we often limit our meaning of nonviolence to resistance, leaving the second crucial part of the practice to those we consider more spiritual.
Joanna Macy calls our time The Great Turning, as humans struggle to move from an industrial growth society to a life-sustaining society. The Great Turning manifests in multiple dimensions. “Holding actions are” what environmentalists and peace activists do in reaction to the domination culture. We sue, we demonstrate, we do whatever we can think of to resist the destruction of life. For humans to get through the Great Turning we need to also develop what she calls “Gaian Structures” and create nothing short of a “shift in consciousness.”
Nonviolent Communication (NVC), developed by Marshal Rosenberg, is a process to shift our consciousness, liberating us from our “us” and “them” thinking. NVC trains our minds to practice Gandhi’s expansive lovingkindness, which Marshall considers our natural human consciousness.
This process gives us the tools to communicate honestly and effectively with ourselves, our dear ones, and those we consider our foes. As we strive to build a community, a nation and a world based on a partnership paradigm, we need help in shifting our own inner world from the domination paradigm in which we were raised. NVC gives us that help.
NVC is based in the universality of human needs. We all have the same needs, but differ in the strategies to meet them. Needs are not weaknesses, they are the beautiful energy which is our humanity. Our feelings help us identify our needs. All our actions are motivated by a desire to meet needs. We would prefer to meet needs in ways that do not harm ourselves or others, yet even when we resort to violence, we are still attempting to meet needs, however tragically.