Marc Moini

Thanks, TDB! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

OK, I'll try. As I understand it from NVC, in order to survive both need air and water and food and rest, and in order to be healthy they also both need movement/exercise and shelter. The rest of the needs in the category of physical well-being, in order to have a satisfying life as a human being, include safety and touch (touching someone else, being touched by someone else) and sexual expression (it may be possible to do without, but we're talking about what is needed for a fully satisfying life). Then both of these people have other needs that also must be met, again from my understanding of NVC, if they are to thrive rather than merely survive (I think the purpose of NVC is to help us live a life that is fully satisfying). These other needs can be classified in the following 6 categories, although other categorizations are possible. The goal of this list is not 100% correctness but to help us be aware that we have "needs" or "longings" or "motivational factors", however you prefer to call them, that give rise in us to pleasant or unpleasant feelings as a mechanism for keeping us doing the things that have brought us this far in evolution. Connection needs: acceptance, appreciation, cooperation, communication, community, companionship, compassion, consideration, consistency, empathy, intimacy, love, mutuality, nurturing, respect/self-respect, safety, security, stability, support, to see and be seen, to understand and be understood, trust, warmth (and more, I've omitted some) Honesty needs: authenticity, integrity, presence Play needs: joy, humor Peace needs: beauty, communion, ease, equality, harmony, inspiration, order Meaning needs: awareness, celebration of life, challenge, clarity, competence, consciousness, contribution, creativity, discovery, efficacy, effectiveness, growth, hope, learning, mourning, participation, purpose, self-expression, stimulation, to matter, understanding Autonomy needs: choice, freedom, independence, space, spontaneity I'm loosely quoting here from Gregg Kendrick, a Certified Trainer: 'In NVC, we try to identify the "universal human needs" that are common to all human beings. We distinguish these fundamental needs from more specific (they include one or more reference to a Person, Location, Action, Time, Object) wants and desires which reflect strategies to fulfill these needs.' The distinction of "needs" vs. "strategies" is crucial in NVC, because when we realize which needs we are trying to meet by following a given strategy, it opens the possibility to still meet the same need but with another strategy that might also better meet our other needs or the needs of other people, thus making it easier to find strategies that result in everybody's needs getting met, i.e. win-win. Does this help make it clearer to you how in NVC we see all human beings as having the same needs? For me it took over 2 years to understand what "needs" are, so I know it can be difficult.

Thomas K, You're quite angry with me from what I can tell, maybe because you find what I have been writing here makes no sense to you, and is an example of what you think is causing violence and unhappiness in the world. I'll be glad to talk with you on video if you want, to maybe understand each other better, because I doubt anything I write here will reach you. I'm marc_moini on Skype. I'll try this one thing though: WHY I PERSONALLY THINK THAT NVC IS BULLCRAP "All human beings share the same needs : NO, some people want to be rich, some want to be famous, some want to have a family, some want to travel the world for their entire life. Given the diverse set of needs, this foundational theory is completely wrong." It seems to me you are not aware that "needs" here does not have the common meaning it has in English, just like when economists say "land" they give this word a different meaning than the common one. In NVC, wanting to be rich or famous or to have a family or travel the world, these are not "needs", they might be strategies for meeting needs. It's a fundamental concept which I had a lot of trouble understanding. If you are interested enough to take the time to learn the meaning of "needs" in NVC, I think you'll understand what you quoted in a different manner. In addition to I hope, benefit in many other ways.

I'm not sure I can explain more than I've already done, because to me this is not an intellectual exercise. Maybe if you find a 3 to 5 year old who trusts you and is willing to try this game with you, and you ask them to imagine they're scared or they have pain, and then you mirror this to them and you ask them to tell you how they feel when you do that? I can't think of anything else right now, it's pretty late for me, sorry. If I think of something else tomorrow I'll add it here. Ok, I just thought of something else that might clarify this for you: to me empathy is not the same as mirroring, and I believe what is effective is empathy, not mere mirroring of either body language or speech. Here is an explanation of the definition of empathy I use: and a demonstration:

This confuses me a bit. The emotions are pain and sorrow, which would scare them to validate and mirror them, but validating and mirroring them wouldn't scare them? Ah yes, I didn't express myself clearly enough, sorry. I mean reflecting only the pain and frustration and maybe fear, without also reflecting the yearning for relief, would have scared her/him more, in my opinion.

