I participated in The Peace Alliance conference call on Non-Violent Communication (NVC) a few hours ago. Even though there were so many of us, Miki is such a terrific moderator that true connections were made across the demographics of age, gender, and geography - the only ones that are obvious on the phone; there may have been others. I will summarize her main points and relate them to ideas that have already been discussed elsewhere.

Like Lakoff, she emphasized the primacy of values. No amount of logic or knowledge on our part will be effective unless we first make a point of establishing a value-based connection with the other person. This connection must be made on an emotional rather than an intellectual level, and that requires a degree of trust and a willingness to be vulnerable that some of us admitted finding difficult to allow in adversarial situations.

Then we moved on to the even more difficult task of learning how to find common ground with the other person, while remaining centered at the same time. By "the same time," she does not mean simultaneously; that would result in a loss of personality integration which is very important to maintain. Rather, she described an alternation between empathizing with the other and then centering before returning to the other person's point of view - back and forth, go out, then retreat, many times during the interaction. In other words, we want to time-share in a very mindful way rather than multi-task and end up accomplishing neither the centering nor the empathy.

Common ground was a very bitter pill to swallow because we are going much deeper here than liking the same food or sharing a hobby. NVC means that we have to be quite literally coming from the same place. For example, she drew out of one participant the fact that even though we are working for peace, we all harbor the darker emotions such as hatred. What? Yes, really! If we try to get rid of it, it will only become bigger. If we try to deny it, we can only shut down.

For further discussion of this idea, Miki recommended the book Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age by Joanna Macy. It is out of print, but she assured us that any public library should have it, and an on-line participant found six or eight copies available at either Amazon or eBay, I can't recall which.

To relate this to Lakoff's framing concepts, please see Aaron Scott's post at Rockridge Institute, "Shadow of a Frame," and read and contemplate the ensuing discussion. You will find my contribution among the others, and an interesting connection between this idea and Jungian psychology along with specific examples in case you find this tangled web of ideas from different disciplines confusing.

Jason and I had just had this same conversation the other day when I admitted that I fear my own anger, another one of those dark emotions. He told me to go to that dark place because it must still have something to say to me. Well, I went there tonight in good company, and I learned that if I communicate from a position of fear, I lose my effectiveness.

Miki says we must learn to "metabolize" these feelings. How? "Envelope it with love." It is just your humanity talking. If we believe that peace must begin within, it is necessary for us to make peace with our dark sides. And guess what? No matter how big and dark it looks to you, nobody else can see it.

Furthermore, if you can accept it in yourself, then you can accept it in the other, and that is necessary to achieve compassion - and non-violent communication. You just have to keep digging and digging, or peeling back the layers, from the surface to the deep. In terms of my study of developmental psychology and unconditional love, this will allow you to loathe the behavior even as you love the person - and the values from which he operates.

Just to make the exercise as difficult as possible, we brainstormed about establishing common ground with GWB. Here is where we must use our head to get back to our heart. Let's start with a simple thread. What do you hate about GWB? He drops bombs on innocent civilians. Why does he do that? Because he wants to be the biggest bully on the planet. Why does he want that? Because he's a megalomaniac and a control freak. Why does he want power and control? Because he wants respect. AHA! There's the common ground - respect. Hate his tactics all you want, but recognize that the need to be respected is common ground.

Now I'll try a more difficult thread that we didn't quite work through to the common ground, and maybe Miki will read this and let me know if I'm barking up the right tree. What do you hate about GWB? He blew up the twin towers. Why did he do that? Because he's crazy. Okay, why would a crazy person want to blow up the twin towers? No, wait! Crazy people are irrational, aren't they? Yes, but they still have reasons for doing what they do. Well, maybe he wanted to see the cloud of dust and debris rising into the air. Why would he want to see that? Because he thinks it's pretty. AHA! There's the common ground - aesthetic appreciation. Even crazy people have values.

So now we have a common ground to use as a basis for non-violent communication. We can recognize the person separate from the behavior. The "punch line" in my essay on Value-Based Progressive Politics was that the core values I identified were HUMAN values and not progressive values at all. As I pointed out to Jason in an email just moments before the conference, even Hitler thought he was doing the species a favor.

I plan a follow-up to the essay cited above that will make the argument that while Lakoff's linguistic/rhetorical contribution regarding framing is right on, his premise that there are two family models that result in two sets of values - a set for neo-cons and a set for progressives - is faulty. The dichotomy is between tactics, patterns of behavior, or as Lakoff would have it, strategic initiatives - as lovely a piece of rhetoric as I've ever heard.