Name: Nonviolent Communication - What is Violence?
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T11:29:55.000Z
Duration: 26 min 50 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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Hello everyone, and welcome to the next episode of Simon's Book Club, where I'll be discussing some of the most interesting books on psychology, neuroscience, communication, relationships, mindfulness, and consciousness.

Adverbs of degree

I'm really interested in how the brain works, how consciousness works, how we construct a sense of self, and in how we can live embodied with more compassion, connection, and love.

And I hope you're interested in these ideas too.

For my last video, I talked about All About Love by focusing on Bell Hooks' All About Love.

And in that video, I talked about the different ingredients we need for love, as outlined by the author.

And those ingredients are care, affection, trust, commitment, respect, recognition, and open and honest communication.

That last ingredient is my springboard into this video, as I think non-violent communication is the open and honest communication that Hooks is talking about.

If you're having difficulty having open and honest communication, in being open and vulnerable with others, and with being able to connect with people, I really think this book can unlock that for you.

Truly, I could say that since I've really incorporated non-violent communication into my life, I've really felt the quality of my connections with people improve.

I've not gotten into the arguments that I used to get into.

I've not really left any conversations feeling icky or uncomfortable.

Those talks with drunk old white dudes that love conservative political figures don't really hurt me on the inside as they used to.

And that's because, here's the big idea, when we're having difficulty communicating with openness and honesty, I think those are the moments that we're speaking with violence.

That's when we're disconnecting from compassion to the person that we're communicating with, and we're connecting more with our own pains and our struggles for power and control.

Now, this is a pattern that I've noticed.

As soon as I say the words violent communication, I often meet resistance.

I remember speaking with my parents about non-violent communication as soon as I got into it, and they immediately tried to distance themselves from the idea of violence.

Like, oh no, violent? We're not violent. We just express our opinions.

That's not what my parents sound like, by the way.

I don't know how to do a Polish accent, but I do know how to do a Vampire Super Mario.

The point is, I'm sure there are some of you who would probably say the same thing.

Who don't think of your language as violent, especially those of you in the YouTube comments section.

So I think a really important starting point here isn't to talk about what non-violence is, but to understand violence first and foremost.

So the idea of violence for many is the idea of physical violence in all of its forms of abuse.

So for some, violence extends to aggression or shouting and name-calling, but I think violence is a lot more subtle than that.

The spectrum of violence has a lot more gradient to it, and violence is a lot wider than the most extreme and the most visibly damaging forms of violence that people usually acknowledge.

Part of the resistance I face when I talk about violence in communication is a kind of dismissal of anything that doesn't hurt you.

If you can't understand how it's hurting you, then it's not violent. It's not that bad. Right, Mario? It's me.

I'm reminded of some talks I've had with parents who don't view their actions as child abuse, because their parents used to really lay into them.

So a little smack here or there isn't that bad, right? Spare the rod, spoil the child.

But we all know that this isn't true, and the same can be said about violence here.

If you don't think that your violence in language is violent because, well, a fist, that's violent, then I think you're making similar excuses as abusive parents.

So let's try to get to a definition of violence here.

According to the World Health Organization, violence is the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community that either results in or has a high likelihood resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.

That's a long definition, and not one that I think is really useful for everyday understanding.

I think that definition is a good starting point, but it's kind of bloated, and I think that it's lacking something important.

It talks about the forms of violence and some of the results of violence, but not the reasons for exerting the violence to begin with.

Now, I want to boil this definition down to something a lot easier to remember, and here it goes.

Violence is the exertion of power to control and coerce, and as a byproduct, is damage.

In this way, I think it can become more evident how violence shows up in our language.

Now, let's think about it. How often do we speak with others to try to convince them, to try to change their minds, or to try to show them that they're wrong, or to advise them, or anything?

Our violence in language shows up when we're trying to make people change.

And I think that idea is going to face resistance, but don't argue against it right away. Please stay open. Just let this simmer in the background.

I'm going to elaborate on this while we go back to the book here.

I shared my thoughts on violent communication. Now, here's what the book has to say about non-violent communication.

In studying the question of what alienates us from our natural state of compassion, I have identified specific forms of language and communication that I believe contribute to our behaving violently towards each other and ourselves.

I use the term life-alienating communication to refer to these forms of communication.

One kind of life-alienating communication is the use of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness or badness on the part of people who don't act in harmony with our values.

Life-alienating communication, however, traps us in a world of ideas about rightness and wrongness, a world of judgments.

It is a language rich with words that classify and dichotomize people and their actions.

When we speak this language, we judge others and their behavior while preoccupying ourselves with who's good, bad, normal, abnormal, responsible, irresponsible, smart, ignorant, etc.