Wesley, I did not slow down the mother, there was no change to the delay in getting to the car, from my interaction. I don't think it would have scared the child to have their emotions validated. In the moment I felt that the child was suffering and wanted relief, that's why I responded in a way which I believe validated both. And I think that all feelings and emotions are useful and essential, that's why we have them. They provide us with the motivation to do something, otherwise we would just sit there and die. Or am I missing the point of your question?

Wesley, because in my evaluation this wouldn't have been as compassionate, I expect it would have scared the child to show her/him a pained and sorrowful expression. As I understand them young children are looking for relief first and foremost, that's why I felt a pained smile or an expression of pain quickly getting mixed with a concerned smile ("Aw, you're upset? Let me help, what do you want?") would be more appropriate, in order to both convey understanding for the pain and for the desire to be free of it.

I actually did this with the one nearest to me, looked into his/her eyes with a pained smile. The other one was not visible, with a towel hanging in front of him/her from the overhang of the seat. I guess I forgot to write this, it's so obvious to me that I would do that if I have an occasion to. I understand how because I did not write this, you thought I might not have done so. Thanks for suggesting this nonverbal communication, it might be useful to future parents reading this. You know, I did do some things with my children that I regret, but there is also the very large majority of my actions towards them that I am proud of. Like spending probably hundreds and hundreds of hours with each of them doing just this, mirroring their expressions and also their movements, to communicate with them when they were little. We moved out of Paris for the countryside in large part because it was important to me that my children breathe clean air and that they see trees and birds and hear the sound of the breeze in the trees and the sound of the birds singing, instead of the dreary grayness of a big city and the roar of cars and trucks. From before they were born I read all the best parenting books I could find (this was pre-2000 so there wasn't much on the net), then I went to therapy when the first problems with my ex-wife surfaced (unfortunately with a charlatan, all I could find around here in the countryside), and also I was lucky enough to be able to save enough money that I did not need to work for their first few years, I have been a stay at home dad ever since. If you saw my children today, you would see that they are healthy and balanced and kind and responsible, as well as quite athletic and strong, they are not afraid of much yet they do take measured risks, and they're more independent (as much as their mom lets them, I'm still working on that. But don't get the wrong idea about her, she has also played a large part I find positive, in raising them) and interested in more things than most of their friends, and have lots of friends they enjoy having various activities with, etc. As to your second suggestion, I had very little time with the mother, I did not get the impression that she would have been receptive to any advice I might have wanted to give her, given the state of stress she was in. Maybe I'll be able to sneak in some advice in the future in a situation like this, I don't know. I think my actions were louder than words, and in my evaluation I did quite well, all considered. But thanks for your suggestion, I appreciate that you're feeling compassion for the children I may interact with in the future.

I expressed more compassion to the mother. I have trouble imagining how I could have done the reverse, the twins are 6 months old. I guess I could have asked the mother permission for taking them in my arms one after the other and expressed love and care to them that way, but I doubt she would have let me. I don't understand the purpose of your question. What would you have preferred me to do, or ideally, what would you have done?

