Why I am excited about Mars

In recent years I have been becoming increasingly interested in and excited about the prospect of people exploring and colonizing the planet Mars. A friend asked me recently about what I find so compelling about this idea, and I thought that I'd elaborate some on it here.

First off, I view the possibility of humans going to and living on Mars on a permanent basis as being an enormously important milestone for humanity overall. This move will signify humanity as being a species that resides not just on one planet, but on multiple planets. Humanity would then be a multiplanetary species. This would be a huge development, comparable to when humanity left Africa 1.8 million years ago to become a multi-continental, multi-regional species. To think that we can witness such a thing, and potentially be a part of such a thing, is just mindblowing.

And as far as the survival of the human species goes, I do think that it is best to not have "all of our eggs in one basket", so to speak. There are any number of different things that could kill off humanity on Earth, be it human-based such as ecoological devastation and nuclear war, or naturally-occuring phenomena like asteroid impacts and supervolcano eruptions. I think that the more that humanity can spread around throughout our solar system, the greater the likelihood that humanity can continute to survive on into the future.

I also appreciate the great challenges involved with space travel, Mars exploration and ultimately settling on another planet. This is the kind of endeavor that would challenge people on every possible level: psychologically, physically, socially, technologically, architecturally, medically, you name it. I think that this kind of challenge is a good thing, because it is the kind of goal that can help get people out of lazy "comfort zones" where trivialities and petty conflicts preoccupy people's minds, and towards big collective goals where people have to work together and bring out their best selves. Beceause, frankly, their lives would depend on it. There's simply no room left for fucking around.

Relatedly, by taking on such a task I think that the conditions would be set for enormous scientific and technological breakthroughs and developments to occur. One of the areas in particular where I believe that lots of development will occur is the area of creating and maintaining life-support systems. This knowledge can be useful for assisting in efforts to colonize other places in our solar system, as well as for the people on Earth, since the Earth is currently on track towards dismantling it's life-support systems. The problems of too hot, too cold, the lack of immediately accessible drinking water, runaway carbon dioxide emissions, producing breathable air, the lack of good soil for growing plants in - these all are increasingly becoming major Earth problems, and of course these are also problems that are front and center with regards to colonizing Mars and other planets as well.

Now, with all of this being said, I also have my own unique goals and aspirations regarding Mars colonization. What I would like to have happen is for people with anarchist and libertarian socialist orientations to work together to establish new self-sustaining utopian colonies on Mars. I would like for these colonies to be separate and distinct from whatever colonies that businesses like SpaceX and Blue Origin and governments like the United States and China might create on Mars. I am excited about the work that SpaceX and NASA are doing, since I see their work as progressing towards human beings eventually actually being able to get from Earth to Mars, but ultimately I think that the kind of utopian anarchist colonies on Mars that I envision would need to become independent of these various agencies and go their own way.

This topic of establishing utopian colonies on Mars is actually something that I gave a workshop about at the international Mars Society convention that took place online last year. You can watch a recording of this talk on YouTube here. My excitement about the prospect of creating utopian colonies on Mars comes down to this one thought: this is our opportunity to finally create our own new society in alignment with our own visions and values.

I have been an anarchist for a long time now, and all this time I have been wanting to create a new world that more closely aligns with the kinds of ethics and values that are talked about in anarchist/libertarian socialist philosophy. And repeatedly over the years, the efforts of myself and my comrades have failed in accomplishing this. And now, looking at the state of the world as it is today, I don't see it as being likely that the world will go in the kind of direction that I'd want. What does seem increasingly likely to me is the possibility of human beings going to and colonizing the planet Mars. So as a result, I think that a shift has occured in me in recent years, a shift away from a "change the world" mindset and towards a "create a new world somewhere else" mindset. This is the same kind of mindset that inspired the utopian socialists to leave Europe and go create their own new utopian colonies in the Americas back in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Part of the appeal to me of the idea of colonizing Mars is the "new frontier" and "fresh start" aspect of the place. Nobody is living there currently, and all of the various required life support systems would need to be intentionally created by human beings. The way that I am approaching this then is thorough focusing on this question:

As long as we are designing life support systems for human beings, how can we intentionally design life support systems to meet all of the different fundamental human needs for all of the different people involved? In other words, how can we design social relationships and social structures that would more effectively meet human needs? How can group decision-making, interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, emotional and psychological well-being, the allocation of resources, the management of public and private spaces, how can all of this be intentionally designed in new ways to maximize the health and happiness of everyone involved? I view the creation of utopian colonies on Mars as being the opportunity to look at all of this from fresh new perspectives.

