In Dark and Violent Times, How to Speak the Language of Compassion

Divisive rhetoric

Like many people, I engage in the political discourse with an uneasy mixture of shock, outrage, and weariness. Watching the nightly news is a cautious endeavor. I tread lightly for fear of stepping on an internal landmine of hopelessness and anger.  Many political leaders seem unable to present platforms that inspire and engage. Rather, in their attempts to win support, these leaders devolved into the lowest form of communication – attack ads that paint their opponents as corrupt, inferior or otherwise defective. Such tactics hook into our basic survival mechanisms and promote fear and unconscious self-protection. With dismay, I witness myself being triggered by the rhetoric. There is a familiar pattern of anger, outrage which then turns into helpless and finally weariness.

However, this rhetorical tactic triggers us because it speaks to the lowest of our collective brains seems to incite. It’s hard not to get emotionally bogged down trying to put things into perspective. 

Judgments and Otherness

Certain language is life-destroying because it disconnects us from our essential and inherent goodness and compassion. Marshall Rosenberg in Non-Violent Communication examines the detrimental effect that judgement language crushes our ability to connect with other people. This happens when we classify and label people as other rather than look inward and connect with authentic feelings and needs. Moralistic judgements imply that the object of the conversation is wrong or bad or less than in some way and needs to be eradicated or punished. Judgment happens when we blame, use put down labels, criticism, and comparisons. For example, we might say use the words incompetence, lazy, selfish, evil, or stupid to describe someone. In all cases, when these are used, we are entering this dangerous territory of judgment. In its extreme form, identifying what is wrong with someone or a group of people leads to a belief that the other needs to be punished for some reason and this leads to violence – verbal, psychological or physical.

Collective Power

Recent tragic and violent events in the U.S. raises questions whether their current political rhetoric provided enough fuel to otherwise already unstable individuals to commit unspeakable acts of violence. Words matter – and they matter a lot. While you can’t pinpoint a specific cause, the collective rhetoric that demonizes the other as evil has been shown to amplify hate time and time again.

Research has demonstrated a strong correlation between cultures where language has overtones of moralist judgments and violence. O.J. Harvey, a psychology professor at the University of Colorado study reveals where language blames the other as bad or wrong, then the incidents of violence were higher. Conversely, in cultures where the focus on basic humanness and human needs, the incidents of violence were lower.

Neuroscience research supports the power of language and compassion. In an article in the New York Times, a psychiatrist, Dr. Friedman writes, “we know that repeated exposure to hate speech can increase prejudice. . . it desensitizes individuals to verbal aggression, in part because it normalizes, which is usually socially condemnable behaviour. Language that is critical and judgmental, that provokes anger and fear in others produces stress hormones of fight or flight and it can be difficult to return to a place of stasis. When our nervous system goes into a high degree of stress and flight or flight mode, our front cortex, the decision-making center of the brain goes offline. This is where the real danger lies. In a high-state of alert, we are not capable of sophisticated higher-level thinking.

Collective Wisdom or Collective Shadow

Renowned psychologist C.G. Jung wrote in Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious: “A group experience takes place on a lower level of consciousness than the experience of an individual. This is due to the fact that, when many people gather together to share one common emotion, the total psyche emerging from the group is below the level of the individual psyche. If it is a very large group, the collective psyche will be more like the psyche of an animal, which is the reason why the ethical attitude of large organizations is always doubtful. The psychology of a large crowd inevitably sinks to the level of mob psychology. If therefore, I have a so-called collective experience as a member of a group, it takes place on a lower level of consciousness than if I had the experience by myself alone.”

In the Power of Collective Wisdom, the authors suggest that as human beings we have the capacity to activate collective wisdom to work constructively together and to bring fresh perspectives and we have the ability to fall into the trap of divisiveness, foolish and folly. The movement is clear – either a group comes together towards unity, higher purpose and compassion or moves toward separation and fragmentation. If the latter happens, the other is seen as “not me” or “not us”. If the pull intensities, then the fragmentation becomes polarization. This can lead to violence.

Studies of groups and societies found that a rise in polarization occurs when a group or society experiences economic hardship or in fact has a crisis of identity. This can be particularly true if a group is confronted with a significant change that it is not able to cope with. Individuals within the group have some feelings and needs that go unacknowledged. Instead, they find themselves defensive and somewhat threatened. It can become especially intense when a sense of identity is threatened.

Needs and Feelings and “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Gandhi

What can we do as individuals? The simple answer is become aware. However, this awareness also requires courage and practice. We must become aware of ourselves and our reactions and take responsibility for our thoughts and feelings. We deny responsibility when we assign blame to another person. We can say, “I did this because I had to,” or “because I am this way or that way,” or “because of my societal role.” There is usually a “You” or “an other” in the sentence.

Psychoanalyst Rollo May suggests that “the mature person becomes able to differentiate feelings into many nuances, strong and passionate experiences, or delicate and sensitive ones as in the different passages of music in a symphony.

The Non-Violent Communication Process has four elements. By following the process we practice the skill of communicating our feelings, needs and requests.

1. Observe without evaluating. In this step, we only describe what happened and detach ourselves from our emotional reaction to the situation
2. Connect with our Feelings. Then we connect with our authentic feels. This can be hard because we often say we feeling something when in fact it is a thought. Authentic feelings are words like love, relief, disappoint, excited, delighted, afraid, panicked, for example.
3. Connect with our needs: We all have basic needs for nourishment, safety, love, sleep, connection and self-actualization. When one of these needs is not met, then we usually experience this emotionally.
4. Make requests: Finally, we need to make clear requests from others to ask for what we need.

Like I wrote about before, by being a warrior for the human spirit, as coined by Margaret Wheatley, We strive to live from the best of human qualities – kindness, generosity, compassion, and love.

Questions for reflection

1. What type of transformation or rebirth process would you like to undergo right now? I’m currently doing a liver-detox, but there are dozens of transformations you can embark on to celebrate this new moon.
2.   Whether you closely follow politics or not, it’s no secret that the rhetoric has escalated over the past year or two. What types of rhetoric have you noticed in your day-to-day life that has you questioning the divide? This can be as simple as a friend making an off-colour joke or perhaps someone in line at the coffee shop being rude to someone else. How does this make you feel?
3.  If you’re honest with yourself, how do you think others view your chosen language? Are you often positive, chipper and kind? Do you find yourself using negative words such as “hate, can’t, fine” and how often? Sometimes we don’t even realize the small words we use on a daily basis that could be coming across as negative even if we don’t mean it that way.
4. Do you often practice the Non-Violent Communication Process? Perhaps take a step back next time and see how you react to something that might upset you.

 

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Christina Becker
November 2018