Marc Moini

Thanks SirJamesIII, I find your post brings clarity to the discussion. And I agree, and I particularly like the quote you chose because the way I understand it, morality does not allow for mistakes ("You should have known!"), and this makes morality a flawed framework for dealing with reality, because in reality humans are not infallible. The way I see it, if I want to be consistent, I cannot at the same time accept both Austrian economics and morality (any kind).

Just for fun!

The way it seems to me, curiosity is a means to an end, and this end can be learning, or it can be discovery, or growth, etc. These are examples of what I think of as higher order purpose, or ulterior motive. Then the ultimate motive is happiness, for me. Are you satisfied with this explanation? And do you now understand my reply to Stephen?

Hi wdiaz03, thanks for these clarifications, I appreciate them.

And what does it bring you, this curiosity about their experience? That's what I mean by a "higher order purpose", not necessarily control or manipulation or anything else negative. Would you please say?

The protective use of force is indeed mentioned in NVC, but not to protect yourself against sociopaths. Again, Rosenberg specifically warns against thinking that there is something wrong with people, that there is such a person as a "sociopath" or a "psychopath". He says those are your evaluations, your labels that you put on people, and he explains how this prevents you from having empathy for these people.

Aren't you the one claiming that it's impossible to connect with some people because they have no capacity for empathy? How is this not missing the whole point that NVC is making? There's no disclaimer in NVC saying "Warning - Cannot be applied with psychopaths", in fact Rosenberg warns against thinking that there's something wrong with people. Because of this I think the idea that some people have no empathy is the very negation of everything NVC is about! I'm convinced you mean well, however. Just like you are thinking the same about me, I think. I understand I'm not getting through to you on this text-based forum, that you find me robotic and lacking in empathy. Let's talk on video, I'm hoping this will make it easier for us to understand each other.

STer, I think your idea that NVC can be used to manipulate others comes from an incomplete surface understanding of NVC. As I understand it, the core of NVC is about establishing the quality of relationship between people, that leads to everyone involved wanting to meet everyone's needs out of compassion. I'm sad when I think that you don't understand this, that you have this distorted view of NVC. Because I would like you and everyone else to get the same benefits from NVC that it brought me.

I was already calm right after expressing my annoyance, before I started writing the history part of my post. After I finished writing the post, I felt satisfied, which to me doesn't feel the same as relieved. I didn't feel relief, because writing the post had not been stressful or tiring or anything similar that would have caused relief in me when it was over. And writing what I wrote did not bring me relief either, it's not the case that I had these thoughts and feelings in me that were difficult to express and expressing them had brought me relief. Thanks for telling me that your purpose was to gather information about my emotional experience, but I'm still wondering what your higher-order purpose is, for wanting to gather this information. I think it's because I don't understand this ulterior purpose that I try to imagine various possibilities, and the one I've encountered the most often on FDR is the idea that I have some unprocessed emotions about my childhood that are distorting my thinking, and that is why I disagree with Stef. In other words, that "This is not about Stef, it's about you Marc." As I've been told repeatedly here for close to a year now, without anyone having provided me with any evidence for this claim. I am open to other possibilities however. If I understand correctly, you say that you had no hypotheses that prompted you to gather information so you could validate or reject them, you simply wondered how I felt, after noticing that you yourself felt relieved. I'm willing to accept this but I'm a bit confused when I also read in your reply that "I imagine it would be relieving to write it all out." This seems like a hypothesis to me. Is it the case that I misunderstood, you didn't mean that you had no hypotheses to check, and you did want to check whether writing about my history had brought me relief? If so, then I'd appreciate if you explained how this is not thinking that I had/have some trauma that I needed/need relief from. Which as far as I can tell, gets us back into the "This is not about Stef, it's about you Marc" territory, i.e. there is something wrong with me. If there's anything I am omitting, or not understanding, I would appreciate having that explained to me. I hope I've expressed myself clearly and without any animosity towards you Stephen or towards anyone else. As always, I appreciate when someone is willing to have a discussion with me.