With that being said, I do not view this question of colonizing the planet Mars as being an "Earth versus Mars" question. Looking at this as an "Earth versus Mars" matter is indicative of the kind of narrow-minded zero sum thinking that I think is currently leading humanity to a dead end. I much prefer "both/and" thinking, with an emphasis on creativity and ingenuity (as well as Ingenuity). To that end, I would like for all of the developments in space flight, life support systems engineering, alternative architecture, social relationships and structures, and other areas, to be looked at with an eye towards applying them to life on Earth, Mars, as well as other places in our solar system. These are all human problems that we are trying to address here, and these are all things that we are trying to create to better support human life, therefore the benefits should be for all of humanity.

One thing that I have come to realize regarding a potential future utopian anarchist coloney on Mars, is that in order for such a thing to be successful, a massive functioning alternative infrastructure would need to be created by the utopian anarchist would-be Martian colonists right here on Earth beforehand. These people would need to be able to understand and operate alternative institutions that are capable of meeting people's various real life needs. These people would also need to be able to effectively make decisions together and resolve conflicts together. And while we are all still immersed in a capitalist society, these utopian anarchist would-be Martian colonists would need to be able to make and manage money together to not just buy necessary materials, but also to pay SpaceX, or whatever company is offering commercial space transportation, to get from Earth to Mars. This kind of high level of cohesion, cooperation and collaboration is not at all present within the contemporary anarchist and radical milieux, and perhaps it never has been. This means that there is a whole lot of work, innovation and development that needs to take place even before we can begin to tackle the various enormous challenges associated with living on another planet.

It is all still very much worth it to me. Living on Mars is an opportunity to create and live in a "New World", both physically and socially speaking. It is all of the exciting "frontier spirit" that animated a lot of the European colonization of the Americas, but without any of the conquest and genocide of indigenous peoples. This can be a place where the world of our dreams can be created, by our own human efforts, in our own human-created life-support bubbles. And all of this can very well happen during our own lifetimes. What a time to be alive!

Anarchist Colonization of Mars

I was on a recent episode of the Anarchy Bang podcast with the topic being Anarchist Colonization of Mars. Here are the pieces that I wrote for the intro and the editorial for this episode.

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In 1974 Ursula K. Le Guin published the science fiction novel “The Dispossessed”, which told the story of a movement of anarchists who collectively left an Earth-like planet to go colonize a Mars-like planet, establishing there a new society organized around their anarchist beliefs. In 1992 Kim Stanley Robinson published the science fiction novel “Red Mars”, the first book of his “Mars Trilogy”, which told the story of people colonizing the planet Mars, including a number of explicitly anarchist groups, who then go on to become independent from the various authorities on Earth.

Then last Saturday, September 28th, Elon Musk held a press conference where he introduced the world to the “Starship” vehicle that he intends to use to send humans to Mars to begin the process of colonizing that planet. Musk’s company, SpaceX, has already shown the world that reusable rockets which are capable of going out into space can be made, and that a private company can make them. Prior to this only single-use rockets were made for space travel, and government agencies were seen as the only organizations capable of going out into space.

Taking inspiration from all of this, the question here becomes: How about we build some real-life anarchist colonies on Mars? Our current planet is fucked, in all kinds of different ways, so how about those of us who yearn for a completely different world go set up shop on a completely different world? How about we turn “the Red Planet” into “the Red & Black Planet”? Let’s become Martians!
Join in the conversation!

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Editorial for Episode 39 - Anarchist Colonization of Mars

For a long time I advocated for a Global Anarchist Social Revolution. I said that everybody in the world can and should change the way that they relate to get rid of all hierarchy and domination, and instead have voluntary cooperation and sharing be the basis for all of social life. This would involve the elimination of all governments, capitalism and patriarchy worldwide, and the dawn of a beautiful new age of freedom and equality for all of humanity. I saw my role in all of that as being to help inspire people to move to unlock this latent potential to make this happen.

