My enemy, myself
01/25/2010

My weekly silent protest of the war in Afghanistan was cancelled last Friday due to rain.  Instead, I attended a Conflict Management workshop based on Marshall Rosenberg’s principles of Nonviolent Communication. 

Nonviolent Communication postulates that underneath every attack, complaint, or criticism is an unmet need.  If you can help someone articulate their unmet need and empathize with it (we all share common needs), you will go a long way towards defusing the conflict.  From there it might even be possible to move toward a mutually agreeable solution. 

Like most forms of practice, Nonviolent Communication is simple in theory; relatively easy in the abstract, or when one is a third party; and substantially more difficult when one is personally involved and triggered.  I can readily empathize with those whose needs aren’t being met—unless that person is my partner and he’s criticizing or complaining about me.  Similarly, I too often become hurt, defensive, and self-righteous when someone is critical of or opposes a political or social justice issue I hold dear.  Even if I’m able to hide the hurt and respond relatively rationally, the pain of the conflict lingers.

The day after the workshop, a friend’s Facebook post urged last-minute action to try to save the public option in healthcare reform.  Clicking the link, I came upon a response to her post that characterized the fight for healthcare reform as a “war on success.  If you have made good choices in your life, worked hard and are successful, then according to Obama you must pay for entitlement programs for people who did not make such good choices and who were not successful.”

Did I sense the unmet need under this attack?  Did I realize that under this post was a person who was scared that he wouldn’t have enough—money, healthcare, anything—if he had to care for others? 

Sadly, no.  I went right into self-righteousness:  “Oh please.  The meritocracy.  You object to paying for people you deem less worthy than you.  Arrogance aside, wait until you—smart, successful, wise choice-making you—gets sick and cancelled, marries someone with a pre-existing condition and can’t get coverage, or has a child with a life-threatening illness that bankrupts you.  This is about taking care of all of us.  Basic healthcare should not be a matter of wealth or privilege.”

It wasn’t until several more exchanges with this person that I finally heard his unmet need.  He said:

“The sad part is that I could get laid off and refuse to work and get better health care than I have right now. Tell me: why is THAT OK?”

It took me a few hours, but at last I heard the unspoken need implicit in his question.  It was a need for justice, the same as me.  My debater was afraid that there are lazy people abusing the system who will receive better care than he does, although he works hard.  There is no doubt a kernel of truth to his concern.

This is another principle of Nonviolent Communication.  If you can acknowledge the kernel of truth in an attacker’s complaint or criticism, it can become the common ground on which the two of you can build.  Even though I believe that a far greater injustice is being perpetrated by our current healthcare system, which doesn’t work for too many of us, it helped me to realize that, despite our differences, my debater and I shared a concern aboutinjustice, even though I'm not nearly as concerned about the injustice of some people abusing the system as I am about the system not working for most of us. It doesn't change my politics, but it helped me feel less estran justice. 

Did becoming aware of this commonality undermine my position?  On the contrary, it empowered and motivated me: We were far closer to agreement than I’d imagined!  That not only helped me in this instance, it is a lesson I hope to use in future conflicts.

One of the things I find most debilitating about social activism is the estrangement I feel from my fellow citizens when they see things differently than I do.  When I cannot identify the unmet need we share, I despair of ever finding common ground and creating the better world I long for, “a world that works for everyone.”  So I shut down.  Fear of shutting down makes me reluctant even to engage in controversial conversations.  I don’t want to endure the pain of potential estrangement from others I care about.

Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams, of the Center for Transformative Change, recommends cultivating “spaciousness and curiosity” about situations in life we find challenging.  This is a Nonviolent Communication recommendation, too.  Curiosity is inherently light and flexible; it can go where new information leads it.  Feeling hurt or angry, on the other hand, is a pretty stuck position.  A stuck and painful position. 

But cultivating spaciousness and curiosity requires faith that other people do have legitimate needs or concerns; they are not just being selfish, arrogant, or mean-spirited, even if that’s what it sounds like.  But I learned from the workshop—and my subsequent real-life experience—that the more skilled I become at sensing the unmet need behind others’ attacks or criticisms, the more effective I’ll be at creating a world that works for everyone.