Hi Stephen, You know, I would have liked to do more for these children, I would have liked to put down my gear and push the pram (or wait with it until the father arrived) so the mother could take a baby in each arm and maybe walk to her car that way, because I believe this would have been more pleasant for them. Or maybe find some other way to help them more. I guess I understand how you too would have liked me to do more for the children in this situation, and how you see my attempt to help the children through helping the mom as being focused primarily on her. She was not my focus, I turned back because I heard the cries of the two babies and I wanted to help them. It just so happens that I didn't think of a better way to achieve this than through also helping out the mom. It sounds like I didn't have it as bad as you did, with being forced to bend backwards to give compassion to your parents. If I had been there when you were a child knowing what I know now, I would have talked with you and I would have given you as much attention and respect and care as I could have, and I would have done the same with your parents, so that they hopefully would have been able to be there for you from then on. I'm glad that you are doing this for yourself now, from what I can tell. And I'm touched by what you write about how you understand where your parents' compassion went, which then left them with none for you, because to me this shows that you can see what they did to you from a point of view different from your own and this in turns tells me that you are free from at least part of the hurt you have been carrying since childhood, and moving swiftly on your way towards full emotional health. As to the table thread, or in general, I don't think I'm focusing more on the parent and less on the child. I didn't write Stef's mother to offer her a suggestion, I wrote to Stef with a suggestion because I want to help *Stef*. I get the impression he's unhappy with his relationship or however he wants to call this that he has or doesn't have with his mother, and I have been trying for almost a year now to get across to him that if he wanted to take a closer look at NVC I believe it can help him take steps that will make him happier. It has not always been easy for me to keep to this goal, in the face of the responses I have received here, but I accept these responses as "people doing the best they can with what they know now". As far as I can tell, I have the same standard for parents as I have for children. And I do recognize that children need more help, I guess the main difference with the stance of many people here is that I don't consider most parents as more "adult" and more conscious and less wounded that most children, even though I see parents in general as being equipped with more of what they need to cope simply because their bodies are more developed and in this culture they have less obstacles preventing them from getting help than children in general have. Thanks for your suggestion to focus more on the children. If you have any suggestions for concrete actions I could take, how I could do better next time I'm in a similar situation, I'll be glad to hear them. I'd like to ask everyone reading to please also write their suggestions for things I could have done which would have helped these twins more, so that we will all be better prepared for helping children in this sort of situation in the future. How does that sound to you?

Last week as I was walking back from the beach to the parking lot there was the sound of babies crying behind me. It was coming from two twins in a pram that their mother was pushing in the hot summer sun. I had passed them earlier as the parents were fastening towels to the top of the seats (one behind the other) to make some shade for the little ones. After a couple minutes of this I turned around and walked back, thinking I'd try to do something to help them feel better. The dad had stayed behind with the 3 year old who I guess wanted to walk, while the mom was hurrying to get back to the car and probably the A/C. The twins were making it known very loudly that they were unhappy, and their mother looked quite unhappy too, apparently not knowing how to provide them with relief other than by rushing to get back. She looked surprised and a bit apprehensive that I accosted her, even though I was smiling I guess I did look a bit weird, bald guy shirtless with jeans and heavy boots, a large backpack and a surfboard, but she relaxed as she understood my concern for her family and we started chatting about babies and how difficult it is sometimes to figure out exactly what it is that they need, especially when they're 6 months old and there's two of them and it's so hot out here, and maybe it was a mistake to bring them to the beach but their brother really wanted to see the ocean and he had enjoyed it very much, and it looked like they were teething maybe, and how I remember I was stressed out when my children were that age and they cried like that, especially in the evening, etc. The chit-chat turned out win-win: the babies, probably intrigued by my voice that they hadn't heard before and maybe also indirectly soothed by their mother's more relaxed voice, were now merely sobbing softly, their mom was less stressed out, and I was happy to see that I was being helpful. Not wanting to impose my presence on them too long and maybe also provoke the father into worrying about what was happening in front, I said goodbye and walked off after maybe 3 minutes, and unfortunately the crying picked up almost immediately. Both parts of the family passed me by as I was gearing up to leave and we exchanged smiles and nods, then a bit later I passed them by their car and they recognized me with the motorcycle and waved and smiled How differently this would have gone 2 or 3 years ago, before I had learned some NVC, when I might have approached the mom with a scowl and an aggressive tone and questionned her disapprovingly for how she was mistreating these two helpless babies, with thoughts like "you heartless, irresponsible idiot!" in my head...

