Marshall Rosenberg

Empathy instead of Anti-ism

Marshall Rosenberg Addressing Terrorism (extract from “Speak Peace“)

<<Many people have asked me how we can use NVC to address terrorism. For starters, we need to get rid of images of terrorists and freedom fighters. As long as we are thinking of the other side as terrorists and ourselves as freedom fighters, we’re part of the problem. Then we need to empathize with what was alive in these people when they did what they did that’s so frightening and hurtful to us—and to see what human needs they were trying to meet by doing it.

Until we can empathically connect with that, whatever actions we take are likely to come out of an energy that’s going to create more violence. Now, with regard to the people who have done things we call “terrorism,“ I’m confident they have been expressing their pain in many different ways for thirty years or more. Instead of our empathically receiving it when they expressed it in much gentler ways—they were trying to tell us how hurt they felt that some of their most sacred needs were not being respected by the way we were trying to meet our economic and military needs—they got progressively more agitated. Finally, they got so agitated that it took horrible form.

Instead of thinking of them as terrorists, we need to empathize. So that’s the first thing. Instead of thinking of them as terrorists, we need to empathize. Many people hear that as saying terrorism is OK—that we should just smile and act like it’s OK to kill thousands of people. Not at all! After we empathize, we need to make clear what our pain is, what needs of ours weren’t met by their actions. And if we can have that connection with these people, we can find a way to get everybody’s needs met peacefully. But if we label them as terrorists and then try to punish them for being terrorists, we already see what we’re going to get. Violence creates more violence.>>