Many of the problems of “to be” are about consciousness of abstraction. If you actually know what you mean because you tabooed the word and are forced to explain what you mean that helps with the problems of “to be”.
On the other level should is about obligations. The intention of not using the word should in NVC is not just being conscious about when you say that there’s an obligation but about not using obligations.
I also think that once one learns to think in that new mode, bringing back “should” as a shorthand doesn’t necessarily cause any problems.
Coming from Protestent ethics the idea that one has an obligation to do things that are benefitial if there’s no cost to doing them is very strong in Western culture. If you are telling a friend that there was a $100 bill laying on the street and you didn’t pick it up because you didn’t want to, you are likely being faced with strong negative judgement often paired with feeling guilty about not taking the slam-dunk option.
Further down I believe that even if one generally doesn’t do things because of feeling obligations it’s still useful to have a word for things that are obligations.
Being able to make a promise to another person and feeling bound by an obligation that the promise creates might still be valuable even for a person that takes most of their actions for reasons for reasons that are not driven by obligations.
This reminds me of a talk where a person said that for some people with terminal illnesses actually must do certain things. If the don’t they literally die.
Combined answer to both your comments
Many of the problems of “to be” are about consciousness of abstraction. If you actually know what you mean because you tabooed the word and are forced to explain what you mean that helps with the problems of “to be”.
On the other level should is about obligations. The intention of not using the word should in NVC is not just being conscious about when you say that there’s an obligation but about not using obligations.
Coming from Protestent ethics the idea that one has an obligation to do things that are benefitial if there’s no cost to doing them is very strong in Western culture. If you are telling a friend that there was a $100 bill laying on the street and you didn’t pick it up because you didn’t want to, you are likely being faced with strong negative judgement often paired with feeling guilty about not taking the slam-dunk option.
Further down I believe that even if one generally doesn’t do things because of feeling obligations it’s still useful to have a word for things that are obligations.
Being able to make a promise to another person and feeling bound by an obligation that the promise creates might still be valuable even for a person that takes most of their actions for reasons for reasons that are not driven by obligations.
This reminds me of a talk where a person said that for some people with terminal illnesses actually must do certain things. If the don’t they literally die.