I recently read a blog post of Yoram’s entitled ‘Beyond Polarization’ and found myself disagreeing almost entirely with its message, as well as the paradigm it presents—in which honesty and empathy, or authenticity and connection, are presented as being in conflict.
The feelings of disappointment, frustration, and alienation that I experienced upon reading it are ones I’ve increasingly been feeling within the NVC community, especially since October 7th, 2023.
My intention in writing this is simply to share my perspective, since I know that if I am feeling this way there are likely many others who are as well. If you have seen the movie “V for Vendetta,” you can think of this as the written version of the scene where the titular character hijacks the television station, imploring the viewers, “Do you see what I see? Do you feel what I feel?”
An NVC approach?
Yoram’s post explores the topic of how we can connect with people who hold different views from our own. He recounts an exchange with an Israeli woman who expressed the view that Hamas are “terrorists” and that the Israeli Army, by contrast, has only ever acted in a protective capacity.
I’ll let Yoram recount his internal response hearing such outrageous falsehoods:
“My inner voice immediately urged me to correct her and attempt to convince her otherwise based on the information I have and my own human sense of the situation. I’m glad I didn’t respond in that manner. I have countless memories of responding by correcting people, trying to convince them they are wrong, attempting to show them that their information is partial or incorrect. In 99% of those dialogues, it simply did not work out as I had hoped. Instead, I would end up leaving the conversation feeling painfully alone, dissatisfied, and with a lingering sense of ‘fuck you’. Every conversation that ends with a ‘fuck you’ leaves a scar on the spiderweb of human connection.”
On the surface, this might seem like classical NVC. As Marshall used to say, it is important to connect before you correct, empathize before you educate. However, he was also clear to caveat this by saying that empathy without honesty is not real empathy.
Problems with Prioritizing Connection Over Honesty
The tragic framework that Yoram’s message sets up is one of correcting vs. connecting: They are in opposition because any honest expression, either of one’s values or facts that contradict what the other is expressing, tends to be at odds with fostering compassionate connection; providing other evidence or counterarguments risks alienating the other and “leaving a scar on the spiderweb of human connection”.
The danger of believing this is that it makes it virtually impossible to ever be fully real and authentic. You invariably will become a “nice, dead person,” the term Marshall coined to refer to people who sit on their needs for self-assertiveness, honesty and authenticity in order to preserve connection.
Giraffes aren’t nice, after all. They’re real.
The Importance of Realness in NVC
The question for all us then is what does it mean to be fully real—to meet the need for authenticity while not wanting to sacrifice connection needs? And, in the NVC context of the horrifying events since Oct. 7, what does it mean to be a giraffe witnessing a genocide while all of us are being continually gaslit to believe is not happening? Given the domination-oriented cultural and political dynamics, the perpetrators have been casting themselves as victims, operating in full-on denial mode trying to absolve themselves of responsibility for the atrocities they commit.
I like how Marshall describes the importance of realness and the danger of using empathy without also being honest:
If I use Nonviolent Communication to liberate people to be less depressed, to get along better with their family, but not teach them, at the same time, to use their energy to rapidly transform systems in the world, then I am part of the problem. I am essentially calming people down, making them happier to live in the systems as they are, so I am using NVC as a narcotic.
The False Dichotomy of Connection vs. Honesty
However, when there’s disagreement, if we believe that connecting is at odds with meeting needs for clarity and honesty, as well as attaining a shared reality (since we’re all members of the same species, adapted to live on the same wondrous planet), we might agree with what Yoram has noted:
Trying to convince’ tends not to work:
→ Resistance: Imagine the core motivation of the person in front of you is to prove you wrong. How open do you feel now?
→ Aloneness ≠ togetherness: Opinions aren’t about having the right information (which we’ll never fully possess), but about the needs hidden beneath them. If I don’t meet people on the level of the core values their opinions try to serve, they’re likely to defend themselves as they feel profoundly alone in holding something dear and precious to them.
‘Convincing’ is winning a battle but losing the war. By refraining from trying to convince people, I shift my focus to something that is much more important to me than winning a single battle. Beyond even the subject matter; it’s about building a foundation together that can resolve already now millions of future conflicts. It involves creating a safe ground for us to coexist.
So when confronted with someone holding opposing (or even frightening) opinions to mine, I direct my focus towards building a sense of teamwork.
Of course, in order to work (and play) as a team, participants dedicated to giving it their all are most useful. If needs for honesty, clarity, freedom, justice, and peace are being sacrificed, however, due to feelings of fear and hatred as well as thoughts of rightdoing and wrongdoing—as they have been during this genocide (and are with domination systems in general)—then we need to ask some vital questions. If we don’t engage in such inquiry, then false dichotomies will crop up: aloneness vs. togetherness; connection vs. conflict. And another confusing belief might arise—that “opinions aren’t about having the right information (which we’ll never fully have).” As creatures of reason, we can ironically use our rational faculties to forward ideas that contradict the facts of reality!
