Orient towards your impressions and emotions and stories as being yours, instead of about the external world. “I feel alone” instead of “you betrayed me.”
“Alice betrayed Bob” contains some information that “Bob feels alone” doesn’t contain, though. I don’t think we should always discard such information.
I thought I responded to this a few days ago, but apparently never hit submit.
“Alice betrayed Bob” contains some information that “Bob feels alone” doesn’t contain, though. I don’t think we should always discard such information.
Specifically, the sorts of additional bits of information that I think are important are 1) Bob’s expectations and 2) the appropriateness of Alice’s or Bob’s emotions. (If Bob’s expectation of Alice was reasonable, then it is appropriate for Bob to feel hurt and appropriate for Alice to feel remorseful; if Bob’s expectation of Alice wasn’t reasonable, then it might be inappropriate for Bob to feel hurt.)
I don’t see the Circling suggestion here as a moral claim, of the form “this sort of information is bad / you shouldn’t reason using it”; I view it as a practical claim, of the form “Bob will probably be more satisfied with how the interaction goes if he opens it with ‘I feel alone’ than with ‘you betrayed me’.” Like, in my view this one is more of a “patch that prevents a predictable failure mode” than a claim that, like, justice or principles don’t exist and only emotions do. [I am not sure how widespread my view is.]
I agree with that, so let me see if I can point more clearly at where I think the difference is.
If Bob leads with impact to Bob, he sets up a conversational context of collaboratively determining what situation they’re in. He might discover that Alice is contrite and wants to do better, or that Alice thinks his expectations were unclear, or Alice thought he was in violation of some of her expectations, and so thought she was matching Bob’s level of reliability. Or he might discover that Alice is uninterested in his wellbeing, or in collaboratively seeking solutions, or in discussing the possibility that she might have done anything wrong. In all of those cases, Bob has opened up to more information about the world, and has a better vantage point to move forward from (even in cases where he decides to no longer associate with Alice!).
[Of course, it helps to be clear about what sort of bids and frames he’s suggesting if this is new to Alice; cultural communication tech works better when both parties have it.]
If Bob leads with Bob’s frame, he sets up a conversational context of arguing who gets to decide what situation they’re in, with the opening bid being “Bob” with the relevance that Bob thinks “Alice misbehaved.” Even if Alice would believe that Alice misbehaved looking at it from the outside, Alice might have serious objections to different layers of the procedure, which are now mixed in to the object level issue, and it’s quite possible that Alice wouldn’t believe that she misbehaved if looking at it from the outside.
I think that this perspective focuses entirely too much on people’s feelings about things, and not nearly enough on the facts of the matter. Consider the following alternative analysis, based on a simple enumeration of possibilities.
We start with Bob believing that Alice betrayed him. There are then two possibilities for the truth value of this belief; and, orthogonally, there are two[1] possibilities for how Bob chooses to proceed with his interaction with Alice. This yields a joint set of four scenarios:
Alice betrayed Bob. Bob expresses his belief straightforwardly, saying: “Alice, you betrayed me”.
Alice betrayed Bob. Bob uses the NVC-style[2] expression, saying: “I feel alone” (or something along these lines).
Alice did not betray Bob. Bob behaves as in scenario (1).
Alice did not betray Bob. Bob behaves as in scenario (2).
In scenario 1, Bob maintains his defenses, so to speak; he does not make himself vulnerable to further exploitation, abuse, etc. on Alice’s part. He curtails (though by no means entirely closes off) the possibility of reconciliation or understanding—but as we have stipulated that Alice did indeed betray Bob, this is fine; the onus to make a concerted effort to reconcile must be on Alice. No burden of understanding or forgiveness, nor even emotional vulnerability, ought to be imposed upon Bob, until and unless Alice takes serious steps toward making up for her misdeed. (In fact, supposing the betrayal to be sufficiently serious, Bob may never forgive or reconcile with Alice; and this is right and proper.)
In scenario 2, Bob lowers his defenses; he exposes vulnerability; he gives Alice information and openings with which to further exploit him. As Alice betrayed him once, she may well do so again; people who betray trusts, who exploit those close to them, rarely do so once. (Note that this consideration does not even depend on conscious ill intent on Alice’s part; betrayal by neglect or thoughtlessness changes this scenario not at all.) Bob invites further harm, and perhaps even worse harm than before. Any attempt at reconciliation assumes good faith from the counterparty, after all; but, by construction, such good faith is lacking in this scenario. Bob is making a grave, and potentially quite costly, mistake.
In scenario 3, Bob is harming a relationship which may be repaired. The worst case is that Alice, in turn, feels betrayed by the accusation, and that reconciliation is closed off, where otherwise it may have been possible. Yet the question of whether Alice betrayed Bob or not, is a question of fact; that the facts involved are facts about expectations, about communication having taken place (or not), about agreed-upon (or assumed) obligations, etc., makes them no less factual. Whether Alice did, or did not, betray Bob, may be discovered, and demonstrated, to any good-faith observer (mediator, counselor, etc.). Supposing (as we do, in this scenario) that Alice did not betray Bob, this fact may be established. If Bob is interested in repairing his relationship with Alice, and Alice likewise, this remains possible, though difficult—but the difficulty stems from Bob’s sense of betrayal, even assuming away any communication errors. Still, the worst case is bad—there can be no denying that.
In scenario 4, the interaction (presumably) proceeds smoothly; everyone’s hurt feelings are soothed; no one’s feelings are newly hurt. Alice and Bob reconcile and continue their relationship as before (and possibly even stronger than before).
The question, then, is: what is the relative weight that we should place on each of these scenarios? Do we disvalue (2) more than (3), or vice-versa—and how much more, the one than the other? How much do we value (4)?
These are not easy questions. They must be answered with attention to the particulars of a person’s situation—their personality, their social circle, etc.—and with the fact firmly in mind that such choices, if made repeatedly, compound, and form incentives for the actions of others, and signal various things to various sorts of people.
What is clear from this analysis, however, is that the “NVC-style” approach absolutely does not dominate. There are quite common environments and contexts, in fact, where it is clearly dominated by the other.[3]
Two within the context of the scenario, anyhow. Bob is of course free to do any number of other things, but those other options are not (currently) under discussion.
By this I only mean to refer to the sort of communication Vaniver endorses in his post and comments; I make no claim of knowing precisely what sort of formulations NVC would actually prescribe in such cases.
Your analysis seems fine, and it also seems worth noting that while Circling might teach you broadly applicable lessons, they’re time-boxed containers where everyone involved has chosen to be there. That is...
These are not easy questions. They must be answered with attention to the particulars of a person’s situation—their personality, their social circle, etc.—and with the fact firmly in mind that such choices, if made repeatedly, compound, and form incentives for the actions of others, and signal various things to various sorts of people.
It seems to me like some large part of the usefulness of Circling comes from “owning experience” compounding and forming incentives and signalling things. That’s separate from the claim that you should own your experience everywhere.
I think that this perspective focuses entirely too much on people’s feelings about things, and not nearly enough on the facts of the matter.
I think that, at least with relationships, people’s feelings are often the primary facts of the matter. Like, obviously when you’re interacting with your barista, what you ordered and what drink they prepared are the primary facts of relevance, and how the two of you feel about it is secondary. But if Alice and Bob are choosing to build a relationship together, how they think and feel about their interactions is much more important than basic facts about those interactions.
not nearly enough on the facts of the matter.
Actually, a different take: “owning experience” is about teaching people the map-territory distinction in emotionally charged situations. Like, it will feel as tho “the territory is that you betrayed me,” and the principle forces a swap to “my map is that I’m alone.” This lets you look at how the map is constructed, which is potentially more fruitful ground for exploration than whether or not it passes or fails a particular experimental test this time.
And the change in type is important; if you just let people say the words “my map” instead of “the territory” they will change their language but not their thinking, and this will impede their ability to go deeper.
It seems you’re thinking of Bob as someone who’s already pretty assertive and just needs tactical advice, and in that case I agree it can be good advice. But for someone who’s less assertive, they might interpret the advice as basically “be more meek”, especially if there’s pressure to follow it. For such people, I don’t think the first exercise should involve lowering of boundaries. Instead it’d be something like practicing saying “no” and laughing in someone’s face, until it no longer feels uncomfortable. Doing these kinds of things certainly helped me.
It seems you’re thinking of Bob as someone who’s already pretty assertive and just needs tactical advice, and in that case I agree it can be good advice. But for someone who’s less assertive, they might interpret the advice as basically “be more meek”, especially if there’s pressure to follow it.
I think this goes through for a less assertive Bob as well, but perhaps it depends on why Bob is less assertive.
That is, suppose Bob is not happy with how things are going, but also thinks it’s very costly to have arguments with Alice. So Bob stores up resentments until they exceed the threshold of the cost of having an argument, and then they have the argument, and then the resentments are depleted. But also probably Bob afterwards feels a desire to walk back his position, since he was out of line, according to himself; he had to force himself into the argument and then it’s not a place where he’s comfortable.
One of the things we might say from the outside is “ah, Bob, you should resent things more, then the explosions will happen more frequently,” which Bob might think is not obviously making him better off. Or we might say something like “ah, Bob, you should imagine the costs of an argument with Alice are lower than they actually are,” which Bob might think is misrepresenting his experience or ability to assess costs.
The thing “owning experience” is suggesting is closer to “there’s a way to bring your actual experience to the relationship that is less likely to lead to those sorts of arguments.” That is, you can lower the cost of sharing using technique, and so if someone is sharing too little because the costs are too high, it’s useful for them as well.
And if Bob discovers that Alice is indifferent to his suffering, well, that’s a thing that he should think seriously about.
But also it might be the case that Bob is less assertive because Bob doesn’t think his suffering matters, and so the only way he protects himself is by relying on abstract rules about concepts like “betrayal.” Then saying “don’t talk about the abstract rules, talk about the impact to you” makes Bob not say anything, because he’s ruled out caring about the impact to him and now he thinks the context has ruled out caring about the abstract rules.
For such people, I don’t think the first exercise should involve lowering of boundaries. Instead it’d be something like practicing saying “no” and laughing in someone’s face, until it no longer feels uncomfortable. Doing these kinds of things certainly helped me.
So according to me, Circling is about understanding psychology / relationships, and boundaries come up because they’re both an important part of the source material and they’re related to how you look at the source material. The primary mechanism is ‘understanding’ boundaries instead of ‘lowering’ them, tho; like, often you end up in situations where you look at your boundaries and go “yep, that’s definitely helpful and where it should be” or you notice the way that you had been forcing yourself to behave a particular way and that was self-harming because you were ignoring one of your own boundaries.
But also I think I run into this alternative impression a lot, and so something is off about how I or others are communicating about it. I’d be interested in hearing why it seems like Circling would push towards ‘letting betrayal slide’ or ‘lowering boundaries’ or similar things.
[I have some hypotheses, which are mostly of the form “oh, I was assuming prereq X.” For example, I think there’s a thing that happens sometimes where people don’t feel licensed to have their own boundaries or preferences, or aren’t practiced at doing so, and so when you say something like “operate based on your boundaries or preferences, rather than rules of type X” the person goes “but… I can’t? And you’re taking away my only means of protecting myself?”. The hope is it’s like pushing a kid into a pool with a lifeguard right there, and so it generally works out fine, but presumably there’s some way to make the process more clear, or to figure out in what cases you need a totally different approach.]