Over time, after a series of different heartbreaks and disappointments, I came to hold a belief that a Global Anarchist Social Revolution (or "GASR" for short) was most likely not going to happen and that it would be best to not be putting my time and energy into things assuming that it would. At around the same time as this, other anarchists were coming to these same conclusions, most notably with the widely circulated text called "Desert". That piece took things a step further by saying that not only would an anarchist revolution not happen, but the sibling project of "saving the Earth" from ecological catastrophe was not going to happen either, and that we should adjust our plans and expectations to accommodate that. My anarchist goals became much more diminished and narrow in scope, shrinking from a global scale down to a more individualist scale, looking at just me and my own little life.

Then in more recent years a new and completely unrelated development has taken place. Elon Musk and his company SpaceX has publicly announced their intention and plans to send humans to the planet Mars, and they have developed some reusable rockets to help make this happen. SpaceX also has the advantage of also being a private company, not a government agency, thereby showing that these kinds of endeavors can take place outside of the purview of a government. If SpaceX can do this, what can other non-governmental agencies accomplish?

An idea then hit me, perhaps a new big grand world-changing mission can be adopted by anarchists to fill the void left by what was previously occupied by the "GASR" (Global Anarchist Social Revolution). Perhaps instead of focusing on changing this world, anarchists can focus on getting off of this world and settling on Mars instead? Both tasks are enormous, involving lots of work, resources, and would most likely take generations to accomplish. But if we are indeed writing off all hope for this planet, as far fetched as it may sound, there may be some hope in the planet Mars instead.

I would like to have a conversation that I have never had before, and that is to talk about the possibility of anarchists colonizing Mars. How can we conceptualize this project in a way that is in some sense realistic and tangible? How can we even begin to break down this massive undertaking in a way that we can make some progress with it? How would we need to re-organize our tiny little anarchist scene or subculture to be able to tackle such a big endeavor? Or perhaps this all is still a project that is ahead of it's time, and is best left for a future "wave" of anarchism to take up?

I don't have the answers to any of these questions. Plus, there are a million other questions and variables to consider when considering something like a project on this scale. But I would like to talk about this, and in particular I would like to talk about all of this while using an anarchist lens. So let's get going.

Buddhist anarchism and Nonviolent Communication writings for Anarchy Bang

Here are some pieces that I wrote up for two episodes of the Anarchy Bang podcast. One episode was about buddhist anarchism and the other episode was about Nonviolent Communication & anarchism.

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Buddhist Anarchism

It's hard to really know where to begin with Buddhism, given that there are so many different ways that people relate to the thing. Buddhism can be seen as a religion, a philosophy, an approach to psychology, a personal practice or a culture. And then there are the infinite different sects, traditions, branches and sub-branches within Buddhism. It all can very quickly become very overwhelming and confusing.

That all being said, the way that I like to begin to make sense of Buddhism is by studying some of the renowned lists within Buddhism. What better way to organize one's thoughts on something than to use lists? One list in particular stands out to me the most, it's called "the three marks of existence". Basically it lists the three qualities that mark life as we know it. The first quality is that change is constant and inevitable, that nothing lasts forever. The second is that everything is comprised of many different interacting components and forces acting on it, that nothing exists on it's own, in and of itself. Basically, "anti-essentialism" is how I like to look at it. And the third is that suffering exists, it's an experience that we all have.

This then goes into perhaps the most famous list within Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths. The first one is what I just mentioned, that whole "suffering" thing that we all have. The second is that there is a root cause to this suffering, and that is craving or clinging to our ideas of what we want. The third is that it is indeed possible to overcome this kind of attachment. And the fourth is the way to go about doing that, which is itself another list, the Noble Eightfold Path.

...And as much as I love the Noble Eightfold Path, I won't go into that list here.

So what does this all have to do with anarchism? Well, as I see it, that whole "suffering" condition that we all experience makes us all crazy, it makes us all desperate and frantic, even if we are able to put up a good front and present ourselves as being mature capable thinkers. Our lack of dealing with our own suffering head-on deprives us of our own personal power.

Buddhist practice is all about developing one's own personal power, self-mastery, cultivating one's ability to choose and act on one's choices, rather that letting one's own old habits, old beliefs and emotional reactivity dictate one's life. It's also about getting more peace and contentment in one's life. You are not always going to get what you want, anarchists will always disappoint you, your dreams for an anarchist world will never happen, and if you do decide to embark on a Buddhist practice, you will probably fuck that up too. But the paradoxical beauty of Buddhism is that even with that all being the case, one can come to acceptance of all of that, and still keep on going. At least for as long as this life you are living now exists.

