Communicate non-violently - 1

Introduction

Is it possible in this complicated world not to use any kind of violence, during communication between people? This question intrigued me, on one part on the personal level, because, how much times I lost my temper, due to aggressive people or fanatic ones or dogmatic persons, with whom I indulged in a conversation for one cause or another. On the other part, I wondered if there is another way to solve conflicts between groups of people, instead of using any power? Sure during history, there were examples of not using violence in order to solve a deep problem, like the prominent example of Ghandi who was empty handed, with his followers, advocating non-violent resistance , that led the British Empire to dismantle its occupation of the whole Indian subcontinent. And despite that he was assassinated on the hands of a fanatic. What concerns me in this essay, is the violence that we use between each other while communicating during daily life. Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, an American psychologist developed a process of non-violent communication in 1984. And since then, the number of trainees in the process has ever grown throughout the world. Dr. Rosenberg has used his method to mediate in armed conflicts around the world and even went to very dangerous places around the globe where violence was rampant.
He and his school have written many books, essays, given workshops to teach the method, given interviews, and participated in events discussing the process. Dr. Rosenberg has written a book called: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life © Marshall B. Rosenberg, 2003, published by PuddleDancer Press. I have read the translation of this book in French. It is an excellent book. This aroused my interest to search more about non-violent communication on the Internet, and read interviews and essays and excerpts from writings of Dr. Rosenberg himself in English. This was more explanatory. It is strange how can a process such as this, is so logic which needs us to be more empathic, can’t be used everywhere. (To be continued...)