Lens, Thanks again for explaining how you are perceiving what I wrote, and for the help you are offering. I understand better why people here get so upset with me, if they believe, like you seem to be believing, that I am harming my children. This is not the case anymore, I am not harming them, neither through not having made sense of my own childhood issues as I did do before 2010, nor in any other way. I repeat, I am not harming my children, not in any way that I am aware of, not in any way that they tell me, not in any way that my friends tell me. I don't know why I have so much trouble making this clear here. It's been 3 years now that I have been having the same sort of relationship with both of them that I have with my friends, with just as much mutual respect and care and understanding. I don't impose any restrictions on them, no sleep time, nothing, the thought doesn't even cross my mind just like it wouldn't occur to me to try to limit my friends' freedom in any way. So I appreciate the fact that you are trying to help me, but I would also appreciate if you explained why you seem to think I need this help, why don't believe me when I say that I'm fine now because my problems are in the past. Maybe there are things I'm not seeing, but in that case please tell me on what evidence you are basing your assertions that I am harming my children, and that I fear my parents, and that I don't have empathy, and that I haven't felt deeply the pain from the hurt I went through in early life, and that I am perpetuating the cycle of abuse. I don't even have these compulsions anymore, two weeks ago they were already waning and now they're gone. My Skype handle is marc_moini, if you want to talk with me on video to get a better sense of whether I still suffer from childhood wounds or whether I am now healthy. Thanks, Marc

Antony and Stephen, thanks for your comments as well, I appreciate them!

Hi Lens, Thanks for explaining, I understand better now, and I am grateful for your help and advice. You would like me to ask myself which needs are behind the actions I feel compelled to take, not just the surface needs but the deep ones, to use feelings to get in touch with these instead of, or maybe in addition to, trying to use thinking. Because to you this is what makes it possible to reach the inner child who is still suffering from pain from not getting essential needs met in the past, and because without feeling this pain it is not possible to heal. And that for many people, because of the culture we grew up in, this pain comes from not having received the love we needed in our first years, not having been seen for who we truly are because acknowledging us as real people was too difficult for our caregivers due to their own confusion and unprocessed pain from their own childhood, I guess. I like the image you give of the way out being through the pain or through the fear, rather than in any kind of avoidance of it. I hadn't thought of it this way but it matches well with my own experience. For me one of the main obstacles was to recognize that I had this fear, I was so afraid of it that I wouldn't admit to myself that I felt fear. Because until discovering that there is another way of thinking about myself and my actions than me being either good or bad, either acceptable and worthy to live or unacceptable and not deserving to stay alive, I was trapped in a mental prison of right and wrong from which I saw no way to escape. That's why I am so eager to let others know what the benefits of NVC could be for them (actual NVC, not the strawman image it seems to me people have of it here), it's because I know the relief I received and I would like more people to receive similar relief, when I see them suffering as I was. I regret that I wasn't experienced enough to succeed at this over the past year here. Merci, bonne chance à toi aussi! Marc Oh, and again I forgot to say that I don't advocate letting go of reality and falling into a mystic view of existence where any which whim is as valid as any other. On the contrary, as I see it now, looking at life using a right/wrong perspective is the main component of our culture, and I am sad that Stef and others here who are so keen on discarding illusions and getting a firm grasp of reality apparently do not realize that they are still using this perspective which to me is so much part of our culture and inaccurate and really the root of all our problems. I wish I could explain better how I see thinking in terms of right/wrong "more clearly" irrelevant, because it is still thinking in the way we've been taught to see and think.

Hi Hannibal, as you've been told I think, one reason some people are wary of what I say is because they perceive me as insincere. At least that's what I've been able to piece together. And one reason they perceive me as insincere is I guess that much of what I wrote on previous threads doesn't make sense to them. Thanks for your efforts towards restoring understanding and civility, I appreciate it. Salut Rob Thanks! As I wrote earlier elsewhere, I'll call in to the show if I'm left with no other alternatives to communicate with Stef, but I prefer to talk without the time pressure for Stef of being on the show. I have contacted him about having a chat, I'll ask again, I hope we can do this sometime in the next week or two. (edit) And when I contacted Stef I said I'm fine with having the talk made public, and I'm fine if Stef wants to have others on the call as well. I'll be glad to talk live on a Google public hangout, for example, where our audio and video gets uploaded to YouTube live.

