Nonviolent Communication

Marshall Rosenberg, who developed the process called ‘nonviolent communication’, passed away on 7 February 2015. I had heard of this process before but hadn’t felt compelled to investigate it, until now. After his passing a post came up on my facebook feed sharing a seminar.

And it totally blew me away. I’m hooked. It’s transformational.

Breaking ‘The Shell as Hard as Steel’ Through Contemplative Practices

I feel like I spend a lot of my time in the academic world locked into what Max Weber called ‘the shell as hard as steel’ (Stahlhartes Gehäuse).* A shell of concepts, abstractions, rigid rationality and logic. I, on the other hand, am not primarily interested in these. I’m more interested in compassion, empathy, wonderment and insight.

Gabriel Marcel – Love and Truth

I haven’t written here for quite a while. Been focused on writing a paper I’m hoping to publish in an academic journal. It’s a paper arguing that contemplative practices ought to be part of the study of political science. A crazy idea perhaps, but the connection between’ inner’ and ‘outer’ peace totally makes sense to me…

Anyway, in my researches I have come across a wonderful philosopher called Gabriel Marcel and as I was reading yesterday, thought I’d share this quote from his book Men Against Humanity, published in 1952.

“[T]here is nobody at all who is not in a position to encourage, within himself and beyond himself, the spirit of truth and love. But one should immediately add the converse proposition: there is nobody at all who is not in a position through the powers of rejection which he possesses, to put obstacles in the way of such encouragement and thus to maintain in the world a state of blindness, of mutual mistrust… What is asked of all of us… is that we should discover what that sphere is, however restricted it may be, in which our own activity can be vitally connected with that universal purpose, which is the purpose of love and truth in the world. Our error, or our fault, invariably consists in our wanting to persuade ourselves that no such sphere exists and that our contribution to the task that has to be accomplished in the world cannot amount to anything.”

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

This amazing man, also known as Badshah (King) Khan and The Frontier Gandhi, led the Pashtun people of Pakistan in a nonviolent movement against British colonial rule.

Small Interactions in my Local Supermarket

I watched some interactions at my local supermarket yesterday which really highlighted for me a relatively simple but important aspect of peace and conflict.

I’d Rather Teach Peace

Many thanks to my friend Geoffrey who put me on to this amazing little book. The book, I’d Rather Teach Peace and the person who wrote it, Colman McCarthy are  full of wisdom.

Reading Ayn Rand

I’ve just finished reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It’s a book I’ve never picked up before – partly because I’d heard it was about capitalism, selfishness, egotism and individualism.  These didn’t really appeal to me. Also, I had some idea that there was a cultish vibe about it.

Anyway, my book club chose it, so I launched into it, became a bit addicted, and found it fascinating.

Quite unexpectedly I also found some of Rand’s ideas resonated with unlikely sources – Anthony deMello’s teaching on selfishness and Jiddu Krishnamurti’s on the futility of imitating people.

Human nature

Are we hard-wired for war?

Often, it is presumed that human beings are by nature violent. In the media, in academic discussion, in political discussion, there seems to be an unspoken acceptance that human beings are hard-wired for violence and aggression. Look around you at the world, somebody might say, isn’t it obvious?

In this blog post I’ve included an example from the media of the way that this kind of thinking is not questioned. I’ve also included a considered response which takes a different perspective.