A young soccer teammate of my daughter’s listened to the referee’s pregame lecture forbidding the girls to “push, grab or trip.” When he walked away, she whispered to her teammates, “But that’s my whole game!”
As I prepare for my book promotion campaign, whatever that winds up looking like, I find myself bracing for questions from interviewers irritated in advance by the sanctimonious sound of the title, An Effort to Understand.
“Well, how exactly do you recommend we communicate with these monsters, Mister Smarty?”
What exactly is my soundbite philosophy of civic communication in a society as viciously divided as ours?
I keep thinking of this term I think I invented but haven’t Googled because I want to develop it from the ground and not some academic’s shoulders:
“Rhetorical non-violence.”
Here’s the foundation, best I can lay tongue to it: We all grew up reciting the biggest lie in the world: “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me.” When the truth we all grew up to realize is, “Broken bones can heal, but words can wound me forever.”
Wound everyone forever.
From the book:
“When a word goes into universe it doesn’t go away,” said Jeff Ansell, a communication coach. “It reverberates around the universe forever.”
I can’t prove words stay in the universe forever. But I can’t figure out how they would get out.
When Martin Luther King espoused nonviolence and nonviolent resistance, it was before every ally of his movement had an online following, and the ability to rhetorically wreck one or 10 or thousands of people with a savage ad hominem attack, a gratuitous daily “Flush the Turd” Facebook post or a comparison to “anyone who still supports” the president (whatever “supports” means) to a Nazi or a mesmerized cult member. (And that works both ways. Your friend, The “Libtard.”)
When MLK was alive, the main form of protesting was physical: sit-ins and marches. So the form of resistance he advocated was physical nonviolence, which he surely would still demand.
But now, the most common form of protesting is writing, online. And I believe if MLK was alive today he would agree with me that verbally condemning human beings of any stripe—individual or group—isn’t what peacemakers do. (Find a quote where King does it.)
I’m still getting my mind around this term, “rhetorical nonviolence,” and the demands it places on its adherents and whether I can truly meet those demands myself. But so far I haven’t found rhetorical nonviolence to be one bit inconsistent with King’s philosophy of physical nonviolence … nor any more restricting of positive arguments for a more just society, or robust criticism of the current one.
Words that injure people—even people who utter the most common human lie, “I don’t care what other people think about me”—are you using them?
I’ve used them many times before. Am I, still?
And as angry as you and I might be—with what justification are we committing rhetorical violence, and to what good end?
David, this is a brilliant notion, and one that deserves more attention. My grandmother was one of those people who somehow found a way to see the good in everybody. Of one relative who drank too much and hung around in strip bars, she acknowledged that he was a hard worker.
I have relatives with whom I share little common political ground, but they love their families and want what is best for society (we just happen to disagree on what that is). So I know they’re not monsters.
Of course, we up here in Soviet Canuckistan are feeling very smug right now about the divisions we’re seeing on your side of the fence, but last summer a Canadian citizen drove 2,000 miles to the Prime Minister’s residence, with weapons, in what he told police was an effort to “talk to” the PM. So we’re far from immune.
As much as I love being able to read your blog and generally know what is going on in the heads of smart people I will probably never meet, I also think technology isolates us from our fellow humans, and this is feeding the dehumanization of those who are different. Furthermore, the pandemic is making it harder even to get out and have conversations in our physical neighbourhoods.
Do I have the answers? Of course not. I can only control myself, but when I do have conversations online I try to imagine the person I’m speaking with is actually in the same room as me, and act accordingly.
Rhetorical non-violence. Yeah, I like that.
“Do I have the answers? Of course not. I can only control myself ….”
This is right on, Gerry. Yet, it doesn’t seem enough for lots of people, who think too much of what good their devastating arguments can do—and far too little of what harm.
I like this term David. As kids, when we would say “I hate…” fill in the blank with “my brother”, “my teacher”, “Lima beans”, or anything else, my Mother (not my Father) would say, “We don’t hate, anyone or anything”. We were a Catholic house, but this wasn’t a Catholic thing. She said it reflexively, like she heard it from her mother in the same way. “Take a breath, what is it that you don’t like?” I found myself saying it to my kids when they were young. Nobody says it to me anymore, but perhaps they should.
Right on, John. “Hate” always sounded like an obscenity. “Asshole,” on the other hand …
David, great idea to advance in this digital age. But I have to admit my reading of this serious post was interrupted by my memory of the classic Ralphie line from”A Christmas Story” about his old man’s tantrums. “In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenity that, as far as we know, is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.”