Re: Did you get the hand-puppets?

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At a certain point, though, you grow up. The charismatic charmer is revealed to be a narcissistic jerk. The clever facilitator is actually a control freak. And moments where it seemed something was being accomplished turn out to have been anomalies rather than progress.

If your goal is to find yourself again after going through a life-changing transformation, this is the time when you need to bow out and forge your own path. But some people take the opposite tack. While others are working to individuate from the group, these folks decide that what the group needs is to become more enmeshed with each other. More Kool-Aid please, and double the dose.

These are the conditions in which Hotel California Cosmology (HCC) thrives.

“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” as the song helpfully informs us.

HCC is all about manipulation, not of experience but of how you perceive and are allowed to talk about your experience.

And whereas the best examples of California Cosmology merge personal gnosis and critical thinking, with HCC there is only room for uncritical thinking and emotion—lots of emotion.

Analysis and logic are thrown out the window like so much old-paradigm hooey, and in its place we can all agree with each other some more about how we are experiencing something truly radical and life-affirming.

(old paradigm [gnosiscafe.com])

The best example of this is Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

NVC [en.wikipedia.org]

which has produced the most mind-numbing blather, and the most sanctimonious adherents, of any fad I have ever encountered. NVC completely strips dialogue of any accountability. It considers not just judgment but educating, praising, apologizing, and correcting to be coercive, blame-based communication patterns.

Intention is king in NVC, and if I tell you I will do something and then don’t do it, number one you can’t blame me because blame is a throwback to violent communication. Number two, I can hold the space for you to express your feelings if you can do so in a non-judgmental way that at no point asks me to apologize for my failure. Number three it was not a failure, and I appreciate the connection I feel with you around hearing your authentic experience. Number four, I hear that you still need me to do what I intended to do, and I am expressing that it is still my intention. Now, don’t we both feel better?

NVC is such a deep study in grandiose irrelevance, I’m sure I will have more to say about it at a later date. For now, though, I will close with a handy list of things to check for if you suspect you are caught up in a HCC vortex. I wrote these reality-check points in a comment to an earlier post of mine, but have rewritten them here in a way that is relevant to a broader range of Hotel California groups and ideas. If you suspect you are in a group that is under the influence of its own Kool-Aid, here are some things to check for in meetings, ceremonies and conversation.

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*Is deference always paid to the person with the biggest personality?

*Are moments of real connection repeatedly broken by a call to arms over a signature issue?

*Is the “ideal vision” invoked at times when questions or divergent opinions are expressed? Does that effectively end the debate?

*Do the leaders play on the emotions of others to mask a lack of integrity in themselves?

*Are policies and goals framed in an either/or, good/bad manner, rather than acknowledging a range of beliefs or possibilities?

*Are ethical concerns re-framed as issues of personal choice or group diversity, in order to deflect personal accountability? Is this maneuver successful?

Corboy note: in one of the comments following this article, another suggestion was

*When an idea, structure, or dynamic is called into question, is it framed and named as a personal attack by those invested in the idea, structure, or dynamic?

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1/21/2009 at 4:03 pm
I have at least one more thing to add to your checklist. I know I can probably come up with more…but this is the most blatant, pervasive, and destructive dynamic I’ve experienced in the HCC culture I still have limited association with. It’s this particular dynamic which distorts NVC into cult communication. So here goes;

When an idea, structure, or dynamic is called into question, is it framed and named as a personal attack by those invested in the idea, structure, or dynamic?

If so, you are in HCC territory. The best thing to do is to immediately name what is happening. Then, prepare to be told that although the words weren’t technically a personal attack….they caused a “feeling of being attacked” and in HCC territory there is no differentiation for those in the most power…if they Feel something, it is True. I have countless examples of this, but my favorite is being told that something I wrote on an e-mail list, although the words were beautiful and loving, and on the surface no one could find fault in them, the reader KNEW because of how she felt that they were in fact a personal attack.

As a therapist, I work helping people understand that feelings are simply that….feelings. They can act as alerts and give information, but all too often our feelings can be like misfiring car alarms….not truly reflecting what is happening outside our own operating system.

I’ve used NVC as a tool and taught it to clients, but it is a tool that does not work correctly when accompanied with the above dynamic. If that dynamic is operating, NVC not only becomes completely insipid, but downright manipulative. Feelings are used as weapons, but of course, in the most nonviolent way. But then HCC culture is indeed a house of mirrors.

The most tragic thing to me is that if these dynamics are operating, the most idealistic ideas/values of a community lose depth and the community is doomed it to operate on the spiritual level of a young child