Hotel California Cosmology
The unique blend of Eastern and Western mysticism, science, and parapsychology that characterizes California Cosmology makes so much intuitive sense to me that it is difficult to even describe why that is so. In my review of Jeffrey Kripal’s book on Esalen I gave it a pretty fair shot, so I won’t spend time tonight trying to say more. Instead I want to introduce its evil twin, what I call Hotel California Cosmology.
California cosmology is what I grew up on, catching glimpses on the radio, tv, and on the streets as a Bay Area youngster in the 1960s and 70s. It was wild and free, challenging, esoteric, erotic, and hinted of a grand future for humanity. It was also what I was looking for as a teenager, the lucky number on which I placed all my chips as I extricated myself from the staid environment I was raised in and headed out on my own.
My chief concern, once I moved to Berkeley at 17, was being able to tell the difference between the real thing and the cheap or dangerous imitation. My first success was landing a job at the Lhasa Karnak herb store on Telegraph Ave., where I learned a lot about healing plants. In a near miss, I went down to Shambhala Books one evening when Robert Anton Wilson was scheduled to speak.
I got halfway through the door when I caught sight of him in his bulky Alpaca sweater surrounded by acolytes, and a strange thing happened. He creeped me out instantly. I was physically repelled by his energy and by the whole scene around him, so I turned around and left. That was the first time I’d ever had such a strong negative intuition, and I consider it a minor miracle that I had enough sense in my innocence to pay attention to it.
But when you are searching for transformation, you can’t stay safe all the time. Sooner or later you will be sucked in by something and lose your bearings, because that’s the only way to undergo a powerful change. Finding yourself again is the tricky part, of course, but that’s kind of like waking up from a dream. First you have to fall asleep.
In my case, I was again fortunate to land in the Bay Area direct action community in the early 1980s, where anarchist coffeehouses, collective living and Pagan spirituality brought together a wonderful cast of characters. There was a whole lot of transformation going on, and the good outweighed the bad most of the time. I think if you can say that about the pivotal times in your life, you’ve done pretty well.
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.
The best example of this is Nonviolent Communication (NVC), 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.
- 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 ceremonial leaders evoke an emotional response rather than a sense of Spirit?
- 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?
January 15th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
God you’re good! I love reading your posts.
January 15th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
I love your description of applied NVC!
It makes sense for NVC to exist at this time in history. NVC is the natural outcome of where extreme Political Correctness and partisanism intersect. A cosmos where individuals get to censor themselves so that they can’t possibly offend anyone, at any time, for any reason.
This is also a time where hyper-partisanship vilifies people who dare speak to “them”, let alone try to understand other peoples’ point of view.
Put them together and where they intersect – tah dah!
If you get good enough at speaking the new paradigm, you can evade responsibility, passively blame others and (I love this part) claim that it’s all very profound.
It seems like so many people need to have every little thing in their life be profound. When I discovered this I realized that it has changed every aspect of my life – and I’ll never be the same again :-)
January 17th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Amen to your comments about NVC! As a political activist I had multiple experiences with people using/promoting/teaching it, and most of them drove me right up the wall. More of an incitement to do violence…well, you know — just kidding.
I know the intention at base is a good one, but in practice it too often seems to lead to Orwellian extremes…
Robert
January 21st, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Anne, I love this:
“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.”
Brilliant as you so often are! It is what I love about peer community – people go off and forge a vital path and then can share the fruits of that labor! Hear hear!
At the risk of you feeling ill, however, NVC doesn’t have to be used badly. It is like any other tool and yes, is oft abused. I for one have found some of it’s ideas to be helpful, though in actuality I seem to have come to them from my own work rather than any direct link to Herr Rosenberg. In trying to own my own life force and power, I have, for example, switched to phrases like “I am so happy to be with you” rather than “you make me so happy.” Besides which, the former is just more accurate language and therefore communicates more rather than less.
And we can also say things like: “I’m pissed off that you didn’t follow through on your promise so I’m unlikely to trust you with a task next time, and frankly, this may jeopardize our working relationship.” And in that case, some of us do indeed move on.
Love to you.
January 21st, 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.
Weird, huh?
January 21st, 2009 at 9:33 pm
It seems I have struck a chord here—I am very glad I’m not the only one who finds Marshall Rosenberg’s creation insufferable. I agree that NVC can be a useful study, particularly for learning how to separate our feelings from our perceptions. However, Rosenberg also believes that Israel and Palestine could solve all their problems if they only learned how to use “I” statements. No, seriously.
My kids all learned how to use “I” statements by the time they were five. By age eight, they could mock them expertly. The point is, it’s a technique that comes in handy but is in no way the apex of human communication, nor is it the key to world peace and harmony between nations.
Language is such a beautiful, complex, expressive gift. Why would we ever limit our ability to use it fully?
January 26th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Found your blog via dosenation.com, that referenced your criticism of 2012 and the Pinchbeck phenomenon. Thank you. Thank you. I run in a social group that tends to buy into HCC (particularly Pinchbeck’s bizarrely misogynistic brand), and it drives me nuts. I appreciate the checklist (and Deborah’s excellent additional point), it gives me something to structure around when I’m in the thick of having to hold my own against a sea of HCC’ers.
I find what I often get in return when I criticize or question an HCC-type belief is “Well, you just aren’t ready to hear it yet”, as if there were some spiritual rung I wasn’t capable of reaching, poor thing. Or some nebulous comments about how I’m being so negative, and if I would just think more positively, utopia would appear, and I’m really holding back everyone’s emotional evolution (malarkey, of course). Or in asking for common sense and logic as validation, I’m somehow playing into The Man’s hands.
What I dislike the most about HCC communities is the lip service paid to inclusiveness of all humanity, and the actual, pragmatic exclusivity of groupthink that keeps them alive.
January 27th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Oh yes, the old “you’re not evolved enough to understand” line. Jeez, what to say?
Glad to help with the checklist and all. I wish I’d had it 25 years ago, but then what would I satirize today?
January 27th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
HCC sounds like an excellent description of the California real estate market circa 2006 – kept alive by group think.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Anne: You have a serious misunderstanding of NVC if you think Rosenberg believes peace can be achieved solely by using I statements.
What you have convieniently left out is that the key to NVC is the intention of respecting and valuing the needs of others. If you don’t think better forms of dialogue and communication will bring peace to the middle east and other areas of the world than what do you think will work? More American missels for Israel to bomb Palestinian civilians? You can’t bomb your way to peace and most of us are not willing to sit around and do nothing.
July 7th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Robert, thanks for writing. I would like to think that there is some third option for the future of the Middle East besides sending more American missiles or sending more Americans who think they have the key to peaceful communication.
Effective diplomacy comes to mind, as do a number of other creative initiatives. NVC can be a helpful tool for individuals, but to think that it is the solution to an effective Middle East peace process, as Rosenberg has stated, just boggles the mind.