This feels like lib shit. Some good practices, but this idea that if we just told our landlords we had a need for housing they would understand and not evict us is illogical & puts the need for proper communication on the one without the power.
I don’t know anything about it except this post, but immediately all I can think of is that the relationship of tenant to landlord is one characterized by systemic violence, as is most power relations under capitalism. Lots of people idolize the concept of non-violence while never acknowledging the violence inherit in the system :dennis:
I listened to this several years ago and thought it was valuable at the time. I remember coming away from it thinking it was something I would never be able to put into practice because of my own lack of discipline and habits of self-denigrating monologue. I don't think his definition of non-violence is the type that involves allowing yourself or others to be kicked. I do think he extrapolates the efficacy of his technique into outcomes that are frankly naive.
Some of the things he talks about peripheral to the topic of the training reminded me of things that I read in Graeber's Utopia of Rules - expressed in psychobabble rather than sociobabble. Specifically the shit about the language and logic of bureaucracies facilitating violence or crystalizing structures of domination. Both of them also hint at the allure of building these kinds of structured relationships but propose a more satisfactory and stable alternative which requires a lot more work and empathy to maintain.
I have no idea how you would use this to address structural violence. I don't think it has any utility there.