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Nonviolent Communication & Anarchism

Nonviolent Communication (also known as “NVC” or “compassionate communication”) is a set of conceptual tools and a general worldview that a number of anarchists have found useful and at times have adopted. Some have found it to be a how-to guide for living without hierarchy and domination, whereas others have found it to be a series of tips for approaching conflict in ways that are hopefully more productive.

NVC can be used as a way to do conflict resolution, which is what it is best known for, but it can also be used for meeting facilitation, counseling & therapy, and some would say for social change work itself. The crux of NVC is developing one’s ability to make distinctions between objective observations vs. subjective interpretations, bodily-felt feelings vs. cognitive evaluations, and fundamental human needs vs. the infinite ways that needs can be met. The ultimate goal of NVC is for it’s practitioners to come to embody a way of being that the psychologist Carl Rogers said is most helpful in relationships: heartfelt authenticity, empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard. The idea is that through such qualities being present in a relationship, that relationship will eventually and inevitably become stronger, autonomy-respecting, collaborative and conducive to those involved realizing their own personal power. Anarchy, baby!

Join us September 15th as we talk about how NVC relates to anarchy, how it doesn’t, it’s potential for becoming an exciting new anarchist social of thought vs. just a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

Some related readings

The Basics of Nonviolent Communication

Key Assumptions and Intentions of Nonviolent Communication

Compassionate Anarchism

Can the Social Order Be Transformed through Personal Practice? The Case of Nonviolent Communication

Person-centered Therapy

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I will begin with a quote which has always been the touchstone for me and my anarchism, that famous quote from Gustav Landauer:

"The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another… We are the State and we shall continue to be the State until we have created the institutions that form a real community.”

With this in mind, I immediately ask: what are the different kinds of relationships that would comprise anarchy? What would these relationships look like?

The answers that I come up with is that these relationships would, generally-speaking, acknowledge and respect the autonomy of everybody involved while also enabling people to cooperate, collaborate and make decisions together as equals, with no one person or group of people bossing everyone else around. All of this stuff is easier said than done, which is why I eventually started to look for some guides and pointers for how to actually do this, practically-speaking.

This lead to me eventually discovering something called "Nonviolent Communication", or "NVC" for short. NVC generally lives in the self-help/self-improvement world, and the demographic that is mainly drawn to NVC is middle-aged middle-class 1st world white women with liberal/progressive politics. In short, NVC is not at all something that originates from the anarchist scene, yet as soon as I started to study I immediately saw the connections and correlations with anarchism, and I got quite excited about that.

For about five years I was a zealous missionary for a kind of NVC-anarchist hybrid that I tried to develop and promote to anybody who would listen to me. For the next ten years after that I had more of a low-key involvement with NVC lasting until just last year when I decided to end my involvement with the NVC milieu altogether. My overall takeaway message from the whole thing is that while some maps, guides and conceptual schemas may be helpful for actualizing anarchy in the real-world, ultimately human beings with all of their complexities, foibles and psychoses go above and beyond anything that we can come up with.

To quote our anarchist daddy, Mikhail Bakunin: "No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker."

This leaves me with a belief that Nonviolent Communication is something that can be useful and helpful for anarchists, if one cares to spend the time & energy to seriously consider it. I do not think that NVC is something that anybody "should" do, and in fact I think that the moment that one looks at it that way the whole thing becomes completely worthless and a waste of time. But if the sincere interest and desire to learn NVC is there, then the time spent can be worthwhile. So let's talk about Nonviolent Communication.

An Anarchist Postive Program

Here are some things that I wrote for an episode of the Anarchy Bang podcast. The episode itself can be found online here.

Introducing An Anarchist Positive Program

Alright, enough with all the negativity, and time to get positive. Now, I know very well that we don’t want this, and we don’t want that. This is fundamentally corrupt and needs to be destroyed, and that is entirely oppressive and needs to be abolished. This is completely fucked-up and needs to be attacked, and that thing over there… well, let’s not even talk about that!