But also I think I run into this alternative impression a lot, and so something is off about how I or others are communicating about it. I’d be interested in hearing why it seems like Circling would push towards ‘letting betrayal slide’ or ‘lowering boundaries’ or similar things.
[I have some hypotheses, which are mostly of the form “oh, I was assuming prereq X.” For example, I think there’s a thing that happens sometimes where people don’t feel licensed to have their own boundaries or preferences, or aren’t practiced at doing so, and so when you say something like “operate based on your boundaries or preferences, rather than rules of type X” the person goes “but… I can’t? And you’re taking away my only means of protecting myself?”. The hope is it’s like pushing a kid into a pool with a lifeguard right there, and so it generally works out fine, but presumably there’s some way to make the process more clear, or to figure out in what cases you need a totally different approach.]
I very much don’t hesitate insisting on my boundaries and preferences, and Im still aversive to these I-formulations. The following is my attempt to communicate the feeling, but its mostly going to be evocative and I’ll propably walk back on most of it when pushed, but hopefully in a productive way:
The whole thing just reeks of valium. I’m sure you’d say theres a lot of emotionality in circling and that you felt some sort of deep connection or something. This is quite possibly true, but it seems theres an important part of it thats missing. I would describe this as part of their connection to reality. Its like milking a phantasy: sure, you get something out of play-pretend, but its a lesser version, and there remains the nagging in the back of your head thats just kind of chewing on the real thing, too timid to take a bite. This is what its like for the more positive emotions, anyway (really, consider feeling your love for your wife in such a way. Does there not seem something wrong with it?). For the anger or betrayal, its much more noticeable: much like an impotent rage, but subverted at a stage even before “I can’t actually scream at the guy”, sort of more dull and eating into you.
I also wanted to say something like “because my anger is mine”, but I saw you already mentioned “owning” you emotions in a way quite different from my intent. Yours sounds more like acknowledging your emotions, or taking responsibility for them (possibly only to yourself), (“own it!”) which I’d have to take an unhealthy separated stance to even do. I intended something more like control. My anger is mine, its form is mine, and its destruction is mine. Restricting my expression of it is prima facie bad, if sometimes necessary. Restricting its form in my head, under the guise of intimacy no less, is the work of the devil.
The whole thing just reeks of valium. I’m sure you’d say theres a lot of emotionality in circling and that you felt some sort of deep connection or something. This is quite possibly true, but it seems theres an important part of it thats missing.
Would this feel different if people screamed when they wanted to scream, during Circling?
I intended something more like control. My anger is mine, its form is mine, and its destruction is mine. Restricting my expression of it is prima facie bad, if sometimes necessary. Restricting its form in my head, under the guise of intimacy no less, is the work of the devil.
What I’m hearing here (and am repeating back to see if I got it right) is the suggestion is heard as being about how you should organize your internal experience, in a way that doesn’t allow for the way that you are organized, and so can’t possibly allow for intimacy with the you that actually exists.
I think I see another drawback of these kinds of techniques: when someone criticizes your thing, your first thought is “let’s analyze why the person said that”, rather than “wait, is my thing bad?” It’s worrying that the thing you’re defending happens to teach that kind of mental move.
Aren’t those kind of the same thing, though? In that before you can ask yourself whether your thing is bad, you need to understand the criticism in question, and that requires verifying that your interpretation of the criticism is correct before you proceed.
It’s true that these sometimes come apart: e.g. maybe I have an irrational fear of AI, but that irrational motive can still drive me to formulate correct arguments for AI risk. But in that case there exists a clean separation between the motive and the object-level argument. Whereas in this case, Bunthut seemed to be articulating reasons behind their emotional discomfort.
If you are trying to check that you correctly understood what someone is saying about their emotional discomfort, then that doesn’t seem like a case where you can isolate an object-level argument that would be separate from “why the person said that”. They are trying to express discomfort about something, and the specific reason why the thing is making them uncomfortable is the object-level issue.
your first thought is “let’s analyze why the person said that”, rather than “wait, is my thing bad?”
It definitely makes sense to be worried about Bulverism, where my attention becomes solely about how it lands for the other person (and figuring out what mistake of theirs prevents it from landing the way I want).
I think you often want to figure out all of 1) what the causal history of their statement is, 2) whether your thing was bad according to you, 3) whether your sense of goodness/badness is bad according to you, in contact with their statement and its causal history. What order you do those in will depend on what the situation is.
Like, suppose I write a post and someone comments with a claim that I made a typo. Presumably my attention jumps to the second point, of “oh, did I type incorrectly?”, and only later (if ever) do I ask the questions of “why do they care about this?” and “am I caring the right amount about spelling errors?”
If instead I make a claim and someone says “that claim misses my experience,” presumably my attention should jump to the first point, of what their experience was so that I can then determine whether or not I was missing their experience when I said it, or expressed myself poorly, or was misheard, or whatever.
---
I note that I am personally only minimally worried about specific Circlers that I know falling into Bulverism, and I feel like if I knew the theory / practice of it more I would be able to point to the policies and principles they’re using that mean that error is unlikely for them. Like, for me personally, one of the protective forces is something like “selfish growth,” where there’s a drive to interpret information in a way that leads to me getting better at what I want to get better at, and so it would be surprising to see me ‘write off’ criticism after analyzing it, because the thing I want is the growth, not the defense-from-attack.
---
I think there are definitely developmental stages that people can pass through that make them more annoying when they advance a step. Like, I can imagine someone who mostly cares about defending themselves from attacks, and basically doesn’t have a theory of mind, and you introduce them to the idea that they can figure out why other people say things, and so then they go around projecting at everyone else. I think so long as they’re still accepting input / doing empiricism / able to self-reflect, this will be a temporary phase as their initial random model gradient-descents through feedback to something that more accurately reflects reality. If they aren’t, well, knowing about biases can hurt people, and they might project why other people dislike their projections in a way that’s self-reinforcing and get stuck in a trap.
Would this feel different if people screamed when they wanted to scream, during Circling?
It could mean that the problem is gone, but it propably means you’re setting the cut later. This might make people marginally more accepting or it might not, I’m not sure on the distribution in individual psychology. For me I‘d just feel like a clown in addition to the other stuff.
What I’m hearing here (and am repeating back to see if I got it right) is the suggestion is heard as being about how you should organize your internal experience, in a way that doesn’t allow for the way that you are organized, and so can’t possibly allow for intimacy with the you that actually exists.
Partially, but I also think that you believe that [something] can be changed independently of the internal experience, and I don‘t. I‘m not sure what [something] is yet, but it lives somewhere in „social action and expression“. That might mean that I have a different mental makeup than you, or it might mean that the concept of „emotion“ I consider important is different from yours.
It could mean that the problem is gone, but it propably means you’re setting the cut later.
I asked because it is considered appropriate in Circling to bring emotions in the forms they want to be expressed in, including things like screams. Also the sorts of emotions people express in Circles run basically the whole emotional range, from pleasant to challenging.
I had the hypothesis that you were imagining a version where emotions had to pass through some external filter, like “politeness,” and so rather than ending up with an accurate picture of where people are at, Circlers would end up with a systematically biased or censored picture. I don’t think that happens with an external filter based on valence. That is, I think there are internal filters and people self-censor a lot (as part of being authentic to the complicated thing that they are), and I think there might be some external procedural filters.
I am somewhat worried about those procedural filters. Like, if I have a desire to be understood on a narrow technical point, the more Circling move is to go into what it’s like to want to convey the point, but the thing the emotion wants is to just explain the thing already; if it could pick its expression it would pick a lecture.
[Worried because of the “can’t allow for intimacy” point, and what to make of that is pretty complicated because it touches on lots of stuff that I haven’t written about yet.]
I remain sceptical of how you use internal/external. To give an example: Lets say a higher-up does something that makes me angry. Then I might want to scream at him but find myself unable to. If however he sensed this and offered me to scream without sanction (and lets say this is credible), I wouldn’t want that. Thats because what I wanted was never about more decibel per se, but the significance this has under normal circumstances, and he has altered the significance. Now is the remaining barrier to “really expressing” myself internal or external? Keep in mind that we could repeat the above for any behaviour that doesn’t directly harm anyone (the harm is not here because it is specifically anger we are talking about. Declarations of love could similarly be robbed of their meaning).
Like, if I have a desire to be understood on a narrow technical point, the more Circling move is to go into what it’s like to want to convey the point, but the thing the emotion wants is to just explain the thing already; if it could pick its expression it would pick a lecture.
This is going in the right direction.
Also, after leaving this in the back of my head for the last few days, I think I have an inroad to explaining the problem in a less emotion-focused way. To start off: What effects can and should circling have on the social reality while not circling?
If I’m inferring correctly, the thing that’s going on here is your frustration is at both how the thing went down and that the person who did it is superior to you. If he ‘lets you’ scream, it’s not a fight or a remonstration, it’s him humoring you, which isn’t the real thing.
To start off: What effects can and should circling have on the social reality while not circling?
Yeah, this is a really tricky question. I think the answer to both is “lots of effects.”
Sometimes there are confidentiality agreements (where people get into a high-trust state and share info and then by default that info isn’t widely propagated, so that you don’t have to be think as much about “I trust Alice, but do I trust Alice’s trust?”) but there aren’t any sort of “forgetting agreements” (where I share something shocking about me and you don’t want to be friends anymore and then I can say “well, can you just forget the shocking thing?”).
Given that it can have lots of effects on the social reality outside of Circling, the question of “are those expected effects good or bad?” is quite important, as is the question of “what standard should you use to measure goodness or badness of those effects?”.
A section of my draft for this post that I decided to move to a comment, and then later decided should be its own post, is about the “will Circling with people I know be good for my social goals?” question, which I answered with “quite probably not on the meta-level I think you’re thinking on, but I think it will on a different meta-level, and I think you might want to hop to the other meta-level.”
To the extent it’s possible, I think it’s good for people to have the option of Circling with strangers, in order to minimize worries in this vein; I think this is one of the other things that makes the possibility of Circling online neat.
To the extent it’s possible, I think it’s good for people to have the option of Circling with strangers, in order to minimize worries in this vein; I think this is one of the other things that makes the possibility of Circling online neat.
I think doing it with strangers you never see again dissolves the worries I’m talking about for many people, though not quite for me (and it raises new problems about being intimate with strangers).
The stuff above is too vague to really do much with, so I’m looking forward to that post of yours. I will say though that I didn’t imagine literal forgetting agreements—even if it were possible to keep them (and while we’re at it, how do you imagine keeping a confidentiality agreement without keeping a forgetting agreement? Clearly your reaction can give a lot of information about what went on, even if you never Tell anyone) because that would sort of defeat the point, no? But clearly there is some expectation that people react differently then they normally would, or else how the hell is it a good idea for you to act differently?
