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.
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.