Instead, let’s get clear: what exactly is it that we DO want in terms of “anarchism” and/or “anarchy”? In other words, let’s say that all of the Big Bad Things are made to go away, through some means or another, then what exactly would our brave new anarchist world look like? What specifically would the people in an anarchist society (or “community”, or whatever) be DOING? What is our big End Goal? What’s the beautiful dream?

Back in the day, various books were written about this topic, both non-fiction such as Fields, Factories and Workshops and Bolo’bolo, and fiction such as “The Dispossessed” and “The Fifth Sacred Thing”. And of course there is the whole solarpunk phenomena that is floating around the interwebs. We can talk about these writings, if they describe the kind of anarchist world that you would like to live in. And if not, then fuck it. What’s important is your anarchist dream, your ideal world and what it would look like. Let’s go into it.

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An Anarchist Positive Program - Editorial

For me anarchism has always been a two-sided coin. There is the destructive "anti" side, the side that says that all forms of capitalism, government, hierarchy, authority, etc. should be completely destroyed ASAP. And then there is the positive side, the part that says that "another world is possible", and that that world would look something like people coming together voluntarily as equals to cooperate, share and help each other out. My concern is that in recent years the positive side of anarchism has been overlooked, or even forgotten about, while the attack-and-destroy negative side of anarchism has become more of what people think about when they think of the big A-word.

I would like to see this change. I would like to see anarchism become more positive. Now, I know that I may sound stupid and hokey saying this, but I really do believe that positivity in some form really does serve a purpose. I believe that positivity can sustain & nourish people, that it can keep people going. And with a big social-political philosophy like anarchism, it also serves the purpose of providing a sense of direction, a way to orient yourself towards what it is that you do want, instead of just getting away from what you don't want.

There is an Israeli anarchist guy I've known for a long time named Ilan Shalif who recently said this online: "If I had no vision of libertarian communist alternative for human society I would not have survived the full 82 years of my life." Now, I am definitely not as old as he is, but I do feel the same way he does. Having a vision for what human beings are capable of, in the positive sense and on a large-scale global level, has certainly kept me going all these years that I have been alive. And with the anarchist scene being what it is these days, this positive sense of our human potential has kept me sticking with anarchism, even though there are a million and one reasons presented to me as to why I should leave it all behind.

Let me be clear here, just because human beings have the potential for great and beautiful things does not at all mean that these things will happen. Possibility does not mean inevitability. And likewise, having a wonderful vision for how human society can be does not mean that this vision will ever be realized. In some sense our visions for a future anarchist world are siblings to the fantastic worlds created in science fiction. The difference is that our anarchist visions are of worlds that we actually do believe can happen, and they are ones that we are ostensibly working to make into a reality.

So with this episode, I would like to hear what your anarchist utopia looks like. I would like to hear how your ideal society (or lack thereof) would function, what daily life would be like, how stuff would get done. Would your ideal society keep the old anarchist dream of workers' councils, neighborhood assemblies and mandated recallable delegates within massive federation structures? Or would you go with more of a 21st century approach and make collective decisions via directly voting for things on your smartphone that is connected with a mesh network and uses heavy encryption? Or would you keep things really old school and instead have humanity be organized the way it was for most of its history, as small bands and tribes of nomadic hunter-gatherers?

Speaking for myself, the centerpiece of my ideal anarchist society would be authentic heartfelt connection between people. So my ideal anarchist world would have people taking the time and effort to be honest with themselves and those around them, really taking the time to listen to and understand those around them, and working through the conflicts and difficulties that inevitably arise in human relationships. My ideal anarchist world would then have specific times and spaces set aside for people to do this kind of messy personal/interpersonal kind of work. And then with that foundation in place, the whole gamut of non-hierarchical meeting facilitation processes and organizational systems can be utilized to help the various "councils", "assemblies", "tribes" and "collectives" run more smoothly and harmoniously than a group of alienated antagonistic people using Robert's Rules of Order or Formal Consensus would ever be able to.

And then, ultimately, we would have bad-ass anarchist colonies on Mars, the asteroid belt, and the rest of the solar system. That is my dream, anyway....

Flying By: my experience of 2018

It's that time of year again! The time when the planet Earth is at that one particular spot in its orbit around the sun where a lot of us like to pause, reflect on our lives and the world we live in, and get wasted. So here are my own reflections on the year-that-was, 2018, and my experience of it.