You're welcome, Stephen. After typing this I felt calm, and satisfied. It's only now that I feel annoyance, when you ask me this, because I interpret your question as you thinking that there's something wrong with me. I would like some recognition for how this is not the first time I've said these things, it's not even the first time I've written them on FDR, as far as I remember, and I've reflected on all this many times and with help from others too. So asking me how I feel, as if I hadn't thought before about how I feel about all this, seems to me either purposefully demeaning, or naive. Just like Rob_Ilir's question. Remembering your previous questions to me however, I wonder if maybe I'm misinterpreting. Perhaps that's not what you're thinking. In that case I'm curious to know what you are thinking, what your purpose was in asking me this, if you don't mind saying. I want to say also that regardless of everything else, I appreciate this discussion.

I'm annoyed that you didn't answer, because I'm not sure this is the best use of my time, but I'll still write a little about each subject, in case I learn something or it leads to something else that I value. Relationship with my parents. Well my father is no longer here as far as I know, if he is alive then he is between 90 and 93 years old and unable to contact me, and I have no idea how to find him, I've tried everything I could think of short of going to Iran and looking there, which I don't think is very realistic for me to try until the wars in the area stop. Until the letters stopped arriving about 10 years ago, we were writing or talking on the phone only about twice a year, because he couldn't find a way to come here and not lose all of his life savings and end up dependent on his family, which was unacceptable to him given the culture he was raised in. So now it's just my mom. We have a video chat each week, along with my brother and sister and some of my nieces and nephews. A few weeks ago I was hesitating whether to go visit her or not, and I would have gone if I could afford to more easily and if I didn't have so many other things I also want to do with my time. I feel free to talk with her about everything, and I do, and I believe it's the same way for her. She's 22 years older than me and she was raised in a very different manner, with much less attention to her needs than what I was lucky enough to get, so we don't think alike on many things, but we are still able to understand each other, it seems to me. My upbringing. I have a brother who's 1.5 years younger, and a sister who's 1.5 year younger than him. I have happy memories of roller skating with them, and doing various other activities together, like playing with building blocks, with guinea pigs, climbing trees, building furniture forts in the living room. I was afraid of my father's short temper, he would get mad when there was a sudden noise or a similar disturbance and he would yell and hit us if we stayed around when it started. My mom would interpose herself and try to get him to calm down and often she would then get yelled at (not hit though), which scared me as well. But in general my parents were quite affectionate with each other and with us, until our family life stopped when I was 13 (because of the events in Iran) they used to nap on the sofa, each on one side and with us children nestling against one or the other. I stopped doing this when I was around 8 or 9 I think, because by then I preferred to play. On weekend mornings when we were younger us 3 children would also rendez-vous in our parent's bed and climb all over them while they were waking up, with our dad catching us when we jumped from the top of his raised legs and things like that. My dad worked as an architect for the city and when I turned 11 my mom started working part-time as a secretary. They would take us to various restaurants from time to time, and in the summer we took a few trips around the country, mostly to the shore of the caspian see because my dad liked the water. Each weekend we would go to either the desert or the mountains near Tehran, or to a park, and enjoy lots of outdoor activities. Later on my dad bought a large garden 20 miles west of Tehran, and this became our playground for the last 4 years. It was full of fruit trees, and there was also an irrigation basin that we used as a swimming pool, and often many relatives on my dad's side would join us there and prepare traditional food while all the children played together. The only downside for me was the presence of scorpions and tarentulas, which I was really scared of, and I think this may have been a precursor to my OCD. I started going to school after I turned 3, I didn't like the first 2 schools but I was happy with the 3rd one, where I started going when I was 5. It was a bilingual school, French and Farsi, and many of the children had french or belgian, swiss, canadian parents. There were also some from Lebanon and from Zaire, who had escaped the wars there. Few from Vietnam and Cambodia. So I grew up in a multicultural environment which was much more open-minded than a lot of other places, I believe. I had many friends at school, and a few close ones. I used to have top grades, not because my parents wanted me to but because I enjoyed myself at school. There was a lot of pressure on me however from my dad for how I should behave, I was expected