Sunday, August 29, 2010

Quote of the Day

From the book Nonviolent Communication

"....Most of us grew up speaking a language that encourages us to label, compare, demand, and pronounce judgments rather than to be aware of what we are feeling and needing. I believe life-alienating communication is rooted in views of human nature that have exerted their influence for several centuries.

These views stress humans' innate evil and deficiency, and a need for education to control our inherently undesirable nature. Such education often leaves us questioning whether there is something wrong with whatever feelings and needs we may be experiencing.

We learn early to cut ourselves off from what's going on within ourselves.

Life-alienating communication both stems from and supports hierarchical or domination societies, where large populations are controlled by a small number of individuals to those individuals, own benefit. It would be in the interest of kings, czars, nobles, and so forth that the masses be educated in a way that renders them slavelike in mentality. The language of wrongness, should, and have to is perfectly suited for this purpose: the more people are trained to think in terms of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness and badness, the more they are being trained to look outside themselves-to outside authorities-for the definition of what constitutes right, wrong, good, and bad. When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings...."

I found this interesting as a historical point of view...it probably ties in with Robin Grille's book "Parenting for a Peaceful World".

Communication is learnt from the people around us. I know I have a lot from my family but also my school days (not all good ;-)). My observations of current school situations strengthen this too as things have not changed much. I feel that Dave and I are becoming more aware as we learn and want to learn to communicate with our children. I do not feel that it is a part of our society yet and there for not common place in our schools to really listen to children or let children express their natural needs.

If you check out Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity on the TED talks You will also see how our culture has led us to distance our selves from our creativity....as becoming an unacceptable thing to have or be.

We are distancing our selves from our selves

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