Thanks to JL for these nice links to four strange gesture videos:


‘Nonviolent Gestures’ (comments are in Dutch)

As you can see in the fifth and last video these ‘gestures’ are part of a kind of hippie cult around the concept of nonviolent communication. Some people even created a Hyve for it (which is a Dutch version of Facebook).

Almost needless to say, I believe that our perceptual sensitivity to insults prevents this initiative to avoid ‘violent communication’ from succeeding. An insult is in the eye of the beholder and not in the message as such. If a non-violent communicator speaks hippie-talk to me, I will still be on the look-out for any disrespectful or derogatory undertones, and possibly end up feeling insulted anyway. Vice versa, I would much rather get a cheery finger from a card buddy if I just beat him in a game, then a solemn statement about his feelings. For all its good intentions, this nonviolent communication seems born out of frustration with humanity and a certain arrogance in thinking human nature could be improved with a few easy guidelines.

So, mister Rosenberg, please take your touchy-feely, softspoken message, stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine, and go **** yourself. Or should I say, I understand you have problems with fairly normal human communication, I see that you think you have found a better way for us, but I do not share your problem nor do I believe in your solution.

Ah well, perhaps I shouldn’t have written anything about it. If he reads my opinion he will probably be insulted anyway, no matter how I phrase it. Or he just thinks I am too dense to understand him. Or worse still, I am ‘part of the problem, not of the solution’.