to be a role model for my younger siblings. He was the 5th of 7 children if I remember correctly, and my mom is an only child. I think this was a major factor in my unease growing up, I thought I wasn't acceptable as I was and I had to be someone else. When I was 13 my mom decided to bring us children to France because the situation in Iran was becoming too worrying. I didn't like it at all, I missed the sun and the outdoors and our home and my friends and my toys and the life we had, I lost it all and instead got the dreary confined grey of Paris, my new school looked and felt like a prison and some of the children at school even spit on me because I was so far ahead of everyone in school "achievement" that it made them look so bad. I hated school in Paris. My interest turned first to pistol shooting, then to computers, this was the time of the Apple ][ and that world became my world from then on. I had no interest in girls, I was still heartbroken from having been separated from the one I loved when her family left Tehran 6 months before us, and I didn't know where she was or how to find her. That was another instance of quasi-abandonment for me, after being left alone and scared in a hospital room when I was 3, which had made me lose a lot of the trust I had in my parents. So the years from 13 to 18 I spent mostly absorbed playing with computers, living in a 2 bedroom public housing apartment on the 13th floor with my mother and brother and sister, and my maternal grandparents. My grandmother used to be a factory worker and my grandfather worked an office job in a large (for France) nationalized conglomerate, he had lost an arm at 14 working in a printing press (he was an orphan from WWI) and he was quite proud to have managed to get this job. They were modest people quite settled in their ways and this invasion of their home was difficult for them, but they tried to accommodate us as best they could. I liked them and we got along fine, but the result was still oppressive for me. It was most difficult for my mom, who was depressed for years after also losing the life she enjoyed so much back in Iran. My brother dove into studies and coped that way, while my sister rebelled and was miserable for years as well before my mom finally managed to send her for a year in the US, where my sister then found a way to stay and live a happier life than what was awaiting her in Paris. I had just come back from a year in the US myself as an exchange student, after I turned 18, and my sister asked my mom to go too, even though she was only 16. We received no money from my dad, because everything he had was locked down by the new regime in Iran, and since my mom was depressed she had a lot of trouble getting a job, though she did in the end. We lived on very little during these years, all our clothes were second hand and food was where most of the money went. To send me to the US she sold the violin she had from her childhood, which was the only valuable she or her parents had, and to send my sister I don't know how she did it, I'll ask her. My feelings about the divorce. Sadness and regrets, but also relief and calm. I didn't want it, I wanted to fix the problems we had, which I think were mainly from a breakdown in communication. I didn't love my ex-wife, not because I didn't want to but because I couldn't, I was disconnecting from my feelings (because the way I had learned to think caused unbearable pain and I didn't know it was possible to think any other way) from the breakup with that girl I was in love with since when I was 11, whom I finally found again when I was 19, but also because again the way I was thinking simply resulted in pain (as it does for most people, including Stef and you and almost everyone else here, I think). But even though I didn't know how to love my ex-wife I tried to, and if this had been an earlier epoch and I hadn't heard about anarchism or unschooling, we would probably still be together and I would be still disconnected and thus half-happy and half-unconscious (compared to now. I'm not claiming to be fully conscious or fully problem-free, part of the reason I write this is to find out if there's more I can fix in myself). I saw the divorce as a failure, my failure as a parent, and it still breaks my heart to think of how difficult it has been and still very much is, for my children. They're both dealing with it in their own way, and it hasn't been all negative, but I wish I had spared them this. I don't know how I could have though, when their mom and I have such opposite views on how to raise children and in fact how to relate to people in general, and to our own person. Aside from never learning about all the ideas I value now, or thinking that somehow I should have found them 15 years before I did, what is there? It's not like I wasn't looking to learn and understand and improve myself, I have always been very interested in this. After the breakup when I was 20, I thought I had already rebuilt my mind from scratch, but I just didn't know about all the ideas I've found since. Blaming myself for having failed my children led me to depression and to the brink of suicide, but now that I've learned more, Nathaniel Branden's ideas on self-esteem and especially NVC, I look at what happened as regrettable but also as an opportunity for everyone involved to be far happier than we could have been before.

