Teachings of Marshall Rosenberg on Anger and Domination Systems.

Date:   4/27/2006 2:14:13 PM ( 18 y ago)

http://www.PSNCC.org/anger_and_domination.html

had a very powerful
and life changing experience
with others in a workshop with
Marshall Rosenberg yesterday.

I am going to write some blogs about this
system of non-vioment communication
that I recommend highly.

I have so much to learn about this system.
I know it can transform my relationship life.

Please look at this article on anger and domination systems.

your eg


from the artlicle above:

Marshall: For me the subject of anger is very much a political issue.   To me anger is not a central issue and I'm worried about thinking of anger as a problem.   Thinking about anger as a problem is like a man who is in the habit of smoking in bed and catching the house on fire and he notices there's always this damn fire alarm going off.

He gets really annoyed and he keeps changing houses because he doesn't like dealing with the fire alarm.   To me in many respects anger is the fire alarm.   Why be worried and concerned about the fire alarm?   So to me anger is not the problem.   To me the problem is the thinking that creates it.   It is a certain quality of thinking that supports domination systems.

By systems I mean governments, organizations, institutions that regulate human affairs.   In his books, The Powers That Be and Engaging the Powers, theologian Walter Wink talks about domination systems being ones in which a few people control [many] to their own advantage.   In domination systems you have to train people to think in ways that support the system, so they fit the system.

Domination systems require:




1.   Suppression of self

2.   Moralistic judgments

3.   Amtssprache (this expression was used by Nazi officials to describe a bureaucratic language that denies choice, with words like should, have to, ought)

4.   The crucial concept of deserve




Now anger is the result, it's a fire alarm that tells us we are thinking in a way that supports domination systems; you are thinking in a way that contributes to the oppressive world order and you are part of it.

So I don't want to get rid of it in that sense I don't want to be like the man who keeps moving his house because of the alarm.   I want to make a radical shift in my thinking so I am not thinking in ways that take part in the domination systems in the world.   So systems train people to think in ways that support the system.   And how we are trained to communicate is obviously going to affect our human development.

We have been trained to be nice dead people or bullies.   When you are in a position of authority you are justified in being a bully.   You don't call yourself a bully - you call yourself an authority.   In domination systems authorities are given legal power to bully through the system of deserve, in which punishment, rewards and other forms of coercion get you to do things.

How human beings develop obviously is going to affect our understanding about the nature of human beings, what we think is the nature of human beings.   This is what leads us to create the kind of systems we create.   This is why I like Water Wink's books so much.   He sees over the past five thousand years a certain kind of consciousness of what human beings are like.

For example if you think that human beings are evil, wretched reeps, horrible things - and this view has been widely spread for several thousand years, that human beings are tainted with an evil energy - then obviously you need to set up a system that is controlled from above by those who are more moral, like you and me!   And I am wary about you to tell you the truth!

The trouble is that the system has a problem to decide who is the more moral person and is the one to know how to control the other people.   There have been some experiments, divine right of kings and the various others, but the idea is that the system follows with a certain consciousness about what human beings are, they have to be controlled.   The primary means is a coercive method of controlling human beings to keep them thinking they are worthless little creeps.

What are the basic systems used?

Punishment - make people suffer - the whole idea of penitence is to get people to change.   First you have to get people to see what horrible creeps they are.   That's why one of the first things a child must be taught to say, and say well, is "Sorry."

Let's get a jackal child puppet.

Jackal Parent: Say you are sorry.

Jackal Child: I'm sorry.

Jackal Parent: You're not really sorry.   I can see from your face you are not really sorry.

Jackal Child: (begins to cry) I'm sorry.

Jackal Parent: I forgive you.




That's what you have to do, you have to make people feel bad about themselves and be penitent.

That?s why in the United States we call these institutions penitentiaries.   The whole idea is you have to make people realize they are evil, so you need a language that does that, you need moralistic judgment that implies evil or bad, with words like: good, bad, right, wrong, abnormal, incompetent etc.

All kinds of words that make you wrong.

There are whole cultures that have not gone that way, where there is almost no violence.   They don't have this language.

 

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