Hi Lens, thanks for your comment and questions and advice, just like for Thomas K I am grateful for your help! Maybe I wasn't clear enough, these compulsions are now mostly in the past for me. And since my original post 2 weeks ago I've made still more progress, for example right now my son is using a mouse he brought from his mom's and he's eating lunch at the same time, and I don't feel any anxiety or other unpleasant feeling whereas before I would have been compelled to clean the mouse and to ask him to wash his hands after taking it out of his backpack. Two weeks ago I was able to resist the compulsion but I felt uneasy. I don't remember feeling any pain associated with these compulsions, it was anxiety. Thanks for bringing up the possibility that these compulsions have their root in my childhood, I hadn't thought about that because they only appeared after I turned 35. I did live in fear much of the time as a child, however it wasn't specifically about cleanliness, it was about doing anything that my dad would get angry over, which included making what he would consider loud noises at the wrong times, or pretty much any other action or inaction when he was already irritated. I don't recall being beaten or even feeling unusual fear in any situation involving being clean, though as you point out it may well have happened. I'm not aware of any effects of childhood traumas on my behavior today, aside from remnants of these compulsions, at least nothing that bothers me. If you (or anyone) see anything I'm missing, please let me know! I understand you have a low opinion of NVC, for me however it has proved immensely helpful, along with the work of Nathaniel Branden. I am much more empathetic towards myself and others now, as a result of learning NVC over the past 3 years, and I am very satisfied with what it has brought me and is continuing to bring me. Please let me know if you would like me to explain why I think Alice Miller was mistaken on her evaluation of NVC. Again, thanks!

Thanks for your advice, Thomas K, I'm grateful that you want to help. Would you please expand on what you wrote? I don't see how NVC is my substitute for washing/cleaning, no. What I see is that I don't interfere with my children's action anymore, they're free to bring whatever they want into the house and I don't freak out over it anymore. Also I have been apologizing to them for my past mistakes for over 3 years now, and I regularly ask them if there is anything they're unhappy about in my actions, anything that would make their lives easier and/or more enjoyable that they would like me to do (whether they think I can or cannot do what they would like me to do). (edit) Oh and also, NVC has nothing to do with buddhism. Though some people who are into mysticism also like NVC, NVC itself as presented by Marshall Rosenberg has none of that, as far as I can tell.

A friend pointed me to this article: http://www.noogenesis.com/nvc/ePrime_NVC.html Here are excerpts below. I think the ideas discussed in this article make a strong case for replacing moralistic judgment with more accurate statements. Please comment if you find any mistakes in this (I am particularly interested in comments about the main point). The movie was good. He is weird. I am ugly. You are a genius! John is depressed. John is happy Each sentence appears to contain a judgment and uses a form of the verb "to be" to connect a noun subject with a noun or adjective predicate. Can the presence of the verb form "to be" in a sentence serve as a cue for judgmental statements? If so, then we may have a simple way of detecting evaluative statements in our speech and writing enabling us to take corrective action to convert them to observations. Alfred Korzybski, the founder of the field of general semantics, asserted that these particular uses of the verb "to be," promoted "demonological thinking," inaccurate perceptions of the world ultimately leading to more conflict. In 1933, in his book "Science and Sanity, he suggested we could reduce this kind of thinking if we could speak or write without using any form of the verb "to be." In 1949, his graduate student D. David Bourland, Jr., took on the challenge and successfully trained himself to speak and write without using any form of the verb "to be." In 1965, he named this subset of the English language "E-Prime," short for English Prime. ... Bourland, in his 1989 article, "To Be Or Not To Be: E-Prime as a Tool for Critical Thinking," explains E-Prime: "(1) Noun Phrase-1 + TO BE + Noun Phrase-2 (Identity) (2) Noun Phrase-1 + TO BE + Adjective Phrase-1 (Predication) where TO BE represents an appropriately inflected form of the verb "to be." Critical thinkers have argued against using statements having the structure of (1) because they immediately produce high order abstractions that lead the user to premature judgments. Consider the following example: (3) John is a farmer. The immediate consequence of such an identification at the very least brings about unjustified abbreviation. For example, consider the following three sentences about "John": (4) John farms three acres. (5) John owns and operates a 2,000-acre farm. (6) John receives $20,000 a year from the government for not growing anything on his farm. We could even carry this illustration into a different dimension: (7) John, after living in the city all his life, has just bought a farm. (8) John grew up on a farm and has farmed there for 61 years. Despite the fact that (4) through (8) make extremely different statements about "John," most English-speaking people feel comfortable making the jump from any one of (4) through (8) to (3). Critical thinkers trained in general semantics hold that (3) does not represent a valid higher order abstraction which could come from such observations as (4) through (8), but rather a possibly incorrect and certainly inadequate abbreviation of the larger picture." ...