The Role of Reason and Opinions
In a healthy and wholesome, healed social world—which is what we need to be striving for—being honest wouldn’t imperil connection needs, especially in this very serious, life-or-death matter of an ongoing genocide, because everyone would understand that integration of needs is key, not defending opinions discordant with facts. Rather than believe that reason is either pointless (since people’s opinions aren’t based on reason anyway) or impossible (since we’ll never fully possess the “right information”), we can instead recognize reason as our distinctive faculty that enables us to identify and integrate our experiences.
Reason enables intellectual discussion and debate to be meaningful, because understanding can be achieved. And yet, following from many confused philosophers throughout history, most people have been led to believe that the human mind is not efficacious, that we can’t make sense of reality or meet the need for (logical) clarity to function in the world as adults. So, those in the NVC community might conclude that to be a giraffe is to stick solely to feeling and needs, never venturing into the seemingly scary, polarizing world of thoughts and ideas.
As I’ve been told in numerous NVC courses, “all opinions are jackals.” You can see how this statement doesn’t make sense by simply asking the following question: “Wait, isn’t the statement ‘all opinions are jackals’ also an opinion, and thus also jackal?” Yes, indeed it is, and it’s an example of the fallacy of self-exclusion.
Not all opinions are jackals, of course—only moralistic judgments are. Opinions, or beliefs, may or may not be based on the facts of reality, and it’s up to each reasoning person to objectively discern the facts as well as to define terms coherently. To be fully human, to be fully real, fully authentic, is to think, to use reason, as well as to feel. All animals feel. It is only we humans who think, who reason—and, unfortunately, who rationalize and sacrifice truth, believing that it’s better than facing reality.
The Danger of Sacrificing Thought for Feeling
I am reminded of workshops Marshall gave where he would ask participants what they are feeling, and they instead would respond with a thought, or a feeling wrapped up in a thought (“I feel judged,” “I feel like you…”). Tragically, many in the NVC community appear to now have the same struggle in reverse—so convinced being a “good” giraffe means not having any thoughts whatsoever, that they now share feelings in lieu of revealing what they actually believe.
I encourage you to test this for yourself. Ask your most NVC-fluent friend if they think the Israeli government and its military (with the complicity of the vast majority of its populace) is committing a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. I bet you they will either respond with a feeling (e.g., “I feel heartbroken seeing the bodies of dead children pulled from the rubble in Gaza. It really doesn’t meet my need for peace.”) or they will simply reflect (e.g., “So I’m hearing you are really feeling distraught about all the violence and suffering you are witnessing…”). They will try very hard not to tell you what they think.
How tragic this is! So many of us, who got into NVC to become more connected to our feelings and needs, have seemingly forgotten how to think. Or, at the very least, we have become fearful and reticent to express our thoughts.
I have certainly noticed this in myself. In my quest to develop a softer heart, I instead developed a soft head, frequently accompanied by tight lips around more polarizing and controversial topics. And while I could rationalize my silence as “caring for the connection”, it was really just reflecting my own fears of conflict and aloneness. Of course, this came at a high cost to my need for own self-esteem. I lost admiration for myself as a result of staying silent. I realized what I needed to cultivate was not more “togetherness” or “care for the fabric of connection,” but more courage to speak my conscience even if that meant risking alienating another and losing a connection.
Needs for Honesty and Clarity in the Face of Propaganda
I value people who desire to call things plainly for what they are, because honesty fosters healthy relations with self and others. Isn’t it ironic that so many of us have been taking all these NVC courses and trying so hard to cultivate giraffe consciousness, only to end up becoming the worst kind of jackals—the kind of jackals who can witness a genocide and say nothing.
We all need to be screaming in giraffe at this point.
And yet, unfortunately, Western political culture, and especially Zionist propaganda (promoted by nearly all politicians and press alike, except for a few independent journalists and podcasters), sacrifices our need to make clear sense of things, as noted in Yoram’s final few paragraphs:
Yes, I have opinions (thoughts), yet I hold them very lightly:
→ I have deep concerns about labeling someone as ‘terrorists’ (which is bad) and another as ‘army’ (which is fine). Yet I also feel very scared about things the Hamas is doing and their ideology. While I have some thoughts, feelings, and intuitions, I have absolutely no clue what the right thing to do is.
→ I do extensively read and hear from a wide variety of sources about the decisions made by the Israeli government and army, and it often leaves me feeling sad and scared. I don’t perceive it solely as protection. However, truthfully, the news and information are so partial and biased, and I have little to no clue about what’s true and what the right course of action is. ”So here is what I replied to her statements: “Hamas are not ‘freedom fighters’; they are ‘terrorists’ as defined by all international laws, and dismissing this is dangerous,” and “The Israeli Army has never attacked, only protected.”
