Sex Matters
version 0.8
NVC might be a really useful approach to furthering Adorno and Horkheimer's incomplete opus. Their work might be understood as a recognition of a need to rehabilitate scientific thinking further to the fall of the Nazis in order to avoid the repetition of the horrors of what happened. My sense is that the role of the instrumental thinking that they identify as contributing to the progression of authoritarianism might be summarized as “the rational mind is the PR department for the relational mind”. In other words, there is a common tendency which supports us to justify behaviours, and without examination can lead to justifying any behaviour, even those that are incongruent with humanizing the other. Examining the messages that supported the state in 1930’s Germany to persuade the majority of the population to allow the state to ‘take care’ of their ‘burdensome’ autistic children supports me to understand how it could famed to make sense. And of course, once the means to ‘take care’ of the burdensome children was perfected it was more possible for the definition of burdensome to expand to “undesirables”.
Evidenced by the potential of Trump winning, the global rise in popularism, ever widening social schisms, and violence in the world, it is clearer and clearer to me that the Frankfurt Schools work was never completed. I am curious about what NVC might bring to the table.
When I reach out to some leading women in the NVC community and receive responses that seem less than authentic, I feel distressed and a bit isolated because I deeply need authentic connection and a supportive community to explore these complex ideas. Most especially as I seek to navigate some of the social schisms that appear to be fuelling a rise in popularism, such as racism, transphobia and the urgent need for social justice as the foundation for our NVC practise, I find myself without a holistic NVC community forum that has the capacity to navigate the complex and painful dance between the rational and the relational with the level of authenticity it invites. I am scared, and perhaps even ahem triggered.
I feel hesitant to ask directly for a discussion on cultivating a more inclusive and authentic space within the NVC community because I realize I need support to get to that place. If anyone is willing, I would appreciate support in exploring how we might move forward together.
REF: https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/05/21/edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-worker-roz-adams-wins-tribunal/