Rosenberg goes on to say that we have become fluent in a language of criticism, in judgment, evaluations, comparisons, labels, moralizing, blaming, shaming, ideas of who's right and wrong, and especially for those of you who are into Sherlock kind of shows, really into diagnosing others.

We are highly proficient in telling people what's wrong with them and, on the flip side, we are barely comfortable, or not at all comfortable, in expressing what's alive in us, what we are feeling and what needs of ours are unmet.

We are very out of touch with our inner feelings and spend most of our words on telling everyone what's wrong with them and what they ought to do.

Here's what's wrong with your partner and here's what's wrong with your brother. Here's what's wrong with your co-workers, your boss, your neighbors, and your president.

Here's what's wrong with people that have different values, different sexualities, different ethnicities, political leanings, diets, and body sizes.

We talk so much about what's wrong with others, so much, and we could talk about that for hours, while talking about what's inside of us, that's tough.

Our attention is focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels of wrongness, rather than on whether life is being served or not.

In the book, Rosenberg often calls this kind of moralistic judgment, life-alienating language, because it disconnects us from what's alive inside of us.

Even the term, what's alive in us, is something that I think some of you will resist, as we've been kind of trained to ignore it, to not be seen as too emotional, or to dread being thought of as needy, to look as if we've got all of our sh** together, and to often respond to people with,

We're guarded, and we've been taught to not open up to others.

Oftentimes, we're offensive with violent communication, and defensive in hiding our vulnerabilities, feelings, and needs.

Rosenberg says that our tendency to judge people is a tragic expression of our feelings and needs, because whenever we speak with people in judgmental terms, and tell people what's wrong with them, and what they should do, well, most people don't just smile and take it with grace, and follow all of the unsolicited advice that you've offered.

No matter how right we think we are, no matter how spot-on we think our criticism may be, no matter how helpful we think we're being,

I just really haven't encountered anyone gracefully listening to people tell them what they need to change.

Nobody I know ever really likes this sh**, and this is why violent communication is tragic.

If you want someone to change, and you're trying to get them to change through violence, you're not going to get the result that you're hoping for.

Even if you can coerce someone into doing what you want them to do, it comes at the cost of psychological pain and damage, and to me, the ends do not justify the means. It's not worth the price you pay.

Now, this isn't my idea here, it comes from the book as well, though it's said with less passion, and this kind of save-the-world bemoaning tone that I'm adopting for some reason here.

Let's go back to Rosenberg's happy voice.

Two questions help us to see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment to change people's behavior.

The first question is, what do I want this person to do that's different from what he or she is doing?

If we ask only this question, punishment may seem effective because the threat or exercise of punitive force may well influence the person's behavior in ways we want.

However, when the second question is asked, it becomes evident that punishment isn't likely to work.

The second important question is this, what do I want this person's reasons to be for doing what I'm requesting?

We seldom address the latter question, but when we do, we soon realize that punishment and reward interfere with people's ability to do things motivated out of a desire to enrich life for themselves and others.

I believe it's critical to be aware of the importance of people's reasons for behaving as we request.

For example, blaming or punishing would obviously not be effective strategies if we want children to clean their rooms out of either a desire for order or a desire to contribute to the parents' enjoyment of order.

Some children clean their rooms motivated by obedience to authority, because my mom said I had to.

They respond out of avoidance of punishment, fear of feeling guilty if they don't, fear of rejection if they don't.

Nonviolent communication, however, fosters a level of moral development based on autonomy and interdependence, whereby we acknowledge responsibility for our own actions and our awareness that our own well-being and that of others are one and the same.

Do we really want people's reasons for doing something to be because of fear of punishment, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of your disappointment and anger and unkindness?

I don't think we want fear of any sort to be people's motivating factor.

I believe we'd all be happier if people's motivation was the inherent joy in their hearts because they'd love to contribute to your well-being, to your society's well-being, rather than to avoid your violence.

Violence in communication is us trying to use force and power to control others.

And truly, that's not the kind of world we want.

We can't keep trying to shape the world through coercion, through disciplinary actions and punishment and exile and fear and deprivation.

We can't keep trying to rule with an iron fist.

We don't like dictators and governments, yet we keep dictating how others should act in our circles.

There are many movements now that speak up against violence.

You might have heard the phrase, speak truth to power.

So I think we can speak about the power dynamics at play when we use violent language against each other, and to speak to how we distance ourselves from love, connection and community when we do so.

And if you're using violence against violence, what results do we expect?

We want to shape the world so that the old power structures don't keep us suffering and underprivileged, that don't marginalize everyone except for old rich men and their interests.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Nonviolent Communication - What is Violence?

deprivation

engage

empathy

practice