Thanks for telling me this. As I said, I'm learning, and I do make mistakes. I didn't stop and listen to what I was saying from another point of view than mine, I was happy that I had caught myself as I was getting into schooling mode, and I didn't look further, I guess I was a bit tired from the effort of trying to figure out from your words what exactly it was that you were communicating to me. I find this easier to do via voice than text. I'm grateful you are helping me learn by pointing out my mistakes to me, and by also offering an example (this is what I find helps me most) of what you would have found a more satisfactory reply. I'm glad as well that you didn't decide that I am beyond help, because I appreciate having this sort of exchange, it brings me a lot of satisfaction when we can understand each other*. I like "I'm doing X and Y, I would love to hear feedback on this method etc", it doesn't imply any criticism of the other person. What if I had written "I see two main parts to this learning, I would like to say what they are, but I'm afraid of sounding like I'm trying to give advice when you haven't asked for it." would that have worked for you as well? I don't remember what those two things were, that I wanted to say. Maybe it'll come back to me later. Thanks again! *plus the pleasure of learning something new, and the thought that this exchange is contributing to better communication between people and it is bringing us closer to the future I want to live in.

So you're concerned that what I see as a way of helping people get along better and be happier together, might actually make things worse in some situations, because people might hear the message in a different way that it's intended? Sure, I think it's possible, that it's even very likely that people will interpret my words in ways I don't expect. I get this all the time, as we all do I believe. If your concern is rather about the possibility that I mistakenly believe someone is after one thing, when in fact they are after another, like Philip maybe wanted to please Cynthia when I thought he might be wanting to break the ice (and at the time I thought he wanted my opinion on the food), that's quite likely as well, I think. But my interpretation of your post is I think you're pointing out that before asking people if they feel a certain way and presenting my guesses as to what they might be wanting right now that makes them feel that way, I'd be well advised to first check with them if they are willing to talk at this level or not (what you refer to as honest communication), because otherwise my enquiry might produce the opposite result from what I want, and them or me or others or any combination of those involved might end up more dissatisfied. If so I agree, I think it's a good idea to be as sensitive as I know how to. I'm learning to do this, it seems to me that this is something that everyone can learn if they want to. I see two main parts to this learning, but maybe you're not interested in me saying what they are for me, because that might be me schooling you! :-) Thanks for your feedback.

Tadas, that's what I read in the quote as well, that actions are meant to create our desired result. So if I do some actions in order to pace myself, then that is my desired result and those actions thus are rational, not irrational. The fact that I have some problem I don't know how to solve, does not change this, that's a separate thing, right? I'm not sure who you are referring to as society, but I agree that many people place a lot of value on intent, and sometimes that can lead them to omit also evaluating the results of their actions. Personally I try to take both intent and results into account, when judging whether actions meet my needs.

Doesn't anybody else find these ideas interesting? I think they're really key to practicing empathy in a way that actually brings relief to the people I'm talking with, as well as myself when it is me who needs empathy. I'd love to hear what other think of this.