A few days ago I encountered Focusing, first by looking at an acquaintance's website (bigempathy.com) where he mentions that he also uses that in addition to NVC, then by hearing Carl Rogers mention it in this video: Carl Rogers on empathy (part 1) So I looked at Eugene Gendlin's Focusing, here is an introduction to that: What I found interesting is how Rogers explains that empathy is not best achieved by reflecting a person's words, but by guessing the feelings going on in them of which they may not even be fully aware themselves, and checking with them to find out if these guesses are accurate. This made new sense to me after hearing Gendlin explain that when we ask someone if they're sad, there is something they go inside to check this against, and then they may reply "no, not really sad…". Then to the question "are you angry then?" they may say "that's not it either, I'm not angry…", and then to "are you disappointed perhaps?" they may reply "Yes, yes that's it! I'm disappointed because" and then go on to explain. So this internal flow is what I understand Gendlin is talking about getting more in touch with, both in ourselves and others, and I find this idea very interesting. I think it is very valuable to guess needs as well, but I'm just so excited about this idea of listening for feelings behinds words, feelings that are not fully expressed because maybe the other person isn't fully aware of the feelings, versus listening for them in the words as if the person is actually experiencing the feelings now, which is how I understood it before, that for the moment I'm not thinking of guessing needs at all and people still tell me that they benefit from my feedback. I was having so much difficulty identifying people's feelings and I thought it was because I wasn't sensing them well enough, whereas now it seems that at least part of the difficulty in what I was trying to do was that sometimes the person themselves wasn't fully aware of the feelings (in the moment) and so they weren't fully expressed in the words for me to hear!

Soon after my daughter was born, and then more after her brother came along, I started becoming very concerned with keeping everything they could possibly touch, very clean. Especially after 9/11 and all the news stories about weaponized viruses escaping from military labs, I was scared that maybe someone arriving on a plane from the other side of the planet would transfer a new illness to someone who would then travel to the nearby town and then when we went to the store the children would touch something this person had coughed on and they'd put their hands in their mouth and become ill and die. I knew this was extremely unlikely but my reasoning was, hey it could happen, and better make sure to keep their hands clean, it was a small cost relative to having them die. The problem was that this small relative cost vs death grew into a large one relative to having ease in everyday life. I would wash every last thing which was brought into the house from someplace where there was people (nature was fine, i.e. the garden, the beach and the forest, because there was nobody there so no killer man-made disease), and either I'd insist that people change clothes when coming in (family) or I would meticulously clean afterwards and during this time the children were forbidden from touching anything in the room where the visitors had been. This eventually became the second thing that got my ex-wife very frustrated, because it became very difficult to have her friends or the children's friends over (the main disagreement we had was about sending them to school, and I wasn't easy to discuss with because at the time I was full-on FDR righteous). This went on for years, and no matter how hard I tried to relax and stop myself from cleaning everything, I couldn't do it. It's only recently, as I'm getting more proficient with NVC and as something that a friend helped me understand has been sinking in, that this compulsion has been going away. I understood that it was my need for safety that was driving me to act that way, because if anything happened to my children that I could possibly have prevented by being more careful, then others would disapprove of me, and for me not having the approval of people around me meant my safety was at risk. I guess that's a strategy I came to depend on in childhood, growing up in a family where I could get attacked for doing things that my dad interpreted as attacks, from his own childhood. Also if I failed my children that way, I wouldn't be able to respect myself at all, because I would be such a failure as a parent. So understanding that it was my need for safety and for self-respect that was at risk here, because of the reasoning I was using without having consciously thought about it, helped me realize that what I was doing made perfect sense, given the premises I had. Also, learning the NVC perspective has allowed me no longer see people as enemies but instead understand that just like me they're trying to get similar needs met, often with as convoluted strategies as my own, and the result is that I no longer fear that crazy military scientists will create killer diseases, and even if they do I can now think more clearly about this without getting overwhelmed by fear and I recognize that I can't possibly protect my children from every disaster I can imagine. So the result of learning all this is that now I don't get so stressed about cleaning everything, for example I feel fine now when my son takes his headphones out of his school backpack and plugs them in the computer, I don't jump in and wipe them with alcohol anymore. I'm still careful about washing hands before preparing food and eating, I didn't go completely the opposite way, and even though it's a gradual process for me I'm confident that soon I won't be bothered by this problem anymore. Thanks for your time, I hope this story may have some value to others.

