As the main presenter of the “Safe Ground” project that was awarded first prize by the Social Innovation Camp panel (youth justice board, prison reform trust, police improvement agency & foyer housing foundation), I’m trying now to collect further practioner/public feedback on the radical(?) idea that won the jailbrake.org competition. What do you think of an on-line way for Restorative Practitioners to mediate/moderate text messages/ phone messages / video clips between victims and offenders?
In order for us to practice the virtue of forbearance, we must have strength, wisdom, and compassion. We must be willing to settle differences or disputes by means of reason and kindness. We must believe in tolerance and restraint as signs of goodness and bravery. Therefore, if we want to succeed in life and bring about a more peaceful world, we must learn to control our emotions and not to be affected by a moment of anger.
– Master Hsing Yun, “Don’t Get Mad, Don’t Get Even”
Two psychologists walking along a road find a severely beaten man lying broken and bleeding in the gutter. The first psychologist turns to the other and says, “The man who did this needs our help.”
It’s all too easy for phrases like ‘your needs equal to mine’ and “we’re all doing the best we can to meet our needs” to become pat. Needs consciousness becomes far more effective when it is embodied. Hearing my body more through focusing work is for me a whole new journey. ‘NVC plus focusing’ also helps me communicate needs in ways that many more people get, I surmise.
I’ve just turned to my own twitterstream reflections in order to try and find a way to go in terms of what appears a straight friendship/career choice:
Can anyone find a clear path to steer between all those messages?
I’ve just been invited (on the basis of my CV alone) to the Social Innovation Camp’s weekend at the end of the month; however going to that would involve letting a friend down for an agreed weekend in Oxford.
Can anyone:
a) offer help in making this decision?;
b) tell me parallel stories of difficult work/friend choice…s,
c) let me know how to conduct an on-line survey via facebook? If not I’ll run the survey from a blog site and let that inform my decision;
d) let me know if asking friends to heavily influence my decisions is a cop-out or looks like progress in my becoming more of a social being?jailbrake.org
Jailbrake is a competition to find and support great ideas that could break the cycle of youth offending using simple web and mobile tools.
Paul Crosland Update: I’ve just received an email from my friend saying:
“There is nothing to discuss here. I suggest you just make a choiceand tell me what it is.” There are just so many ways to interpret that!
about a minute ago · Paul Crosland:My instinct is to go over next week to the city where he lives, take him out for a meal, plan a bike ride for the summer and pay him the cost of the hotel that he booked. Reactions?
In the last day, two new pages have been added:
NVC plus
NVC training
If you are in the NVC world, I’d particularly appreciate your looking at the NVC plus page and letting me know what it is that you combine (or aspire to integrate) your NVC practice with.
Two of the main components of NVC appear to be:
1) Care & Consideration for others
2) Self-responsibility.
The flavour of NVC that I serve up emphasises the second component more than many people like. Perhaps there is a third main flavour to be be found too; that a third of the population would actually prefer to the other two.
Malcolm Gladwell (of ‘The Tipping Point’ etc fame) illustrates well how this third main flavour was found with pasta sauce; so why not with NVC?
“Being creatures of desires, human beings are concerned with things only to the extent that they can be made to serve our own ends…For us things and people exist not in their own right but only as actual or possible means of our own gratification..Usually we do not like to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that our attitude to life is often no better than that of a pig rooting for acorns. Motives are therefore rationalised. Instead of admitting that we hate somebody, we say he is wicked and ought to be punished…
According to the Buddha, all the philosophies, and a great deal of religious teachings, are rationalisations of desires.”
Sangharakshita (from ‘The Essential Sangharakshita’, p105-106)
Within a minute of the last posting on this blog, I tried my own suggestion, and it worked! I said “I didn’t have a sense of completion after you had expressed your distress to me the other day. I’d be keen for us to have an open and frank discussion later today about this.” He said “OK”. It looks like we’re breaking through, beyond the uncomfortable silences. Is the progress made just a toe in the water, or a whole foot?
Your Needs Equal To Mine Blog 