But also it might be the case that Bob is less assertive because Bob doesn’t think his suffering matters, and so the only way he protects himself is by relying on abstract rules about concepts like “betrayal.” Then saying “don’t talk about the abstract rules, talk about the impact to you” makes Bob not say anything, because he’s ruled out caring about the impact to him and now he thinks the context has ruled out caring about the abstract rules.
No comment (for now, anyway) about the rest of what you write here… but the quoted part (which is a sentiment I have seen pro-Circling and pro-NVC and pro-similar-things folks express quite a few times) is something which seems to me to be taking a view of relationships, and people, which is deeply mistaken, insofar as it fails to correctly describe how many (perhaps, even most) people operate. To wit:
If Alice betrays me, the problem is not that this causes me suffering (though certainly it is likely to do so).
The problem is that Alice betrayed me.
That, directly, itself, is what’s wrong with the situation. There isn’t any way of re-framing things that will let you describe the problem with reference only to me—not by talking about my feelings, or my suffering, or my boundaries, or my expectations, etc., etc. None of these things would capture what is wrong with what happened, which is Alice’s betrayal.
Any attempt to describe this in terms of me only, is no more meaningful than saying “instead of saying ‘here is a tree’, say ‘I have sense-impressions that I perceive as representing a tree’”. Yes, we perceive the world through our senses, etc., but what we are interested in discussing aren’t the sense-impressions—we care about the things themselves.
It is possible, of course, that our senses may lead us astray. Perhaps we think there’s a tree but actually it’s only a mirage; that is, our sense-impressions are not veridical (and the beliefs which result from taking the sense-impressions at face value are false). But what we’re interested in is still the (alleged) tree itself, and whether it exists, and what it’s like, etc. Likewise, our feelings, beliefs, etc., may lead us astray; Bob’s belief that Alice betrayed him may be false; Bob’s feelings of betrayal may not be veridical. But what is at issue remains the (alleged) betrayal.
By all means, we can say “Bob, you think that Alice betrayed you, but consider that perhaps actually she didn’t?”. But any account of the situation, or any attempt to resolve the matter, that fails to refer primarily to the fact (or non-fact) of Alice’s betrayal will quite miss the point.
I can’t speak for Vaniver or Circling, but I’ve participated in related practice T-Group, and what they said there is:
This isn’t supposed to be how you communicate every day, any more than Tai Chi is supposed to be how you walk every day. But if you practice the weird, specific movements of Tai Chi, you will find yourself with more options and fewer problems when you move in your everyday life, and that is helpful. Similarly, T-Group (and I assume Circling) uses weird social/verbal muscles to give you the ability to do different things in your relationships, but that doesn’t mean you are non-consensually T-Grouping people all the time.
Note that this doesn’t apply to NVC, which I have the impression is meant to be direct practice for handling conflicts.
I think Circlers are more optimistic about Circling’s ability to handle conflicts that arise in a Circle, or to use Circling as a method for mediation. I think this comes from an implicit (explicit?) belief that a lot of conflicts are the result of either simple or complex misunderstandings, and so by pressing the “understand more” button you can unravel many of them, or make them much simpler to resolve.
This seems like useful advice for how to engage with Circling, etc., but I’m not sure how it responds to what Said wrote in the parent comment.
Is the idea that it would be okay if Circling asks the wrong questions when dealing with cases of potential betrayal (my quick summary of Said’s point), because Circling is just practice, and in real life you would still handle a potential betrayal in the same way?
But if Circling is just practice, isn’t it important what it trains you to do? (And that it not train you to do the wrong things?)
(FWIW, I don’t share the objection that Said raises in the parent comment, but my response would be more like Raemon’s here, and not that Circling is just practice.)
I also go to T-Group (have been around a half-dozen times). T-Group, more so than other flavors of Circling, has a very rigid and restrictive format that couldn’t possibly work for everyday life. It took me many tries to be remotely good at it, but it’s helped me improve less heavily used aspects of my communicating/relating/connecting.
I actually objected (and was somewhat surprised Vaniver didn’t object to) your description upthread of “either Alice betrayed Bob, or she didn’t”. Betrayal is very much not an atomic object (and importantly so, not just in the generic “everything is complicated” sense)
(Note: the following all tracks how I personally use the word Betrayal. Notably, others might use the word differently. But, the fact that people use words differently is a related, important point)
Betrayal is a meaning that people assign to actions, and only really has meaning insofar as people assign it. It exists in social reality, personal subjective experience, and interpersonal subjective experience. It is not objective fact about reality, except insofar as personal subjective experiences are part of reality.
If Alice and Bob have an explicit agreement that they are monogamous, and that cheating is an act of betrayal, and then Alice has sex with Carl, there are three concrete facts of the matter: Alice had sex outside the relationship, Alice took an action that both parties agreed they would not do, and furthermore agreed was a betrayal. In this case it’s all pretty clear cut.
But, often (I would expect most of the time), instead it’s more like people have a bunch of implicit expectations, some of which they don’t understand themselves.
Suppose Alice is spending a lot of time with Carl. Is that a betrayal?
Suppose Alice is not spending much time with Carl, but feels attraction to him that she’s deliberately cultivating. Is that a betrayal? What if she’s not deliberately cultivating it, but neither trying to squish it? What if she tries to squish it, but sort of halfheartedly?
Suppose Alice and Bob have been on one date, and not discussed monogamy. Bob has sex with Charlotte. Is that betrayal? Is it betrayal after the second, third, or 10th date?
Suppose Alice watches a movie that Bob had been looking forward to seeing together. Is that a betrayal?
You might say “betrayal has a specific meaning, and it applies in [whichever those cases you think it applies to]”. But I am quite confident people will not agree on which is which.
And in many other cases, people might rationally agree “betrayal has not taken place”, and nonetheless feel a deep sense of having been betrayed. And if Alice tells Bob he is being unreasonable… maybe she’s right, but nonetheless there’s going to a nagging pit in his stomach that is going to poison the relationship, and trying to reason his way out of those feelings is not going to work most of the time. (I’m not sure whether you’re claiming it works that way for you, but I am claiming fairly strongly it doesn’t work that way for many (and probably most) people).
Even in the most explicit first case, “betrayal” still lives entirely in social reality, perception, and assigned meaning. There’s an alternate Alice and Bob who still agreed to be monogamous, and nonetheless… don’t find themselves caring that much about the breaking of the agreement, and who reserve the word “betrayal” for things they care more about. (You may or may not want to be in a relationship with them, but that’s a fact about you and your own sense of what betrayal means and what things you assign it to, not a fact about objective external reality)
One can say such things as you have said, about almost anything. A tree, after all, is only a meaning that people assign to certain collections of molecules (or quarks, or waves in the configuration space, etc.). Democritus: “By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.”
And we can ask these kinds of questions, too: is a palm a tree? Is a bonsai tree a tree? There are difficulties in categorizing; what of it? We know all about this.
Alice and Bob, we may imagine, agreed to various things. Some of the agreements were explicit; some, implicit, or assumed. Some of them were inherited from a larger social context. Perhaps Bob thought that an agreement existed, but Alice had no such notion. Perhaps Alice only claims this. We can investigate this; we can ask Alice, and ask Bob, what was said, and what was expected; we may believe their answers, or not. Bob (or Alice) may claim that any reasonable person would understand that such-and-such agreement had taken place; Alice (or Bob) may disagree; we may agree with the one, or with the other. Alice, or Bob, may come to see that they were wrong, and the other was right; or, they may not. Perhaps Bob concludes that Alice really didn’t think any obligation obtained, but also that Alice is so unreasonable and weird a person that she cannot be trusted, despite a lack of malice. And so on, and so forth. And, supposing that we do conclude that some betrayal has occurred, we (or Bob) may judge it to be relatively mild, and well within the bounds of what may be atoned for, and forgiven… or, instead, something terrible, from which a relationship cannot recover. There is a range of possibilities.
Nevertheless, we are still talking about what happened—about obligations, expectations, agreements, intent, responsibility, and actions taken—and not about how everyone currently feels about it!
And in many other cases, people might rationally agree “betrayal has not taken place”, and nonetheless feel a deep sense of having been betrayed.
I would need an example of this, before I could say for sure what I think of it. My suspicion is that, in such cases, I would say: “Bob has some issues to work through, if he has such irrational feelings”. Labeling feelings as ‘irrational’ isn’t something to do lightly; but if, indeed, the label applies, then the problem is of a very different kind, and should absolutely not be conflated with the question of what are the facts of the matter.
I would need an example of this, before I could say for sure what I think of it.
In my experience, this kind of a thing tends to come up when there has been no explicit agreement about something, but previous experience implies a particular thing, and the other person knows that this matters for the other.
For example, say that Alice is Bob’s aging mother who is lonely in her old days. Bob has explicitly promised to visit her every week. Over time, this has ended up usually meaning twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Now one week it happens that Bob visits on Tuesday, as normal, and doesn’t say anything about any changes to the normal schedule. Then on Thursday, when Alice asks what kind of dinner Bob would want to have on Friday, Bob says “oh, I’m not coming this Friday, I’ll see you next Tuesday”.
In this situation, Alice might on an intellectual level think that there was no betrayal. The explicit agreement was for Bob to visit once a week, and he never promised anything else. It just kind of happened that Bob ended up visiting more regularly, but he never made a promise to visit every Friday. Nor did he on Tuesday say that he would visit next Friday. Alice just kind of ended up assuming that he would, like usual.
On the other hand, she may still feel betrayed, in that she had expected Bob to visit on Friday. In particular, there may be a feeling that Bob should have known that based on him having visited on every Friday for the last six weeks, Alice would expect him to visit the coming Friday as well. Alice may feel that Bob should have understood his mother well enough to know that unless Bob specifically says that he will not be coming, Alice will plan her week under the assumption that he is coming. (Depending on how introspective Alice is, she may not be able to articulate all this, and just feel that “I know that Bob never said that he would come on Friday, but I still feel betrayed”.)
Habitual action creates expectations (especially in informal contexts, like interactions between family members). This is a perfectly ordinary thing. If (as you suggest at the start of the comment) Bob also understands this fact, then there’s nothing unusual here at all; Bob has created an expectation that he’ll be coming on Friday, and he knows this, and he then violates this expectation. This is a betrayal, especially given that it’s his mother we’re talking about, and given (as you say) that this matters to her (and that Bob knows this, too).
Now, the expectation isn’t very firm, and the betrayal isn’t very severe. Like I said before, there are degrees of this thing. But the situation isn’t of a different kind. So why call Alice’s feelings irrational?
It seems to me that this isn’t at all an example of the given extensional definition.
I actually objected (and was somewhat surprised Vaniver didn’t object to) your description upthread of “either Alice betrayed Bob, or she didn’t”. Betrayal is very much not an atomic object (and importantly so, not just in the generic “everything is complicated” sense)
I understood Said to mean something like “either Bob would think he had a convincing case that Alice betrayed him, or Bob would change his mind, and assuming Bob follows some standards of reasonableness, a Reasonable Observer would agree with Bob.”