BayNVC's Safer Communities Project

I'm now watching the part that starts at 56 minutes, and it's really powerful. Thanks Antony! There were a few thing I found interesting before too, but I see very important consequences in this idea of hidden rules. I remember there's other interesting accounts of violent people, sorry people who have committed violent acts, changing after receiving empathy, in the interview of Jorge Rubio by Stephanie Bachman Mattei on this page: http://nvctraining.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=latest&layout=latest&Itemid=1342

Hm, I see how my last response to you was not favorable to continuing communication, which is what I would like. At the same time, I don't know how to get to a more satisfactory communication on this text forum. Anybody has any ideas?

This is not convincing to me at all. Sure, these things happen and there is a possibility that they could have the effect of reducing someone's capacity for empathy enough that it would be noticeable, but seriously STer, isn't it just as likely that instead of impairing the capacity for empathy they would impair someone's sight, or speech, or comprehension, or memory, or sense of touch, or any number of other brain functions instead? Are you familiar with Oliver Sacks work, where he describes the weird effects that strokes and various accidents cause sometimes? What percentage of the population is affected by all of these, 0.01% or less? And empathy impairment cases are then only a fraction of that fraction, isn't it? Are you going to count senile people next to pump up the number? If you're worried that such a small number of people are going to ruin everybody's life, this doesn't seem like a realistic fear to me. I'm not saying you don't have that fear, from what I understand of what you've written so far I think you do, and I feel for you. Not everyone goes and writes the page on "the science of evil" you have on your site, this to me shows that this is an important part of your mental landscape, and if I believed the world to be populated by so many people determined to get me, I'd be scared to death too. Your argument about mutations falls for the same reason, as far as I can tell. Because if mutations caused a significant number of empathy-impaired people, then they would also cause a similar proportion of other brain (not rest-of-body) impairments that affect the capacity for speech or comprehension or memory or coordination or music appreciation, etc., and as far as I know these are extremely rare. "many believe traits like those seen in psychopathy actually have an evolutionary role" is a bit vague, I find. If you have scientific evidence for this I'm open to it. As far as I know this would qualify as a distinction similar to Cro-Magnon vs Neanderthal, and look at what happened there, one caused the disappearance of the other. So if these non-empathic monsters existed as a distinct population, it seems logical to me to deduce that they would either have disappeared long ago too, or that we wouldn't be here anymore. Plus, this argument of yours, which to me is the only one with any potential for being shown valid, does not take into account the counter arguments I've given you on the table thread, to which you haven't replied yet, nor what LovePrevails is saying (from what I understand) based on the work of James Gilligan, and others such as Marshall Rosenberg. Half in joking, if you called in to the sunday show with this worldview of yours, and if Stef didn't agree with you in large part (from what I can tell), can you venture a guess for what his first question to you would be? Personally, and I say this because believe it or not I care about you, I think a more productive way for you of getting your need for safety (my guess) met so that you can carry on with your life and be happier is to talk with people who will give you the empathy I believe you need in order to free yourself from this worry.

The conversation with STer has continued partly on the table thread http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/34179-fdr-2221-stefs-mothers-table/page-20 and partly on Rehabilitating Very Violent People (not always a lost cause) It looks like Joseito is no longer a member. José, I'll still be glad to talk with you if you want, I have the impression we were getting somewhere in our discussion.