Sublime

The concept that certain actions merit reward while others merit punishment is also associated with life-alienating communication. This thinking is expressed by the word deserve as in “He deserves to be punished for what he did.” It assumes “badness” on the part of people who behave in certain ways, and it calls for punishment to make them repent a

NVC: a way of communicating that leads us to give from the heart.

We might recall here Roger Scruton’s commendation of taking “a negotiating posture towards the other”—to do that, I think, is to cease to see a person as “the other” but rather as “my neighbor.” And when you do that, it becomes harder to Bulverize that person, to treat him or her as so obviously wrong that no debate is required, only mockery.

“Excuse me,” I broke in, addressing the group of nine other people I’d found myself with, “I’m feeling impatient because I’d like to be more connected with you, but our conversation isn’t creating the kind of connection I’m wanting. I’d like to know if the conversation we’ve been having is meeting your needs, and if so, what needs of yours are bein

Behind intimidating messages are merely people appealing to us to meet their needs. A difficult message becomes an opportunity to enrich someone’s life.

A basic premise of NVC is that whenever we imply that someone is wrong or bad, what we are really saying is that he or she is not acting in harmony with our needs.

Life-alienating communication, however, traps us in a world of ideas about rightness and wrongness—a world of judgments. It is a language rich with words that classify and dichotomize people and their actions.

Four components of NVC: 1. observations 2. feelings 3. needs 4. requests