→ I said: ‘I guess it deeply worries you that if they are not named as ‘terrorists,’ it creates the space to accept such actions as those on the 7th of October, and generally, to accept anti-Semitism as being okay?’ She cried. She shared that she grew up with a father who spoke Arabic and had very good connections with Palestinians. She grew up with this image of connection between the nations, and the events of the 7th of October shattered her dream of peace. She cried again. She cried about how scary it is to witness certain actions against Jews today and the fear that antisemitism might grow and spread again.
I was touched and felt tons of compassion. I am so happy I did not try to convince her. I so value staying together in it. And for those of you who are thinking now: ‘YES, but you cannot just stay silent and let people continue believing dangerous things!’
I breathe. It’s tempting to revert to thinking that my job is to convince her to change her mind. Then again: I am not God, I sit with my own fears, I mourn (‘Mourning’ is the process of accepting reality as it is—to meet her as she is, rather than focusing on how to change her). And I want to cooperate also with people who think very differently from me. I want to stay together. I take another breath, grateful that I let her be herself and that I am contributing to the very quality of togetherness I want to live and create on this planet.
I felt so much disappointment, alienation, and confusion reading this. To me, this represents the essence of weaponized NVC, and I can’t help but contrast it to Marshall’s perspective:
I want to make a radical shift in my thinking so I am not thinking in ways that take part in the domination systems in the world. So systems train people to think in ways that support the system. And how we are trained to communicate is obviously going to affect our human development. We have been trained to be nice dead people or bullies. When you are in a position of authority you are justified in being a bully. You don’t call yourself a bully—you call yourself an authority. In domination systems authorities are given legal power to bully through the system of deserve, in which punishment, rewards and other forms of coercion get you to do things.
In Yoram’s dialogue, I would say the Israeli woman is in the role of the bully (one who dehumanizes others and plays the victim), whilst Yoram is in the role of a “nice, dead person” calming her down, essentially enabling her distorted belief system that’s causing her distress and making excuses for a genocide (which nothing can excuse, not even Oct. 7). And this kind of silence and pervasive self-doubt (“I have little to no clue what’s true”) is exactly what bullies and domination systems rely on. As Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel, 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The most totalitarian of domination systems require instilling this sense of internal confusion and mental fog. And where “The Party” in 1984 had Newspeak, Israel has Hasbara (“explaining,” i.e., Zionist propaganda).
Serious Limitations of Empathy Without Honesty
Also, something about Yoram’s empathetic reflection leaves me with a feeling of cold unease. It is commonly said within NVC circles that you can’t be responsible if someone takes your empathy as agreement. But, in my mind, that really depends on the kind of empathy you are providing, and whether it is balanced with honesty.
When someone has been so propagandized, as this woman clearly has, to empathize in the way Yoram did only strengthens her mistaken beliefs. Consider that prior to Yoram’s conversation with the Israeli woman, she didn’t have a clearly articulated reason for why Hamas were “terrorists.” She could only make some vague reference to international law, which is extremely ironic considering that the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice have ruled many months ago now that Israel is “plausibly” committing a genocide.
Then Yoram comes along and says “I guess it deeply worries you that if they are not named as ‘terrorists,’ it creates the space to accept such actions as those on the 7th of October, and generally, to accept anti- Semitism as being okay?”
Now, she has a seemingly intellectual defense for her dehumanization of Palestinians and their resistance to Israeli occupation and domination: “We must call Hamas terrorists, since to do otherwise risks normalizing violence against Jews and anti-semitism” (By the way, Hasbara, or Zionist propaganda, assumes a perverse conflation of Israel and Zionism with Judaism.)
To me, this isn’t full empathy. It is more like leading a witness astray from getting in touch with both reality and her own humanity. There are so many falsehoods and distortions that underlie their dialogue that it renders wholesome and honest, empathetic (i.e., universal, or non-ethnocentric) connection impossible. Instead, only a pretense of connection is fostered—a pretense that can be maintained only as long as there is no truthful statement that triggers the Israeli woman’s upset and defensiveness.
As long as you don’t say 2+2=4 and Israel is committing genocide, all is supposedly well in the echo chamber of Hasbara talking points. This is psychologically and existentially dangerous and destructive of everyone who wants a world filled with equality and justice, along with peace, love, happiness.
The Reality of the Situation
How reminiscent of childhood is this gaslighting experience, when so many of us were coerced into sacrificing authenticity and honesty for connection with our parents and caregivers? I am reminded of NVC trainer Kelly Bryson saying that, in his family system, there was “a herd of elephants with naked emperors on their backs”—providing an illusion of togetherness, so long as no one pointed any of them out.