So early on in this thread I said:
Like, in my view this one is more of a “patch that prevents a predictable failure mode” than a claim that, like, justice or principles don’t exist and only emotions do. [I am not sure how widespread my view is.]
and later I said:
He might discover that Alice is contrite and wants to do better, or that Alice thinks his expectations were unclear, or Alice thought he was in violation of some of her expectations, and so thought she was matching Bob’s level of reliability. Or he might discover that Alice is uninterested in his wellbeing, or in collaboratively seeking solutions, or in discussing the possibility that she might have done anything wrong.
I thought the second does an adequate job of pointing out “betrayal is complicated,” in that a discussion of it could go many ways and I do not believe “betrayal is a malformed concept,” as pointed out in the first. Like, for any particular case, I think you could in principle reach a “fact of the matter” that either Alice betrayed Bob, didn’t, or that Alice and Bob have irreconcilable standards (which you might lump into the ‘betrayal’ case, or might want to keep separate).
I understood Said to mean something like “either Bob would think he had a convincing case that Alice betrayed him, or Bob would change his mind, and assuming Bob follows some standards of reasonableness, a Reasonable Observer would agree with Bob.”
Yes, this is a reasonable portrayal. Facts being what they are, nevertheless the purpose of all such exercises is to determine future actions taken by people, so what we’re (mostly) actually talking about here is facts as represented in the minds of the people involved. (This is, of course, true of a very broad spectrum of situations—far broader than only “interpersonal conflict” or similar.)
the quoted part (which is a sentiment I have seen pro-Circling and pro-NVC and pro-similar-things folks express quite a few times) is something which seems to me to be taking a view of relationships, and people, which is deeply mistaken, insofar as it fails to correctly describe how many (perhaps, even most) people operate.
I have seen this misunderstanding happen and result in a significant amount of misery. (That is, Bob viewed themselves as being treated unjustly by Alice, who cared about Bob’s suffering and was interested in understanding it, but a big part of Bob’s suffering was that Bob and Alice didn’t share a notion of ‘justice,’ and so they couldn’t agree on ‘what happened’ or ‘what mattered’ because they had different type signatures for them.) I was not able to bridge it that time, despite seeing both sides (I think).
what we are interested in discussing aren’t the sense-impressions—we care about the things themselves.
Where my attention is going at the moment is not the sense-impressions, or the things themselves, but the machinery that turns the sense-impressions into models of the things, and the machinery that refines that modeling machinery.
I think it’s difficult to keep one’s attention on that part of the process; seeing the lens instead of just seeing the object through the lens. I view “owning experience” as, among other things, an attempt to direct attention towards the lens using a rule that’s understandable even before you see the lens.
[I hope it’s clear, but it’s worth saying, Circling is a lot like meditation, and very little like courts. That is, I expect it to help you deepen your understanding of how you perceive the world and how others perceive the world, and for it to make difficult topics easier to navigate, but I expect it to sometimes do those things at the expense of figuring out object-level issues. As in this set of paragraphs, where I followed my attention from the object level case to the more abstract question of how we settle such cases.]
By all means, we can say “Bob, you think that Alice betrayed you, but consider that perhaps actually she didn’t?”. But any account of the situation, or any attempt to resolve the matter, that fails to refer primarily to the fact (or non-fact) of Alice’s betrayal will quite miss the point.
I do object here to some of the implications of saying “the point” instead of “Bob’s point.” (While thinking that it’s bad to miss Bob’s point.)
Like, given that Bob made the point, calling it ‘the’ point is probably legitimate, but it is interesting that in this situation Bob cares about this when Carl, put into the same situation, might not. The implication that I’m troubled by is the one where Bob is assuming a shared level of understanding or buy-in to their conception of where the importance is, while not seeing it as a choice out of many possible choices.
Like, in my mind it’s the difference between the judge, who orients around determining what The Law says about the case in front of them, and the legislator, who orients around determining which of many possible laws should be enacted. Or it’s mistaking the intersubjective and the objective, thinking that the rules of chess are inherent in mathematics instead of agreed on.
Where my attention is going at the moment is not the sense-impressions, or the things themselves, but the machinery that turns the sense-impressions into models of the things, and the machinery that refines that modeling machinery.
Indeed this is also fascinating and worth investigating, but: is Circling supposed to be for resolving conflicts and other object-level situations, or is Circling supposed to be for investigating this meta-level “how does the machinery operate” stuff? I’ve seen pro-Circling folks, you included, appear to vacillate between these two perspectives. (Perhaps it can be used for both? This would be surprising, and would increase the improbability of the pro-Circling position, but certainly cannot be ruled out a priori.) In any case, it seems to me to be an exceedingly poor idea to try to do both of these things, simultaneously. These two purposes can only be at odds, and it seems to me that trying to combine them is likely to do serious harm to both goals.
A similar point has to do with this bit:
I hope it’s clear, but it’s worth saying, Circling is a lot like meditation, and very little like courts.
Perhaps so, but it seems to me that this is all the more reason why Circling is an inappropriate tool with which to determine whether what you need is meditation, or a court[1].
Like, given that Bob made the point, calling it ‘the’ point is probably legitimate, but it is interesting that in this situation Bob cares about this when Carl, put into the same situation, might not. The implication that I’m troubled by is the one where Bob is assuming a shared level of understanding or buy-in to their conception of where the importance is, while not seeing it as a choice out of many possible choices.
That Bob and Carl would react differently may indeed be interesting. But as far as the troubling implication goes… all I can say is that “who agreed to what, with whom, and when”, and “what were everyone’s expectations”, and so on, are also facts. If Bob’s understanding was not shared by Alice… that, too, is a fact. It is not an easy one to establish… but in that it is not alone. Alice may say “I genuinely didn’t know that we were supposed to have had this agreement, Bob”, and Bob may believe her, or not, and they can figure out how to proceed from there. Nevertheless the discussion is still about what happened, not about how everyone currently feels about what happened.
Or, to be more precise, “something like a court”—that is, a stance where you take seriously that some accusation has been made, some alleged transgression, and attempt to determine the facts of the matter, etc. This need not be formal, of course, much less actually involve the legal system.
is Circling supposed to be for resolving conflicts and other object-level situations, or is Circling supposed to be for investigating this meta-level “how does the machinery operate” stuff? I’ve seen pro-Circling folks, you included, appear to vacillate between these two perspectives.
I think ‘better Circling’ involves leaning towards investigating the meta-level. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone’s first Circle be about exploring a dispute they’re involved in; that seems like it would be likely to go poorly. In situations that seem high-stakes, it’s better to understand the norms you’re operating under than not understand them!
Perhaps it can be used for both? This would be surprising, and would increase the improbability of the pro-Circling position, but certainly cannot be ruled out a priori.
I think it helps you understand conflicts, and that sometimes resolves them, and sometimes doesn’t. If Alice thinks meat should be served at an event, and Bob thinks the event should be vegan, a Circle that includes Alice and Bob and is about that issue might end up with them understanding more why they think and feel the way they do, and how their dynamic of coming to a decision together works. But they’re still going to come to the decision using whatever dynamic they use.
To the extent people think Circling is useful for mediation or other sorts of resolution, I think that’s mostly informed by a belief that a very large fraction of conflicts have misunderstandings at their root, or that investigating the generators is more fruitful than dealing with a particular instance.
Perhaps so, but it seems to me that this is all the more reason why Circling is an inappropriate tool with which to determine whether what you need is meditation, or a court.
I’m confused by this, because it seems to me to imply that I thought or argued that Circling was the tool you would use to determine how to resolve an issue. What gave you that impression?
I’m confused by this, because it seems to me to imply that I thought or argued that Circling was the tool you would use to determine how to resolve an issue. What gave you that impression?
Yes, that was inaccurate phrasing on my part, my apologies. I do stand by the idea I was trying to express, but am unsure how to concisely express it more accurately than I did… I will try again, in any case. So, here’s an example, from this very comment of yours:
I think [Circling] helps you understand conflicts, and that sometimes resolves them, and sometimes doesn’t.
So my question is: can Circling tell you “actually, what you need is not Circling but something else [like a (metaphorical) ‘court’]”? Or, to put it another way: when should you not use Circling, but instead use some ‘court-like’ approach?
My impression from your comments is that the answers given by the pro-Circling perspective are “no” and “never”, respectively. Now, if that impression is inaccurate—fair enough (but in that case I have further questions, concerning the meaning of the comments that gave me said impression). However, supposing that my impression is (at least mostly) accurate, then it does seem reasonable to say that Circling (if not the actual act of Circling, then the “pro-Circling perspective”, as I’ve been putting it) takes the function of determining what tool you should use (and answers “Circling, that’s what!” every time).
Or, to put it yet another way: are there situations of the same category as those which Circling is meant to handle (whether that be “interpersonal conflicts”, or any other kind of thing that you would assert Circling is appropriate for), but in which Circling is not appropriate, and a more ‘court-like’ method is better? If so, then: how do you determine this to be the case?
Now, all of this aside, and re: the rest of your comment: I confess I still do not know whether you think (and/or claim) that Circling is supposed to be used for object-level conflict resolution, or not. I think that this is important; in fact, I don’t know how much more progress can be made without getting clear on this point.
So my question is: can Circling tell you “actually, what you need is not Circling but something else [like a (metaphorical) ‘court’]”? Or, to put it another way: when should you not use Circling, but instead use some ‘court-like’ approach?
My first reaction is to pick apart the question, which suggests to me we have some sort of conceptual mismatch. But before I try to pick it apart, I’ll try to answer it.
I think Circling won’t “tell you” anything about that, except in the most metaphorical of senses. That is, suppose you’re not bought into using Circling for resolving issue X; Circling will likely bring that to conscious attention, and then you might realize “ah, what I really want to do instead is settle this another way.” But the judgment is yours, not Circling’s, because Circling isn’t trying to generate judgments. (I should note that it could be the case that the other participants either notice their own resistance to using the Circle in that way, or might notice your resistance before you do and bring that up, so I mean “yours” in the ‘final judgment’ sense as opposed to the ‘original thinking’ sense; you can end up agreeing to things you wouldn’t imagine.)
As mentioned before, if you’re not an experienced Circler, I wouldn’t use it as a conflict-resolution mechanism, and I would be suspicious of someone who was an experienced Circler trying to immediately jump to conflict-resolution with someone new to Circling. If you have a conflict where everyone thinks everyone understands the issue, and yet there’s still a conflict, I don’t think Circling will point towards a resolution.
in that case I have further questions, concerning the meaning of the comments that gave me said impression
I would be interested in seeing the things that gave you this impression.
I confess I still do not know whether you think (and/or claim) that Circling is supposed to be used for object-level conflict resolution, or not. I think that this is important; in fact, I don’t know how much more progress can be made without getting clear on this point.
I agree that settling that seems useful. I think your question attempts to be “yes xor no” but the answer to the question as written is “yes and no,” and so I responded with a question-substitution to try to identify the thing that I think divides the cases more cleanly.
That is, I claim that Circling can help people understand each other (and their way of interacting) better. Separately, I observe that many conflicts have, at their root, a misunderstanding. This generates the hypothesis that Circling would resolve many conflicts by knocking out the root misunderstanding generating them, or by transforming them from “two people trying to solve two problems” to “two people trying to solve one problem,” which may do most of the work of resolution.