Kaki, sure, ask me anything you want. "why not just start a conversation instead of potentially making everyone feel even more awkward" It seems to me that part of my intent with the reply I would give Philip now is to start a conversation. Only I'm adding an extra step that you don't add, and this is what you find uncomfortable or rather frightening, as far as I can tell. "Why not simply react on what vibes you take in?" I sense that Philip is feeling awkward, wants to make his girlfriend and everyone else feel more at ease. In this same situation your reaction, or wdiaz03's reaction would be to act on that directly, trusting your perception, from empathy, if I understand correctly. So you would reply to Philip "Not bad, thank you Cynthia" and you'd follow with "So Cynthia, how are you liking it so far?" or something along those lines. My reaction back then was different. I was disconnecting from my feelings in order to protect myself from feeling too much of the pain and sadness I would experience otherwise. Growing up I had no idea how to deal with the most difficult of the situations I found myself in, any other way than by shutting down my feelings*. Because of this I was unable to sense what was going on for Philip or anyone else, hell I wasn't aware of what was going on in myself! So it is true that I had almost no empathy, and as a result I was permanently on guard, or almost permanently, the exceptions being the situations where I felt safe enough, like this dinner. I was on guard because I had no way of knowing how people felt, what they were likely to do next, and I had a number of people around me whose moods seemed unpredictable to me, like my dad or some people at school. I could only avoid trouble by staying hyper-vigilant and reacting to whatever small clues I could pick up, in the manner of these people you describe who "read" others without being able to use their natural empathy for this. I can't tell you how sad I am that you see these people as monsters out to get you, when to me they appear as desperate people who haven't had the chance to learn how to cope with life any other way than by crawling into a shell and attacking everyone who comes near, out of fear that people are going to harm them. Please understand, I'm not blaming you in any way, I know you've had it pretty difficult as well, and you also are only trying to protect yourself. I find it so tragic that people who I think could get along and have a wonderful time all together (I'm not saying they should! just that it might be possible, if they knew how, and then perhaps they'd want that), each end up isolated and afraid and putting the blame on others who are mostly doing the same things. It seems to me that what is missing here is knowledge of how to communicate with oneself and others, as well as this big picture idea that everyone is only trying to get by, it's out of ignorance that we end hurting ourselves and others. I know it's really difficult to see it this way when you've been on the receiving end of punition at the hand of people who even said they wanted to hurt you. So anyway, the extra step I take now is that I ask people whether my perception of how they're feeling and what is important to them in the moment, whether this perception is accurate. I do have some of my empathy back, now, and I do rely on it, but I still check with people when I'm not sure enough. My reason for checking is that I've found that assumptions are dangerous, they can make me believe I'm doing something people want me to do when in fact that's not the case. Yeah it sounds a bit awkward at times to have people ask if that's how you feel and whether you're after this or that, or it sounds condescending like I think you don't know what you feel or what you want, especially when it comes from a non-native English speaker like myself. Personally I find this is a small price to pay, compared to the pain that can arise from misinterpretation or misunderstanding or miscommunication. I keep having a lot of those even with my best efforts to avoid them, and it hurts, so I prefer to double-check when I think there is a risk. And I check both ways, I also ask people if what I've understood is what they want me to understand, because I'm no more immune to misunderstanding that anyone else. Does this answer your questions? I'll be glad to talk about this or any other questions you might have, on video via Jitsi or Skype or Google Hangouts. It's important for me to share what I've learned from NVC, I would really like it if more people got the same benefits I am getting from learning these ideas and practices, and one of the main obstacles to this for me here on FDR has been going through text. I find that it is much easier to understand each other on video. *If I could go back knowing what I've learned since, the situations would start the same but I would know what to do to change them to be more satisfying for everyone involved. Even those that I couldn't change, I would see from a different perspective, a truer one in my opinion (more in line with reality), and I wouldn't be affected the way I was before, and so I wouldn't be reduced to disconnecting from my feelings.

I agree, this would also have avoided the unhappiness, the way I see it. Yes, at the time I was making the assumption that he wanted feedback on the food. Today though I think I'm only guessing. That's one thing I believe NVC is helping me become aware of, to not make assumptions but only guesses, and to ask whether my guess is correct or not. Do you think I'm still making assumptions? And yes, if I had thought he was breaking the ice then I agree that bringing up a topic would also have resulted in a more satisfactory outcome for me and probably the others as well. Thanks for your feedback!

Today I remembered an incident from when I was 16 and in sailing camp on the river Thames for a month. Maybe 30 of the other children/young adults had already left and only 5 of us remained the last week. The counselor, Philip, was around 25 as far as I could tell, and I liked him, we got along fine. His girlfriend was visiting and she had prepared dinner for all 7 in the house. As we were eating Philip asked what we thought of the chicken, and I was feeling safe there, I wasn't on guard and watching myself like usual, so I didn't think and simply replied "A bit dry". At that he got really mad at me, saying how I was ungrateful and insensitive, that (I don't recall her name) had taken trouble to prepare dinner for us and all I could do was complain. I was taken aback, quite ashamed of myself for being so self-absorbed. After that I was tense the last few days and I didn't have much fun. If I had known how to talk to myself and others without always shaming or blaming, which would have allowed me to be more connected to myself, and in turn more connected to others (in other words if I had learned how to communicate more effectively*), I might have recognized that Philip's question wasn't about the food, that maybe he was a bit uncomfortable because his girlfriend was new in the group and what he really wanted was for everyone to feel at ease, and he was trying to get a conversation going. Instead of taking his question litterally I might have replied "I rather like it**, and I appreciate that (Cynthia?) prepared it for us. Are you a bit concerned perhaps that everybody's silent, and you would like us all to feel at ease and talk and have a good time together?". I believe this would have made for a much more pleasant dinner for all of us, and a more enjoyable last few days of camp after that. Of course if Philip had learned to express himself more authentically and to take more responsibility for his interpretations, that could have worked too, to make our time together more enjoyable for all. *especially NonViolent Communication, which is where I'm learning about observation vs interpretation/evaluation, and what each person is feeling, and what's important to each person right now, etc. **which was true: the slight dryness was the only problem I could find with it and it was minor for me, I liked everything else, maybe I was just trying to be helpful by giving feedback since that's how I had understood the question to be about.