This cone of silence is how families come to resemble cults. And it is how entire societies such as Israel (and the United States empire) remain out of touch with reality and in denial about committing genocide.
To reiterate, the Israeli woman’s response to Yoram’s reflection further reveals her disconnection from reality:
She cried. She shared that she grew up with a father who spoke Arabic and had very good connections with Palestinians. She grew up with this image of connection between the nations, and the events of the 7th of October shattered her dream of peace. She cried again. She cried about how scary it is to witness certain actions against Jews today and the fear that antisemitism might grow and spread again.
I was touched and felt tons of compassion. I am so happy I did not try to convince her. I so value staying together in it.
It’s difficult to fully express how much outrage I felt reading this, because the needs for awareness, clarity, understanding, learning, and trust were sacrificed.
“She grew up with this image of connections between the nations.” What nations is she talking about? Palestine doesn’t have a nation in the sense she means it (Palestinians do, of course, have a shared natality—a shared birth. They are the indigenous people of the land). Israel, on the other hand, is a State that refuses to declare its borders as it has continued to steal more Palestinian land, dispossessing, murdering, and denying the Palestinians their basic rights all the while. This is the nature of Zionism, as stated by its founders.
“the 7th of October shattered her dreams of peace.” What peace is she talking about? Does she believe that the Palestinians in Gaza were just going to lie down and die in their concentration camp, and accept an unending occupation by a foreign military?
While Yoram says he “was touched and felt tons of compassion. I am so happy I did not try to convince her. I so value staying together in it,” I on the other hand feel horrified and perplexed. I do not value “staying together in it,” when the “it” is the delusions of someone whose mentality represents a denier of, or apologist for, genocide, i.e., “violent attacks with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group”—in this case, the deliberate mass murder and maiming of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, inflicting starvation, dehydration, disease, and “ethnic cleansing” upon them (half of which are children)!
The Importance of Speaking One’s Conscience
I imagine that Yoram might respond by asking how I can speak with such certainty? Do I think I’m God? Well, I am someone with eyes to see and a mind that can make sense of what I am seeing. And what I’m seeing is a genocide. That’s what we’ve all been seeing, whether we feel uncomfortable calling it that or not.
I have seen children blown to bits, refugees incinerated, old men waving white flags sniped to death, nuns murdered in their cassocks, children’s charred corpses buried under rubble. I’ve seen mass graves where the IDF—in actuality IOF, Israel Occupation Forces—buried Palestinians alive. I’ve seen an unarmed man say a quick prayer before a hunter-killer drone blew his body to pieces in a flash with a Hellfire missile. I’ve seen IOF soldiers desecrating Palestinian corpses and posing with the lingerie of woman they’ve murdered. I have seen photos from a Telegram channel run by the IOF called “72 virgins – uncensored,” where IOF soldiers shared graphic videos of their murders. I have seen journalists and medics intentionally sniped to death. I have seen Palestinian children who have had limbs amputated without anesthesia because Israelis remove it from what few aid trucks they allow through… And I have seen so, so much more.
This is the world’s first live-streamed and most documented genocide. And while Yoram has a “dream of seeing people valuing care for the human fabric of connection more than the issues at hand,” I have a very different dream.
I dream of seeing people having the courage to speak their conscience—valuing honesty and authenticity as much as connection. I dream of a world in which there’s no cooperation with murderous strategies and mentalities. And for such dreams to become a reality, we need a lot less going along to get along, and a lot more rocking of the boat.
I think of what Mahatma Gandhi said: “A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”
Speaking honestly is not something we do solely with the goal of convincing another (which rarely works, as Yoram correctly noted). If we are truly connected to ourselves, being honest is really something we do to meet our own needs for authenticity and self-esteem (the sum of self-efficacy and self-worth).
Whether what I am writing here convinces Yoram or any of you reading this, it is primarily for my own conscience that I am expressing it.
A difficult truth I’ve come to realize is that it takes very little courage to reflect what someone is feeling, and only a little more to share what we are feeling ourselves. This is so often portrayed in NVC circles as being vulnerable, but in reality it is often a form of hiding.
What does take significant courage is to share your thoughts and innermost convictions knowing that you might lose connections and alienate people who disagree. In short: being real, rather than nice.
To me, this is what it means to be a giraffe witnessing a genocide.
And if you want to see a real-life example of what this vision of being a (street) giraffe looks like, I encourage you to watch this roughly five minute segment of Gabor Maté with his son, Daniel, talking to an Israeli woman (likely of much the same mindset as the woman Yoram spoke to). I hope it provides as much inspiration to you as it has to me, showing how the needs for honesty and empathy can both be met even with the most polarizing of topics. A new world awaits.