In a number of regards my experience of this year was a boring repetition of the same-old same-old. I lived in the same apartment, worked the same job at the same location, drove the same car, and had the same friends, the same family situation and the same coworkers as the year prior. I don't view that as being a necessarily "bad" or "good" thing, it just is. It is/was the bedrock of stability from which I can look at everything else.

Traveling-wise, this year I traveled out to Las Vegas, New York City, West Virginia, Michigan, South Dakota and Chicago. So I was able to get some traveling in this year, albeit each one of these trips was a little short trip. I had the most fun in Las Vegas, which is kind of what the city is designed for. But going to New York City was my favorite of them all, simply because:
I ❤ NYC.

My time in NYC this year was also probably the most eventful time for me, as far as different big events crammed into a small period of time goes. During my time there I saw a few long-time friends of mine, I ended the friendship with one of those friends, I narrowly missed meeting up with some new friends of mine, I met up with someone who was once a member of a cult that I was once tangentially involved with that nevertheless had a huge impact on my life, I became disillusioned with NVC (which some people also call a cult), and I realized there that going to public anarchist events is a waste of my time. Oh, and I also saw the remains of real-life dinosaurs!

This year I got involved with a bunch of different things/groups that go by Three Letter Acronyms: PCT, NVC, NFP, DSA, LSC. With each of these I went through cycles of thinking that they were quite interesting and that I had a bright future with them, to eventually thinking that they were quite boring and overblown. My thoughts on all of these things now is that they each have their place in life and the world at large, but also that putting too much faith or importance in them is best described with a Two Letter Acronym: BS.

Belief-system-wise, my heart is still with The Beautiful Idea of anarchy/anarchism. There is no particular hyphenated ideology of anarchism that I am tied to, I am more interested in the whole thing in general. Yes, the whole social scene/subculture that surrounds anarchism is total shit, but I am lucky to have some friends who are anarchists as well as a body of thought that speaks to how I see life and the world at large.

Speaking of the world at large, 2018 has been a big year for Politics! I spent a lot of time paying attention to mainstream politics this year, mainly in the U.S., but also in some other countries as well. I view mainstream politics, particularly in the U.S., as being a kind of team sport, and this year I treated it as such. My team that I root for is the Democrats, and so as the scandals, investigations, testimonies and elections wore on, I cheered as my team scored points, booed when the opposing team scored points, and strategized as to how the next few moves can and should play out. I have no illusions that the Democrats, nor any other political party or politician, will ever bring us freedom, meaning, a brave new future, or anything else worthwhile. The whole system is based on deception, death, destruction and despair, it is all propped up with outright violence and the threat thereof, and while it all plays out the Sixth Mass Extinction Event for this planet is continuing on unabated. But team sports, be it political or otherwise, can be a fun way to pass the time, and so that was a game that I partook in this year as well.

Speaking of entertainment, in the world of science fiction Star Trek and Star Wars surprisingly were not that big on my mind this year. 2017 was a big year for me for both of those franchises, but not 2018. This year I would say that my favorite sci-fi TV show was The Expanse, my favorite new sci- movie was Prospect and my favorite new publishing sci-fi author was the wonderful Kim Stanley Robinson. Yes, I acknowledge that there are other genres out there besides science fiction, I just don't see them as being interesting enough for me to write about here. ;)

Real-life science had an interesting year this year as well, what with SpaceX doing some cool things, a robotic lander successfully touching down on the surface of Mars, the first genetically engineered humans being born, and the details of our impending doom being laid out for all to see and ignore.

Speaking personally, one notable thing for me this year was that 2018 was the year that I turned 40. 40! There is no more pretending that I am a youngling anymore! Ten years ago, when I turned 30, I went through a huge existential moment of trying to figure out who I am and what I am doing in the world. Turning 40 was far less dramatic, more subdued, more accepting of my place in life. I wonder if turning 50 will be similar?

Happy New Year to all! And good luck to New Horizons as it flies by Ultima Thule!

Why I am not into NVC anymore

From 2003 until pretty recently I was really into Nonviolent Communication (aka: "NVC"). This is not the case for me anymore. I have a few reasons as to why this is the case.

1) The central claim behind NVC is bogus

The central claim behind NVC, and the initial selling-point to get people interested in it, is that NVC is a uniquely effective way for peacefully resolving conflicts between people. This is not true. In the 15 years that I have been involved with NVC circles I have seen countless conflicts occur between people who are ostensibly committed to NVC and the overwhelming majority of these conflicts were not peacefully resolved to the satisfaction of everybody involved.