Wesley, yes, the way I understand it "value is arbitrary" if you think of it this way, without reference to any specific person. However, as I understand it, the point Mises is making is that when making value judgments each person logically can only use themselves as the reference (he explains why above), and then in reference to this person value is no longer arbitrary. If it is valuable to you to mug someone, then it is valuable to you. And that's why he says that it's rational, with this proviso. The way I understand it, Austrian economics is based on this. If someone disagrees with this, I have trouble understanding how they can accept Austrian economics. And yes, I agree that value of actions and morality of actions are completely different categories, because one is supposed to apply to everyone while the other only has meaning when it is individual. That's what I've been trying to get people interested in the implications of, and I keep trying as I think of new ways to present this idea.

Thanks for your feedback, Cheryl. So you disagree with the quote, because your view is that some people do act in an irrational manner, if I understand correctly. And you also disagree because you resent people who advocate non-judgment of others, you see them as either fools or more likely malevolent people who are only trying to manipulate others into becoming their victims, right? I think I understand what Mises said in a different manner than you. I see 3 choices where I think you may be recognizing 2, either moralistic judgment or non-judgment. I think the 3rd choice is the one that Mises is talking about here, the one that is foundational to Austrian economics, where each person judges based on value to them. The way I understand it, he says that all we can really do if we want to be consistent with logic is to use value judgment of both our own actions and the actions of others, value to us. He warns of the futility of trying to decide for another person of the value of something to them. I think passing value judgment allows us to recognize when someone's actions are not bringing us the value we want, and in this manner it allows us to protect ourself the way I think you want people and especially children to be able to protect themselves. When mises writes "it is vain to pass judgment on other people's aims and volitions." I think he means value judgment as to whether other people's aims and volitions are a value to them. I think he's saying that each person passes value judgment on what is a value to themselves. Whereas if I understand correctly you're saying you want to pass moralistic judgment on the actions of others, as well as your own actions, and everyone should do the same. Would you please clarify if I am not understanding what you wrote?

Well if you don't want to talk on video then ask me very specific questions please, because I've already written pages and pages (did you read what I already wrote about my parents and my upbringing and my feelings about the divorce, on the Stef's mother's table thread?) about these things and I don't want to be writing them again and still not answer your questions.

Rob_Ilir, sure, on Skype?

Thomas K, what I understand is that in your view what Rosenberg says is illogical and naive and in fact dangerous. And you fear that if you don't protect yourself against the very real dangers you see around you, you could end up getting seriously hurt. At least these are my guesses. The reason why I didn't reply to your questions is, as I wrote before, that I believe you will not hear them until you no longer see me as your enemy. That's why I offered to talk on video, because I see more a chance of showing this to you that way. But you refused, which is fine with me of course. I see Rosenberg as empathizing very much with victims of wars, including WWII. Just because he also wants to be able to understand Hitler's perspective doesn't change this in any way, for me. As to Rosenberg's writing on spirituality, the way I understand them is that it is an invitation to religious people, not an admission that he himself is religious. I see him as being very careful on how he expresses himself on this subject, in order to find common ground without going against his own values. I think to him spirituality means the same things that it means to Nathaniel Branden, which is very different from any religious belief, the way I understand it.

"Human action is necessarily always rational. The term 'rational action' is therefore pleonastic and must be rejected as such. When applied to the ultimate ends of action, the terms rational and irrational are inappropriate and meaningless. The ultimate end of action is always the satisfaction of some desires of the acting man. Since nobody is in a position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people's aims and volitions. No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented. The critic either tells us what he believes he would aim at if he were in the place of his fellow; or, in dictatorial arrogance blithely disposing of his fellow's will and aspirations, declares what condition of this other man would better suit himself, the critic."~ Ludwig von Mises