Of course, not all conflicts have a misunderstanding at the root; sometimes only one of us gets to win the chess game, or decide what restaurant we go to, or whatever. For such conflicts, there’s no strong reason to think Circling would help. (There are weak reasons, like an outside-view guess that “if you think there are no misunderstandings, this is nevertheless sometimes a thing you think where there are misunderstandings,” but I wouldn’t want to make a strong case on weak reasons.)
This generates the hypothesis that Circling would resolve many conflicts by knocking out the root misunderstanding generating them …
So, wait. Have you ever used Circling to resolve conflicts? Or, seen it used this way? Or, know anyone (whose word you trust) who has used it this way?
So, wait. Have you ever used Circling to resolve conflicts? Or, seen it used this way? Or, know anyone (whose word you trust) who has used it this way?
I have seen… maybe a dozen attempts to use it this way that I can remember (at least vaguely). Some of them were successful, some weren’t; many had the flavor of “well, we haven’t resolved anything yet but we know a lot more now”. (Also I’m not counting conflicts about where the group attention should be going, which are happen pretty frequently.)
Some of the conflicts were quite serious / high-stakes; described somewhat vaguely, I remember one where a wife was trying to ‘save her marriage’ (the husband was also in the Circle), and over the course of an hour or so we got to the label of her felt sense of what was happening, figured out an “if X, then Y” belief that she had so deeply she hadn’t ever looked at it, and then when she asked the question “is that true?” it dissolved and she was able to look at the situation with fresh eyes.
I don’t remember being one of the primary parties for any of those conflicts; the closest was when I organized a Circle focused on me to work through my stance towards someone in my life that I was having a conflict with who wasn’t present. (I thought that was helpful, but it’s only sort of related.)
Also, I noticed a day or two ago that maybe I should back up a bit: when I’m talking about “resolving conflicts,” I mean something closer to “do work towards a resolution” than “conflict goes in, result comes out.” Like, if we think about democracy, there’s a way in which candidate debates help resolve an election, but they aren’t the election itself.
There’s not an arbitration thing going on, where you take a conflict to the Circle, talk about it for a while, and then the facilitator or the group as a whole or whatever says “well, this is what I think” and then that’s the ruling. Instead it’s much closer to Alice and Bob relating to each other in a way that conflicts, and that getting explored, and then sometimes Alice and Bob end up relating to each other in a way they agree on, and sometimes they don’t.
There’s also a clear way in which Circles are a conflict-generating mechanism, in that Alice and Bob can be unaware that they disagree on a topic until it comes up, and now they can see their disagreement clearly.
So according to me, Circling is about understanding psychology / relationships, and boundaries come up because they’re both an important part of the source material and they’re related to how you look at the source material. The primary mechanism is ‘understanding’ boundaries instead of ‘lowering’ them, tho; like, often you end up in situations where you look at your boundaries and go “yep, that’s definitely helpful and where it should be” or you notice the way that you had been forcing yourself to behave a particular way and that was self-harming because you were ignoring one of your own boundaries.
But also I think I run into this alternative impression a lot, and so something is off about how I or others are communicating about it. I’d be interested in hearing why it seems like Circling would push towards ‘letting betrayal slide’ or ‘lowering boundaries’ or similar things.
FYI this felt like a fairly buried lede to me. This feels like the important crux of the conversation.
The primary mechanism is ‘understanding’ boundaries instead of ‘lowering’ them, tho; like, often you end up in situations where you look at your boundaries and go “yep, that’s definitely helpful and where it should be” or you notice the way that you had been forcing yourself to behave a particular way and that was self-harming because you were ignoring one of your own boundaries.
Yeah, this description matches things I like about circling. I’ve had experiences with people who in normal life would want things of me that I don’t want to give them (e.g. types of social efforts and reassurances), and circling has given me space to practise not giving it to them when I endorse that, and introspecting in slow motion, understanding better and in more detail what both I and they are feeling (and I believe they’re learning things about themselves too).
“Alice betrayed Bob” contains some information that “Bob feels alone” doesn’t contain, though. I don’t think we should always discard such information.
I thought I responded to this a few days ago, but apparently never hit submit.
Specifically, the sorts of additional bits of information that I think are important are 1) Bob’s expectations and 2) the appropriateness of Alice’s or Bob’s emotions. (If Bob’s expectation of Alice was reasonable, then it is appropriate for Bob to feel hurt and appropriate for Alice to feel remorseful; if Bob’s expectation of Alice wasn’t reasonable, then it might be inappropriate for Bob to feel hurt.)
I don’t see the Circling suggestion here as a moral claim, of the form “this sort of information is bad / you shouldn’t reason using it”; I view it as a practical claim, of the form “Bob will probably be more satisfied with how the interaction goes if he opens it with ‘I feel alone’ than with ‘you betrayed me’.” Like, in my view this one is more of a “patch that prevents a predictable failure mode” than a claim that, like, justice or principles don’t exist and only emotions do. [I am not sure how widespread my view is.]
Yes, accusing someone of betrayal is costly in the short term. But letting betrayal slide is costly in the long term.
I agree with that, so let me see if I can point more clearly at where I think the difference is.
If Bob leads with impact to Bob, he sets up a conversational context of collaboratively determining what situation they’re in. He might discover that Alice is contrite and wants to do better, or that Alice thinks his expectations were unclear, or Alice thought he was in violation of some of her expectations, and so thought she was matching Bob’s level of reliability. Or he might discover that Alice is uninterested in his wellbeing, or in collaboratively seeking solutions, or in discussing the possibility that she might have done anything wrong. In all of those cases, Bob has opened up to more information about the world, and has a better vantage point to move forward from (even in cases where he decides to no longer associate with Alice!).
[Of course, it helps to be clear about what sort of bids and frames he’s suggesting if this is new to Alice; cultural communication tech works better when both parties have it.]
If Bob leads with Bob’s frame, he sets up a conversational context of arguing who gets to decide what situation they’re in, with the opening bid being “Bob” with the relevance that Bob thinks “Alice misbehaved.” Even if Alice would believe that Alice misbehaved looking at it from the outside, Alice might have serious objections to different layers of the procedure, which are now mixed in to the object level issue, and it’s quite possible that Alice wouldn’t believe that she misbehaved if looking at it from the outside.
I think that this perspective focuses entirely too much on people’s feelings about things, and not nearly enough on the facts of the matter. Consider the following alternative analysis, based on a simple enumeration of possibilities.
We start with Bob believing that Alice betrayed him. There are then two possibilities for the truth value of this belief; and, orthogonally, there are two[1] possibilities for how Bob chooses to proceed with his interaction with Alice. This yields a joint set of four scenarios:
Alice betrayed Bob. Bob expresses his belief straightforwardly, saying: “Alice, you betrayed me”.
Alice betrayed Bob. Bob uses the NVC-style[2] expression, saying: “I feel alone” (or something along these lines).
Alice did not betray Bob. Bob behaves as in scenario (1).
Alice did not betray Bob. Bob behaves as in scenario (2).
In scenario 1, Bob maintains his defenses, so to speak; he does not make himself vulnerable to further exploitation, abuse, etc. on Alice’s part. He curtails (though by no means entirely closes off) the possibility of reconciliation or understanding—but as we have stipulated that Alice did indeed betray Bob, this is fine; the onus to make a concerted effort to reconcile must be on Alice. No burden of understanding or forgiveness, nor even emotional vulnerability, ought to be imposed upon Bob, until and unless Alice takes serious steps toward making up for her misdeed. (In fact, supposing the betrayal to be sufficiently serious, Bob may never forgive or reconcile with Alice; and this is right and proper.)
In scenario 2, Bob lowers his defenses; he exposes vulnerability; he gives Alice information and openings with which to further exploit him. As Alice betrayed him once, she may well do so again; people who betray trusts, who exploit those close to them, rarely do so once. (Note that this consideration does not even depend on conscious ill intent on Alice’s part; betrayal by neglect or thoughtlessness changes this scenario not at all.) Bob invites further harm, and perhaps even worse harm than before. Any attempt at reconciliation assumes good faith from the counterparty, after all; but, by construction, such good faith is lacking in this scenario. Bob is making a grave, and potentially quite costly, mistake.
In scenario 3, Bob is harming a relationship which may be repaired. The worst case is that Alice, in turn, feels betrayed by the accusation, and that reconciliation is closed off, where otherwise it may have been possible. Yet the question of whether Alice betrayed Bob or not, is a question of fact; that the facts involved are facts about expectations, about communication having taken place (or not), about agreed-upon (or assumed) obligations, etc., makes them no less factual. Whether Alice did, or did not, betray Bob, may be discovered, and demonstrated, to any good-faith observer (mediator, counselor, etc.). Supposing (as we do, in this scenario) that Alice did not betray Bob, this fact may be established. If Bob is interested in repairing his relationship with Alice, and Alice likewise, this remains possible, though difficult—but the difficulty stems from Bob’s sense of betrayal, even assuming away any communication errors. Still, the worst case is bad—there can be no denying that.
In scenario 4, the interaction (presumably) proceeds smoothly; everyone’s hurt feelings are soothed; no one’s feelings are newly hurt. Alice and Bob reconcile and continue their relationship as before (and possibly even stronger than before).
The question, then, is: what is the relative weight that we should place on each of these scenarios? Do we disvalue (2) more than (3), or vice-versa—and how much more, the one than the other? How much do we value (4)?
These are not easy questions. They must be answered with attention to the particulars of a person’s situation—their personality, their social circle, etc.—and with the fact firmly in mind that such choices, if made repeatedly, compound, and form incentives for the actions of others, and signal various things to various sorts of people.
What is clear from this analysis, however, is that the “NVC-style” approach absolutely does not dominate. There are quite common environments and contexts, in fact, where it is clearly dominated by the other.[3]
Two within the context of the scenario, anyhow. Bob is of course free to do any number of other things, but those other options are not (currently) under discussion.
By this I only mean to refer to the sort of communication Vaniver endorses in his post and comments; I make no claim of knowing precisely what sort of formulations NVC would actually prescribe in such cases.
And it seems to me that many ‘rationalist’ communities constitute just such environments.
Your analysis seems fine, and it also seems worth noting that while Circling might teach you broadly applicable lessons, they’re time-boxed containers where everyone involved has chosen to be there. That is...
It seems to me like some large part of the usefulness of Circling comes from “owning experience” compounding and forming incentives and signalling things. That’s separate from the claim that you should own your experience everywhere.
I think that, at least with relationships, people’s feelings are often the primary facts of the matter. Like, obviously when you’re interacting with your barista, what you ordered and what drink they prepared are the primary facts of relevance, and how the two of you feel about it is secondary. But if Alice and Bob are choosing to build a relationship together, how they think and feel about their interactions is much more important than basic facts about those interactions.
Actually, a different take: “owning experience” is about teaching people the map-territory distinction in emotionally charged situations. Like, it will feel as tho “the territory is that you betrayed me,” and the principle forces a swap to “my map is that I’m alone.” This lets you look at how the map is constructed, which is potentially more fruitful ground for exploration than whether or not it passes or fails a particular experimental test this time.