For a long time I have been ignoring this fact and persisted in having a faith in the conflict transforming power of NVC. Now I see that my faith has been misplaced and that my actual real-life experience shows that NVC does not achieve what people says it does. I do not wish to continue believing in something when the evidence right in front of me does not support it.

2) NVC is not special

Shortly upon entering the NVC milieu I was introduced to a whole slew of other different self-help, personal growth, interpersonal, spiritual and organizational methods, practices, processes and packages. Each of these claim to be uniquely beneficial and a good thing to have as a regular part of your life. I agree that a lot of these are useful helpful things to use and have a working knowledge of. But then I ask myself: why is it that I prioritize NVC as being the thing that I most practice and talk about to others?

And the answer that I come to for this is that NVC is the personal/interpersonal tool that I came across first. I established a habit of thinking and talking about it, and I maintained that habit over the years since my initial encounter. A habit is a habit, not necessarily a good thing or bad thing in and of itself. It just is what it is.

When I think about it, a lot, if not most, of the other different personal/interpersonal tools have some beneficial things to offer. Prioritizing NVC over the others is essentially an arbitrary thing to do that comes from whatever personal biases people have. My personal bias has been towards NVC and as a result I have been showcasing the benefits of NVC over the years, while disregarding the benefits of all of the other different personal/interpersonal tools that are out there.

3) There's nothing new here

For a long time I have been frustrated with NVC essentially manifesting itself as a perpetual series of workshops, retreats, practice groups and merchandise that one can purchase. Utilizing this model is pretty standard within the larger self-help subculture that NVC is a part of. A few attempts by NVC enthusiasts have been made to go beyond that model, but these attempts pretty much always sputter and die due to a combination of confusion, conflict and lack of interest. I think that by and large the NVC milieu has found a comfortable routine and niche for itself through the model of workshops, retreats, practice groups and merchandise. If you want something transgressive you need to go somewhere else.

4) Grand Poobahs everywhere you go

Most of the time when people think of "Nonviolent Communication" they think of one man: Marshall Rosenberg. I have long been frustrated with that tendency and I have hoped that that would go away with Marshall Rosenberg passing away. That was not the case.

NVC is filled with Grand Poobahs, people who are adored, put up on pedestals and who appear to have very high opinions of themselves. What these people say generally carries a lot of weight within NVC circles, whereas what the people who are not in these positions have to say is generally inconsequential. I am tired of this dynamic.

When I think about it, though, this is probably tied to the training and merchandising model that NVC is wedded to. If you have people whose economic livelihood is dependent upon other people paying money to them for their NVC goods and services, the best way for you to have security and stability in that position is to have people think that you are hot shit and be eager to hand over their money to you for whatever you say or do next. This is a tiered system of trainers, students and administrative support staff for the trainers who may or may not be paid for the work that they do. For someone who is opposed to hierarchy in all its forms I find this to be a profoundly uninteresting set-up to be stuck with.

5) People are people

I have long had the belief that NVC enthusiasts are more likely to display the qualities of empathic listening, abstaining from judging people, and expressing themselves honestly and vulnerably. I no longer believe that this is the case. I now think that NVC people, just like other people, are just as likely to perpetuate blame, shame, judgement and emotional disconnection. I give them kudos for trying to go beyond it, that is, when they actually do try to do so.

However I think that it is unwise to expect anything else when we are all programmed by the same overarching society that we all live in, a society that is based upon blame, shame, judgement and emotional disconnection. This is not to say that I have not met some remarkable people in NVC circles who clearly have displayed these qualities of empathy, non-judgement and personal authenticity, but I have also met such people in spaces outside of the NVC milieu as well. So, again, NVC is not particularly special in this regard.

6) A question of consciousness

I have heard a number of different NVC trainers over the years say that the purpose of NVC practice is to get one's mind into a kind of consciousness of peace and love. These same NVC trainers are also often quick to point out that this kind of consciousness is not only available via NVC and that many other means also exist to achieve this end goal. The NVC trainers say that NVC is their preferred method for reaching that kind of consciousness and that their preference for NVC does not make NVC "better" than the other methods out there.

