While writing this section, I looked Alice Miller up in relation to the complexity of her relationship with her own son (who published a book about their relationship in which he describes her as an extremely difficult and abusive mother even while respecting her work and claiming it saved his life). That was the first time I learned that she was a Jew, which adds even more significance to her explorations about Hitler in For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence. Experiencing compassion for seven-year-old Adolf was a formative moment in my life. It’s as if encountering her prepared me for embracing NVC as a deep practice rooted in certain assumptions about what’s possible for humans rather than simply a method of communication. It’s an article of faith for her that no one, including Hitler, has ever done anything harmful or violent to another unless something was first done to them, especially early on. Only now, writing this, do I also see the connection with the depth of the Jewish belief that human souls are pure. (This phrase is part of the morning prayer: “God, the soul you have given in me is pure.” The awkward preposition is so in the original, too.)
This conviction about the full humanity of each perpetrator, regardless of what they have done, was also reinforced by reading James Gilligan’s Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes, a loving and courageous book about people who commited horrific acts of violence whom he encountered as a director of mental health for the Massachusetts prison system.
This perspective has helped me immensely in being able to develop empathic imagination without ever writing off anyone as less than human. It also seems necessary, to some extent, in order to be able to accept the possibility that how we are with each other and in our systems now isn’t inevitable. I wrote an article that ties their work together with other sources into understanding atrocities. It’s called “The Freedom to Disobey.”
The following four sections are intended to initiate the process of alignment between you and NGL. Please take your time reading them. Our intention in communicating with you in this way is to bring clarity to your involvement in NGL as a Friend and for that clarity to live in both your mind and in your body. The more clearly you understand the invitation by which you are welcomed into NGL, the more ease we anticipate having in meeting our purpose together. For us, NGL Friends contributes to our intent to practice openness and build relationships that will mutually support our collaboration towards nonviolent global liberation.
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As we mentioned in the introduction to Join NGL Friends, we have a number of requests of you that we want you to engage with seriously as you decide whether being an NGL Friend is a fit for you.
The overall principle we are asking of you is that you recognize the limits of our collective resources as a community, and adopt the attitude of reverence and “do no harm.” We have worked for a long time with much care to create this space. We want it to be as welcoming as we know how, and we know it’s not perfect.
We want to learn from and with you, and our capacity is limited to engage with you beyond what we offer generally. We ask that you act with awareness of being a guest in our community. We have attempted to offer as much guidance as we can to support your journey into and within NGL, and we may have not given sufficient clarity.
If so, let us know when we ask for feedback, and we will aim to find a way to offer more guidance in new ways. We deeply believe that you will learn and get a sense of belonging from attending calls and we ask that you do this with care for all of our specific requests (which mostly focus on your overall intention and focus, not concrete actions):