And the change in type is important; if you just let people say the words “my map” instead of “the territory” they will change their language but not their thinking, and this will impede their ability to go deeper.
It seems you’re thinking of Bob as someone who’s already pretty assertive and just needs tactical advice, and in that case I agree it can be good advice. But for someone who’s less assertive, they might interpret the advice as basically “be more meek”, especially if there’s pressure to follow it. For such people, I don’t think the first exercise should involve lowering of boundaries. Instead it’d be something like practicing saying “no” and laughing in someone’s face, until it no longer feels uncomfortable. Doing these kinds of things certainly helped me.
I think this goes through for a less assertive Bob as well, but perhaps it depends on why Bob is less assertive.
That is, suppose Bob is not happy with how things are going, but also thinks it’s very costly to have arguments with Alice. So Bob stores up resentments until they exceed the threshold of the cost of having an argument, and then they have the argument, and then the resentments are depleted. But also probably Bob afterwards feels a desire to walk back his position, since he was out of line, according to himself; he had to force himself into the argument and then it’s not a place where he’s comfortable.
One of the things we might say from the outside is “ah, Bob, you should resent things more, then the explosions will happen more frequently,” which Bob might think is not obviously making him better off. Or we might say something like “ah, Bob, you should imagine the costs of an argument with Alice are lower than they actually are,” which Bob might think is misrepresenting his experience or ability to assess costs.
The thing “owning experience” is suggesting is closer to “there’s a way to bring your actual experience to the relationship that is less likely to lead to those sorts of arguments.” That is, you can lower the cost of sharing using technique, and so if someone is sharing too little because the costs are too high, it’s useful for them as well.
And if Bob discovers that Alice is indifferent to his suffering, well, that’s a thing that he should think seriously about.
But also it might be the case that Bob is less assertive because Bob doesn’t think his suffering matters, and so the only way he protects himself is by relying on abstract rules about concepts like “betrayal.” Then saying “don’t talk about the abstract rules, talk about the impact to you” makes Bob not say anything, because he’s ruled out caring about the impact to him and now he thinks the context has ruled out caring about the abstract rules.
So according to me, Circling is about understanding psychology / relationships, and boundaries come up because they’re both an important part of the source material and they’re related to how you look at the source material. The primary mechanism is ‘understanding’ boundaries instead of ‘lowering’ them, tho; like, often you end up in situations where you look at your boundaries and go “yep, that’s definitely helpful and where it should be” or you notice the way that you had been forcing yourself to behave a particular way and that was self-harming because you were ignoring one of your own boundaries.
But also I think I run into this alternative impression a lot, and so something is off about how I or others are communicating about it. I’d be interested in hearing why it seems like Circling would push towards ‘letting betrayal slide’ or ‘lowering boundaries’ or similar things.
[I have some hypotheses, which are mostly of the form “oh, I was assuming prereq X.” For example, I think there’s a thing that happens sometimes where people don’t feel licensed to have their own boundaries or preferences, or aren’t practiced at doing so, and so when you say something like “operate based on your boundaries or preferences, rather than rules of type X” the person goes “but… I can’t? And you’re taking away my only means of protecting myself?”. The hope is it’s like pushing a kid into a pool with a lifeguard right there, and so it generally works out fine, but presumably there’s some way to make the process more clear, or to figure out in what cases you need a totally different approach.]
I very much don’t hesitate insisting on my boundaries and preferences, and Im still aversive to these I-formulations. The following is my attempt to communicate the feeling, but its mostly going to be evocative and I’ll propably walk back on most of it when pushed, but hopefully in a productive way:
The whole thing just reeks of valium. I’m sure you’d say theres a lot of emotionality in circling and that you felt some sort of deep connection or something. This is quite possibly true, but it seems theres an important part of it thats missing. I would describe this as part of their connection to reality. Its like milking a phantasy: sure, you get something out of play-pretend, but its a lesser version, and there remains the nagging in the back of your head thats just kind of chewing on the real thing, too timid to take a bite. This is what its like for the more positive emotions, anyway (really, consider feeling your love for your wife in such a way. Does there not seem something wrong with it?). For the anger or betrayal, its much more noticeable: much like an impotent rage, but subverted at a stage even before “I can’t actually scream at the guy”, sort of more dull and eating into you.
I also wanted to say something like “because my anger is mine”, but I saw you already mentioned “owning” you emotions in a way quite different from my intent. Yours sounds more like acknowledging your emotions, or taking responsibility for them (possibly only to yourself), (“own it!”) which I’d have to take an unhealthy separated stance to even do. I intended something more like control. My anger is mine, its form is mine, and its destruction is mine. Restricting my expression of it is prima facie bad, if sometimes necessary. Restricting its form in my head, under the guise of intimacy no less, is the work of the devil.
Thank you for writing this. I was trying to express the same kind of feelings, but you did it better.
Thanks for the detailed reply!
Would this feel different if people screamed when they wanted to scream, during Circling?
What I’m hearing here (and am repeating back to see if I got it right) is the suggestion is heard as being about how you should organize your internal experience, in a way that doesn’t allow for the way that you are organized, and so can’t possibly allow for intimacy with the you that actually exists.
I think I see another drawback of these kinds of techniques: when someone criticizes your thing, your first thought is “let’s analyze why the person said that”, rather than “wait, is my thing bad?” It’s worrying that the thing you’re defending happens to teach that kind of mental move.
Aren’t those kind of the same thing, though? In that before you can ask yourself whether your thing is bad, you need to understand the criticism in question, and that requires verifying that your interpretation of the criticism is correct before you proceed.
It’s true that these sometimes come apart: e.g. maybe I have an irrational fear of AI, but that irrational motive can still drive me to formulate correct arguments for AI risk. But in that case there exists a clean separation between the motive and the object-level argument. Whereas in this case, Bunthut seemed to be articulating reasons behind their emotional discomfort.
If you are trying to check that you correctly understood what someone is saying about their emotional discomfort, then that doesn’t seem like a case where you can isolate an object-level argument that would be separate from “why the person said that”. They are trying to express discomfort about something, and the specific reason why the thing is making them uncomfortable is the object-level issue.
It definitely makes sense to be worried about Bulverism, where my attention becomes solely about how it lands for the other person (and figuring out what mistake of theirs prevents it from landing the way I want).
I think you often want to figure out all of 1) what the causal history of their statement is, 2) whether your thing was bad according to you, 3) whether your sense of goodness/badness is bad according to you, in contact with their statement and its causal history. What order you do those in will depend on what the situation is.
Like, suppose I write a post and someone comments with a claim that I made a typo. Presumably my attention jumps to the second point, of “oh, did I type incorrectly?”, and only later (if ever) do I ask the questions of “why do they care about this?” and “am I caring the right amount about spelling errors?”
If instead I make a claim and someone says “that claim misses my experience,” presumably my attention should jump to the first point, of what their experience was so that I can then determine whether or not I was missing their experience when I said it, or expressed myself poorly, or was misheard, or whatever.
---
I note that I am personally only minimally worried about specific Circlers that I know falling into Bulverism, and I feel like if I knew the theory / practice of it more I would be able to point to the policies and principles they’re using that mean that error is unlikely for them. Like, for me personally, one of the protective forces is something like “selfish growth,” where there’s a drive to interpret information in a way that leads to me getting better at what I want to get better at, and so it would be surprising to see me ‘write off’ criticism after analyzing it, because the thing I want is the growth, not the defense-from-attack.
---
I think there are definitely developmental stages that people can pass through that make them more annoying when they advance a step. Like, I can imagine someone who mostly cares about defending themselves from attacks, and basically doesn’t have a theory of mind, and you introduce them to the idea that they can figure out why other people say things, and so then they go around projecting at everyone else. I think so long as they’re still accepting input / doing empiricism / able to self-reflect, this will be a temporary phase as their initial random model gradient-descents through feedback to something that more accurately reflects reality. If they aren’t, well, knowing about biases can hurt people, and they might project why other people dislike their projections in a way that’s self-reinforcing and get stuck in a trap.
It could mean that the problem is gone, but it propably means you’re setting the cut later. This might make people marginally more accepting or it might not, I’m not sure on the distribution in individual psychology. For me I‘d just feel like a clown in addition to the other stuff.
Partially, but I also think that you believe that [something] can be changed independently of the internal experience, and I don‘t. I‘m not sure what [something] is yet, but it lives somewhere in „social action and expression“. That might mean that I have a different mental makeup than you, or it might mean that the concept of „emotion“ I consider important is different from yours.
I asked because it is considered appropriate in Circling to bring emotions in the forms they want to be expressed in, including things like screams. Also the sorts of emotions people express in Circles run basically the whole emotional range, from pleasant to challenging.
I had the hypothesis that you were imagining a version where emotions had to pass through some external filter, like “politeness,” and so rather than ending up with an accurate picture of where people are at, Circlers would end up with a systematically biased or censored picture. I don’t think that happens with an external filter based on valence. That is, I think there are internal filters and people self-censor a lot (as part of being authentic to the complicated thing that they are), and I think there might be some external procedural filters.
I am somewhat worried about those procedural filters. Like, if I have a desire to be understood on a narrow technical point, the more Circling move is to go into what it’s like to want to convey the point, but the thing the emotion wants is to just explain the thing already; if it could pick its expression it would pick a lecture.
[Worried because of the “can’t allow for intimacy” point, and what to make of that is pretty complicated because it touches on lots of stuff that I haven’t written about yet.]
I remain sceptical of how you use internal/external. To give an example: Lets say a higher-up does something that makes me angry. Then I might want to scream at him but find myself unable to. If however he sensed this and offered me to scream without sanction (and lets say this is credible), I wouldn’t want that. Thats because what I wanted was never about more decibel per se, but the significance this has under normal circumstances, and he has altered the significance. Now is the remaining barrier to “really expressing” myself internal or external? Keep in mind that we could repeat the above for any behaviour that doesn’t directly harm anyone (the harm is not here because it is specifically anger we are talking about. Declarations of love could similarly be robbed of their meaning).
This is going in the right direction.
Also, after leaving this in the back of my head for the last few days, I think I have an inroad to explaining the problem in a less emotion-focused way. To start off: What effects can and should circling have on the social reality while not circling?
If I’m inferring correctly, the thing that’s going on here is your frustration is at both how the thing went down and that the person who did it is superior to you. If he ‘lets you’ scream, it’s not a fight or a remonstration, it’s him humoring you, which isn’t the real thing.
Yeah, this is a really tricky question. I think the answer to both is “lots of effects.”
Sometimes there are confidentiality agreements (where people get into a high-trust state and share info and then by default that info isn’t widely propagated, so that you don’t have to be think as much about “I trust Alice, but do I trust Alice’s trust?”) but there aren’t any sort of “forgetting agreements” (where I share something shocking about me and you don’t want to be friends anymore and then I can say “well, can you just forget the shocking thing?”).
Given that it can have lots of effects on the social reality outside of Circling, the question of “are those expected effects good or bad?” is quite important, as is the question of “what standard should you use to measure goodness or badness of those effects?”.
A section of my draft for this post that I decided to move to a comment, and then later decided should be its own post, is about the “will Circling with people I know be good for my social goals?” question, which I answered with “quite probably not on the meta-level I think you’re thinking on, but I think it will on a different meta-level, and I think you might want to hop to the other meta-level.”