What comes up for me upon reflecting upon this is: What about the other paths? What if I prefer to use one of those instead? Perhaps over time some other path, or combination of paths, has become more appropriate for me?

Regardless of all of that, my excitement and enthusiasm for "walking the path" these days is shot. It is simply not something that is important to me right now. The principles and intentions behind NVC are still things that are close to my heart, but an NVC practice or affiliation is not.

What now?

I do not feel any kind of anger or hostility towards the various different NVC people out there. I wish those people who continue to be enthusiastic about NVC well and good luck. And to those people who are new to NVC and who are interested in learning more about it: by all means, go for it!

But for me, personally, my time with NVC is up. My enthusiasm for it is gone, my faith in it has evaporated and my interests now lay elsewhere. NVC has had a profound impact and effect on me and my life, but now my life is at a different place from where it was in the past. It does not make sense to me to keep things around simply for the sake of nostalgia and habit. It was great while it lasted, and now it is time for me to move on to other things.

Letting Go of Social Change

So much of anarchism, and radical politics in general, seems to be about envisioning an ideal society, strategizing about how to get there, and charging forth on that mission. For me, I don't really believe in that. I mean, yes, envisioning an ideal society (or two, or three, or three hundred) can be fun, and strategizing about how to get there can be an enjoyable way to pass the time, but in the end I simply do not believe it.

The way that I see it is that while the concept of a utopia can be enchanting, it is essentially just a work of fiction. While I do believe that all kinds of different possibilities exist for how human beings can live together and organize their affairs, I do not believe that it is healthy or wise to think that such-and-such a society is on it's way towards becoming a reality, or that you are the harbinger for a new era.

This is to say, then, I no longer believe in social/political change. Perhaps it is inaccurate to say this, since change of all kinds is a constant in life. Things have changed in the past, things are changing now, and I fully believe that things will change in the future as well. What I don't believe is that things will change in the way that I (or you) want them to. I would love it if that did happen, and it could happen, I just don't put my faith in it.

The reason why I say this is that we live in a world of 7.4 billion human beings, give or take a few million. All of these different people are in their own ways influencing the world to change in some way or another. I can have my influence, and then immediately have it be counter-acted by another person, and then another, and on and on. Or I can even inadvertently counter-act my own influence myself by saying or doing something that goes against the kind of world that I would like to see.

And then there are various non-human influences as well, such as the various forces of nature, always in motion, which in their own way also affect the direction that human societies change over time. It is all simply too much, which leads me to throw my hands up in the air at the prospect of being a "change agent" in the world. This is yet another rat race that is pointless to pursue.

And yet, we are still alive, and for as long as that lasts we still do have the power to make choices and determine what actions to take. It is from this basis that I appreciate the perspective of individualism, which emphasizes this ability of individuals to choose and act on their own, if they so desire. This then leads to the kind of anarchism that I value being a kind of philosophical anarchism in that it does not necessarily imply any particular action being done, while at the same time serving as a set of conceptual tools and frameworks to use to look out at and interpret the world around us. Ideally, I would like for this philosophical anarchism to be a form of quietism, in that it would serve a personally therapeutic purpose, helping people to reconcile themselves with the world that they find themselves in, relieve personal distress, and increase personal clarity.

Through my saying all of this, I am not meaning to imply that I no longer have an interest in big picture projects, utopias and social/political movements of various stripes. I find all of that to be quite interesting indeed, I just do not believe in them, or that the intended results that people want will necessarily come about. I may even choose to participate in some of these myself, for reasons that are similar to how I choose to be employed and work at a job. That is, to meet various needs of mine, none of which being that of high-minded idealism.

That being said, I still do find some sense of solace and direction in the philosophy of Buddhism as well. This is namely through the understanding that everything has a merely apparent existence through various different interacting component parts, that suffering is something that we bring upon ourselves through our own choices of which kind of state of mind to maintain, and that change itself is constant and inevitable. With that in mind, the best way to find happiness in this fleeting existence is to do what you can to contribute to the well-being of others, and to work to have love in your heart.

As is often the case, all of this stuff is easier said than done. But I would rather tread this difficult path than to have my head stuck in the clouds, trapped in the various competing illusions & delusions of competing political utopias, political movements, and an exaggerated sense of our own importance. The kind of anarchism that I embrace is not so much that of "burning it all down", but rather one of seeing through the smoke in a world that is already in flames.