I’ve been considering the banality of violence lately.
We have a cultural narrative that violence is extraordinary, that it only appears in these grotesque and inhuman ways – war, genocide, deportation – global phenomena that occurred passively, somehow – without actor, seemingly on their own, if you were to go by the New York Times headlines.
Even the more intimate violences – the persistent narrative is a stranger jumping from the bushes or the alley, possessed by drug or demon – when countless research studies have demonstrated again and again that the man most likely to harm a woman is her husband.
I think we ostracized violence culturally because we fear the violent parts within us – the in fact profoundly human desire to retaliate in the face of our own pain. And with so many societal patterns of domination – how could we not learn to repeat them by default?
We are violent with each other, I’d contend, all the time. Look for the little violences in your day today – be outraged not just by the global horrors, but by the ways in which you might coerce another. Where are you willing to permit a violation in order to get what you want?
(As always – be gentle with yourself in the inventory, friend.)
Much of my work in facilitation spaces goes unseen – process work, when done well, should remain the right balance of hidden and emergent. But when a group comes to me with a fraught conversation – a decision they don’t know how to make yet, an intractable conflict – I attend to these banal violences.
Who commands a room the moment they step into it? Where do participants seem differential? What is going unspoken that needs to be surfaced?
And my job is to offer the conditions that make care more likely, that make change more possible, that make the day more delightful.
Facilitation is more like play than it is work, after all, and connection is the antidote to violence.
I’m booking out board retreats and strategy convenings for July-September. If you’re planning a hard conversation this summer – a leadership offsite, a community listening session, a shifting strategic plan – I’d love to attend to the process so your content expertise can flourish. Let’s talk.