To the extent it’s possible, I think it’s good for people to have the option of Circling with strangers, in order to minimize worries in this vein; I think this is one of the other things that makes the possibility of Circling online neat.
That seems mostly correct.
I think doing it with strangers you never see again dissolves the worries I’m talking about for many people, though not quite for me (and it raises new problems about being intimate with strangers).
The stuff above is too vague to really do much with, so I’m looking forward to that post of yours. I will say though that I didn’t imagine literal forgetting agreements—even if it were possible to keep them (and while we’re at it, how do you imagine keeping a confidentiality agreement without keeping a forgetting agreement? Clearly your reaction can give a lot of information about what went on, even if you never Tell anyone) because that would sort of defeat the point, no? But clearly there is some expectation that people react differently then they normally would, or else how the hell is it a good idea for you to act differently?
No comment (for now, anyway) about the rest of what you write here… but the quoted part (which is a sentiment I have seen pro-Circling and pro-NVC and pro-similar-things folks express quite a few times) is something which seems to me to be taking a view of relationships, and people, which is deeply mistaken, insofar as it fails to correctly describe how many (perhaps, even most) people operate. To wit:
If Alice betrays me, the problem is not that this causes me suffering (though certainly it is likely to do so).
The problem is that Alice betrayed me.
That, directly, itself, is what’s wrong with the situation. There isn’t any way of re-framing things that will let you describe the problem with reference only to me—not by talking about my feelings, or my suffering, or my boundaries, or my expectations, etc., etc. None of these things would capture what is wrong with what happened, which is Alice’s betrayal.
Any attempt to describe this in terms of me only, is no more meaningful than saying “instead of saying ‘here is a tree’, say ‘I have sense-impressions that I perceive as representing a tree’”. Yes, we perceive the world through our senses, etc., but what we are interested in discussing aren’t the sense-impressions—we care about the things themselves.
It is possible, of course, that our senses may lead us astray. Perhaps we think there’s a tree but actually it’s only a mirage; that is, our sense-impressions are not veridical (and the beliefs which result from taking the sense-impressions at face value are false). But what we’re interested in is still the (alleged) tree itself, and whether it exists, and what it’s like, etc. Likewise, our feelings, beliefs, etc., may lead us astray; Bob’s belief that Alice betrayed him may be false; Bob’s feelings of betrayal may not be veridical. But what is at issue remains the (alleged) betrayal.
By all means, we can say “Bob, you think that Alice betrayed you, but consider that perhaps actually she didn’t?”. But any account of the situation, or any attempt to resolve the matter, that fails to refer primarily to the fact (or non-fact) of Alice’s betrayal will quite miss the point.
I can’t speak for Vaniver or Circling, but I’ve participated in related practice T-Group, and what they said there is:
This isn’t supposed to be how you communicate every day, any more than Tai Chi is supposed to be how you walk every day. But if you practice the weird, specific movements of Tai Chi, you will find yourself with more options and fewer problems when you move in your everyday life, and that is helpful. Similarly, T-Group (and I assume Circling) uses weird social/verbal muscles to give you the ability to do different things in your relationships, but that doesn’t mean you are non-consensually T-Grouping people all the time.
Note that this doesn’t apply to NVC, which I have the impression is meant to be direct practice for handling conflicts.
This seems pretty accurate to me.
I think Circlers are more optimistic about Circling’s ability to handle conflicts that arise in a Circle, or to use Circling as a method for mediation. I think this comes from an implicit (explicit?) belief that a lot of conflicts are the result of either simple or complex misunderstandings, and so by pressing the “understand more” button you can unravel many of them, or make them much simpler to resolve.
This seems like useful advice for how to engage with Circling, etc., but I’m not sure how it responds to what Said wrote in the parent comment.
Is the idea that it would be okay if Circling asks the wrong questions when dealing with cases of potential betrayal (my quick summary of Said’s point), because Circling is just practice, and in real life you would still handle a potential betrayal in the same way?
But if Circling is just practice, isn’t it important what it trains you to do? (And that it not train you to do the wrong things?)
(FWIW, I don’t share the objection that Said raises in the parent comment, but my response would be more like Raemon’s here, and not that Circling is just practice.)
Seconding this.
I also go to T-Group (have been around a half-dozen times). T-Group, more so than other flavors of Circling, has a very rigid and restrictive format that couldn’t possibly work for everyday life. It took me many tries to be remotely good at it, but it’s helped me improve less heavily used aspects of my communicating/relating/connecting.
I actually objected (and was somewhat surprised Vaniver didn’t object to) your description upthread of “either Alice betrayed Bob, or she didn’t”. Betrayal is very much not an atomic object (and importantly so, not just in the generic “everything is complicated” sense)
(Note: the following all tracks how I personally use the word Betrayal. Notably, others might use the word differently. But, the fact that people use words differently is a related, important point)
Betrayal is a meaning that people assign to actions, and only really has meaning insofar as people assign it. It exists in social reality, personal subjective experience, and interpersonal subjective experience. It is not objective fact about reality, except insofar as personal subjective experiences are part of reality.
If Alice and Bob have an explicit agreement that they are monogamous, and that cheating is an act of betrayal, and then Alice has sex with Carl, there are three concrete facts of the matter: Alice had sex outside the relationship, Alice took an action that both parties agreed they would not do, and furthermore agreed was a betrayal. In this case it’s all pretty clear cut.
But, often (I would expect most of the time), instead it’s more like people have a bunch of implicit expectations, some of which they don’t understand themselves.
Suppose Alice is spending a lot of time with Carl. Is that a betrayal?
Suppose Alice is not spending much time with Carl, but feels attraction to him that she’s deliberately cultivating. Is that a betrayal? What if she’s not deliberately cultivating it, but neither trying to squish it? What if she tries to squish it, but sort of halfheartedly?
Suppose Alice and Bob have been on one date, and not discussed monogamy. Bob has sex with Charlotte. Is that betrayal? Is it betrayal after the second, third, or 10th date?
Suppose Alice watches a movie that Bob had been looking forward to seeing together. Is that a betrayal?
You might say “betrayal has a specific meaning, and it applies in [whichever those cases you think it applies to]”. But I am quite confident people will not agree on which is which.
And in many other cases, people might rationally agree “betrayal has not taken place”, and nonetheless feel a deep sense of having been betrayed. And if Alice tells Bob he is being unreasonable… maybe she’s right, but nonetheless there’s going to a nagging pit in his stomach that is going to poison the relationship, and trying to reason his way out of those feelings is not going to work most of the time. (I’m not sure whether you’re claiming it works that way for you, but I am claiming fairly strongly it doesn’t work that way for many (and probably most) people).
Even in the most explicit first case, “betrayal” still lives entirely in social reality, perception, and assigned meaning. There’s an alternate Alice and Bob who still agreed to be monogamous, and nonetheless… don’t find themselves caring that much about the breaking of the agreement, and who reserve the word “betrayal” for things they care more about. (You may or may not want to be in a relationship with them, but that’s a fact about you and your own sense of what betrayal means and what things you assign it to, not a fact about objective external reality)
(Removed text that merely pointed out typos.)
One can say such things as you have said, about almost anything. A tree, after all, is only a meaning that people assign to certain collections of molecules (or quarks, or waves in the configuration space, etc.). Democritus: “By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.”
And we can ask these kinds of questions, too: is a palm a tree? Is a bonsai tree a tree? There are difficulties in categorizing; what of it? We know all about this.
Alice and Bob, we may imagine, agreed to various things. Some of the agreements were explicit; some, implicit, or assumed. Some of them were inherited from a larger social context. Perhaps Bob thought that an agreement existed, but Alice had no such notion. Perhaps Alice only claims this. We can investigate this; we can ask Alice, and ask Bob, what was said, and what was expected; we may believe their answers, or not. Bob (or Alice) may claim that any reasonable person would understand that such-and-such agreement had taken place; Alice (or Bob) may disagree; we may agree with the one, or with the other. Alice, or Bob, may come to see that they were wrong, and the other was right; or, they may not. Perhaps Bob concludes that Alice really didn’t think any obligation obtained, but also that Alice is so unreasonable and weird a person that she cannot be trusted, despite a lack of malice. And so on, and so forth. And, supposing that we do conclude that some betrayal has occurred, we (or Bob) may judge it to be relatively mild, and well within the bounds of what may be atoned for, and forgiven… or, instead, something terrible, from which a relationship cannot recover. There is a range of possibilities.
Nevertheless, we are still talking about what happened—about obligations, expectations, agreements, intent, responsibility, and actions taken—and not about how everyone currently feels about it!
I would need an example of this, before I could say for sure what I think of it. My suspicion is that, in such cases, I would say: “Bob has some issues to work through, if he has such irrational feelings”. Labeling feelings as ‘irrational’ isn’t something to do lightly; but if, indeed, the label applies, then the problem is of a very different kind, and should absolutely not be conflated with the question of what are the facts of the matter.
In my experience, this kind of a thing tends to come up when there has been no explicit agreement about something, but previous experience implies a particular thing, and the other person knows that this matters for the other.
For example, say that Alice is Bob’s aging mother who is lonely in her old days. Bob has explicitly promised to visit her every week. Over time, this has ended up usually meaning twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Now one week it happens that Bob visits on Tuesday, as normal, and doesn’t say anything about any changes to the normal schedule. Then on Thursday, when Alice asks what kind of dinner Bob would want to have on Friday, Bob says “oh, I’m not coming this Friday, I’ll see you next Tuesday”.
In this situation, Alice might on an intellectual level think that there was no betrayal. The explicit agreement was for Bob to visit once a week, and he never promised anything else. It just kind of happened that Bob ended up visiting more regularly, but he never made a promise to visit every Friday. Nor did he on Tuesday say that he would visit next Friday. Alice just kind of ended up assuming that he would, like usual.
On the other hand, she may still feel betrayed, in that she had expected Bob to visit on Friday. In particular, there may be a feeling that Bob should have known that based on him having visited on every Friday for the last six weeks, Alice would expect him to visit the coming Friday as well. Alice may feel that Bob should have understood his mother well enough to know that unless Bob specifically says that he will not be coming, Alice will plan her week under the assumption that he is coming. (Depending on how introspective Alice is, she may not be able to articulate all this, and just feel that “I know that Bob never said that he would come on Friday, but I still feel betrayed”.)
Habitual action creates expectations (especially in informal contexts, like interactions between family members). This is a perfectly ordinary thing. If (as you suggest at the start of the comment) Bob also understands this fact, then there’s nothing unusual here at all; Bob has created an expectation that he’ll be coming on Friday, and he knows this, and he then violates this expectation. This is a betrayal, especially given that it’s his mother we’re talking about, and given (as you say) that this matters to her (and that Bob knows this, too).
Now, the expectation isn’t very firm, and the betrayal isn’t very severe. Like I said before, there are degrees of this thing. But the situation isn’t of a different kind. So why call Alice’s feelings irrational?
It seems to me that this isn’t at all an example of the given extensional definition.
Fixed, whoops.
I understood Said to mean something like “either Bob would think he had a convincing case that Alice betrayed him, or Bob would change his mind, and assuming Bob follows some standards of reasonableness, a Reasonable Observer would agree with Bob.”
So early on in this thread I said:
and later I said:
I thought the second does an adequate job of pointing out “betrayal is complicated,” in that a discussion of it could go many ways and I do not believe “betrayal is a malformed concept,” as pointed out in the first. Like, for any particular case, I think you could in principle reach a “fact of the matter” that either Alice betrayed Bob, didn’t, or that Alice and Bob have irreconcilable standards (which you might lump into the ‘betrayal’ case, or might want to keep separate).
Yes, this is a reasonable portrayal. Facts being what they are, nevertheless the purpose of all such exercises is to determine future actions taken by people, so what we’re (mostly) actually talking about here is facts as represented in the minds of the people involved. (This is, of course, true of a very broad spectrum of situations—far broader than only “interpersonal conflict” or similar.)
I have seen this misunderstanding happen and result in a significant amount of misery. (That is, Bob viewed themselves as being treated unjustly by Alice, who cared about Bob’s suffering and was interested in understanding it, but a big part of Bob’s suffering was that Bob and Alice didn’t share a notion of ‘justice,’ and so they couldn’t agree on ‘what happened’ or ‘what mattered’ because they had different type signatures for them.) I was not able to bridge it that time, despite seeing both sides (I think).
Where my attention is going at the moment is not the sense-impressions, or the things themselves, but the machinery that turns the sense-impressions into models of the things, and the machinery that refines that modeling machinery.
I think it’s difficult to keep one’s attention on that part of the process; seeing the lens instead of just seeing the object through the lens. I view “owning experience” as, among other things, an attempt to direct attention towards the lens using a rule that’s understandable even before you see the lens.
[I hope it’s clear, but it’s worth saying, Circling is a lot like meditation, and very little like courts. That is, I expect it to help you deepen your understanding of how you perceive the world and how others perceive the world, and for it to make difficult topics easier to navigate, but I expect it to sometimes do those things at the expense of figuring out object-level issues. As in this set of paragraphs, where I followed my attention from the object level case to the more abstract question of how we settle such cases.]
I do object here to some of the implications of saying “the point” instead of “Bob’s point.” (While thinking that it’s bad to miss Bob’s point.)
Like, given that Bob made the point, calling it ‘the’ point is probably legitimate, but it is interesting that in this situation Bob cares about this when Carl, put into the same situation, might not. The implication that I’m troubled by is the one where Bob is assuming a shared level of understanding or buy-in to their conception of where the importance is, while not seeing it as a choice out of many possible choices.
Like, in my mind it’s the difference between the judge, who orients around determining what The Law says about the case in front of them, and the legislator, who orients around determining which of many possible laws should be enacted. Or it’s mistaking the intersubjective and the objective, thinking that the rules of chess are inherent in mathematics instead of agreed on.
Indeed this is also fascinating and worth investigating, but: is Circling supposed to be for resolving conflicts and other object-level situations, or is Circling supposed to be for investigating this meta-level “how does the machinery operate” stuff? I’ve seen pro-Circling folks, you included, appear to vacillate between these two perspectives. (Perhaps it can be used for both? This would be surprising, and would increase the improbability of the pro-Circling position, but certainly cannot be ruled out a priori.) In any case, it seems to me to be an exceedingly poor idea to try to do both of these things, simultaneously. These two purposes can only be at odds, and it seems to me that trying to combine them is likely to do serious harm to both goals.
A similar point has to do with this bit:
Perhaps so, but it seems to me that this is all the more reason why Circling is an inappropriate tool with which to determine whether what you need is meditation, or a court[1].
That Bob and Carl would react differently may indeed be interesting. But as far as the troubling implication goes… all I can say is that “who agreed to what, with whom, and when”, and “what were everyone’s expectations”, and so on, are also facts. If Bob’s understanding was not shared by Alice… that, too, is a fact. It is not an easy one to establish… but in that it is not alone. Alice may say “I genuinely didn’t know that we were supposed to have had this agreement, Bob”, and Bob may believe her, or not, and they can figure out how to proceed from there. Nevertheless the discussion is still about what happened, not about how everyone currently feels about what happened.
Or, to be more precise, “something like a court”—that is, a stance where you take seriously that some accusation has been made, some alleged transgression, and attempt to determine the facts of the matter, etc. This need not be formal, of course, much less actually involve the legal system.
I think ‘better Circling’ involves leaning towards investigating the meta-level. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone’s first Circle be about exploring a dispute they’re involved in; that seems like it would be likely to go poorly. In situations that seem high-stakes, it’s better to understand the norms you’re operating under than not understand them!
I think it helps you understand conflicts, and that sometimes resolves them, and sometimes doesn’t. If Alice thinks meat should be served at an event, and Bob thinks the event should be vegan, a Circle that includes Alice and Bob and is about that issue might end up with them understanding more why they think and feel the way they do, and how their dynamic of coming to a decision together works. But they’re still going to come to the decision using whatever dynamic they use.
To the extent people think Circling is useful for mediation or other sorts of resolution, I think that’s mostly informed by a belief that a very large fraction of conflicts have misunderstandings at their root, or that investigating the generators is more fruitful than dealing with a particular instance.
I’m confused by this, because it seems to me to imply that I thought or argued that Circling was the tool you would use to determine how to resolve an issue. What gave you that impression?
Yes, that was inaccurate phrasing on my part, my apologies. I do stand by the idea I was trying to express, but am unsure how to concisely express it more accurately than I did… I will try again, in any case. So, here’s an example, from this very comment of yours:
So my question is: can Circling tell you “actually, what you need is not Circling but something else [like a (metaphorical) ‘court’]”? Or, to put it another way: when should you not use Circling, but instead use some ‘court-like’ approach?
My impression from your comments is that the answers given by the pro-Circling perspective are “no” and “never”, respectively. Now, if that impression is inaccurate—fair enough (but in that case I have further questions, concerning the meaning of the comments that gave me said impression). However, supposing that my impression is (at least mostly) accurate, then it does seem reasonable to say that Circling (if not the actual act of Circling, then the “pro-Circling perspective”, as I’ve been putting it) takes the function of determining what tool you should use (and answers “Circling, that’s what!” every time).
Or, to put it yet another way: are there situations of the same category as those which Circling is meant to handle (whether that be “interpersonal conflicts”, or any other kind of thing that you would assert Circling is appropriate for), but in which Circling is not appropriate, and a more ‘court-like’ method is better? If so, then: how do you determine this to be the case?
Now, all of this aside, and re: the rest of your comment: I confess I still do not know whether you think (and/or claim) that Circling is supposed to be used for object-level conflict resolution, or not. I think that this is important; in fact, I don’t know how much more progress can be made without getting clear on this point.
My first reaction is to pick apart the question, which suggests to me we have some sort of conceptual mismatch. But before I try to pick it apart, I’ll try to answer it.
I think Circling won’t “tell you” anything about that, except in the most metaphorical of senses. That is, suppose you’re not bought into using Circling for resolving issue X; Circling will likely bring that to conscious attention, and then you might realize “ah, what I really want to do instead is settle this another way.” But the judgment is yours, not Circling’s, because Circling isn’t trying to generate judgments. (I should note that it could be the case that the other participants either notice their own resistance to using the Circle in that way, or might notice your resistance before you do and bring that up, so I mean “yours” in the ‘final judgment’ sense as opposed to the ‘original thinking’ sense; you can end up agreeing to things you wouldn’t imagine.)
As mentioned before, if you’re not an experienced Circler, I wouldn’t use it as a conflict-resolution mechanism, and I would be suspicious of someone who was an experienced Circler trying to immediately jump to conflict-resolution with someone new to Circling. If you have a conflict where everyone thinks everyone understands the issue, and yet there’s still a conflict, I don’t think Circling will point towards a resolution.
I would be interested in seeing the things that gave you this impression.
I agree that settling that seems useful. I think your question attempts to be “yes xor no” but the answer to the question as written is “yes and no,” and so I responded with a question-substitution to try to identify the thing that I think divides the cases more cleanly.
That is, I claim that Circling can help people understand each other (and their way of interacting) better. Separately, I observe that many conflicts have, at their root, a misunderstanding. This generates the hypothesis that Circling would resolve many conflicts by knocking out the root misunderstanding generating them, or by transforming them from “two people trying to solve two problems” to “two people trying to solve one problem,” which may do most of the work of resolution.
Of course, not all conflicts have a misunderstanding at the root; sometimes only one of us gets to win the chess game, or decide what restaurant we go to, or whatever. For such conflicts, there’s no strong reason to think Circling would help. (There are weak reasons, like an outside-view guess that “if you think there are no misunderstandings, this is nevertheless sometimes a thing you think where there are misunderstandings,” but I wouldn’t want to make a strong case on weak reasons.)
So, wait. Have you ever used Circling to resolve conflicts? Or, seen it used this way? Or, know anyone (whose word you trust) who has used it this way?
I have seen… maybe a dozen attempts to use it this way that I can remember (at least vaguely). Some of them were successful, some weren’t; many had the flavor of “well, we haven’t resolved anything yet but we know a lot more now”. (Also I’m not counting conflicts about where the group attention should be going, which are happen pretty frequently.)
Some of the conflicts were quite serious / high-stakes; described somewhat vaguely, I remember one where a wife was trying to ‘save her marriage’ (the husband was also in the Circle), and over the course of an hour or so we got to the label of her felt sense of what was happening, figured out an “if X, then Y” belief that she had so deeply she hadn’t ever looked at it, and then when she asked the question “is that true?” it dissolved and she was able to look at the situation with fresh eyes.
I don’t remember being one of the primary parties for any of those conflicts; the closest was when I organized a Circle focused on me to work through my stance towards someone in my life that I was having a conflict with who wasn’t present. (I thought that was helpful, but it’s only sort of related.)
Also, I noticed a day or two ago that maybe I should back up a bit: when I’m talking about “resolving conflicts,” I mean something closer to “do work towards a resolution” than “conflict goes in, result comes out.” Like, if we think about democracy, there’s a way in which candidate debates help resolve an election, but they aren’t the election itself.
There’s not an arbitration thing going on, where you take a conflict to the Circle, talk about it for a while, and then the facilitator or the group as a whole or whatever says “well, this is what I think” and then that’s the ruling. Instead it’s much closer to Alice and Bob relating to each other in a way that conflicts, and that getting explored, and then sometimes Alice and Bob end up relating to each other in a way they agree on, and sometimes they don’t.
There’s also a clear way in which Circles are a conflict-generating mechanism, in that Alice and Bob can be unaware that they disagree on a topic until it comes up, and now they can see their disagreement clearly.
FYI this felt like a fairly buried lede to me. This feels like the important crux of the conversation.
Yeah, this description matches things I like about circling. I’ve had experiences with people who in normal life would want things of me that I don’t want to give them (e.g. types of social efforts and reassurances), and circling has given me space to practise not giving it to them when I endorse that, and introspecting in slow motion, understanding better and in more detail what both I and they are feeling (and I believe they’re learning things about themselves too).