Beyond NAP: intimacy

Intimacy is the state of being close to another person: emotionally, intellectually and physically. Intimacy is a social value which is not discussed a lot in writings of libertarians and anarchists. But intimacy is at least as important as NAP. Babies who do not experience it die. Grown ups who do not experience it wither.

Intimacy is related to NAP because NAP is generally necessary for intimacy. But it is not sufficient. Non-aggression is passive and intimacy is active. Ones behaviour and language can be completely NAP, but he may have no closeness with anyone. On the other hand many people who are a bit aggressive still manage to have intimacy with someone some of the time.

Here is a table showing what people who influenced me over the years think about the Non-Aggression Principle and about intimacy. For completeness, I also added a column for rationality.

The last row is what I currently think. I have not completelly made up my mind on many detals.

	Rationality (private)	Universal NAP (social)	Intimacy (social)
The pope and his crew	Good but faith is better	Good but does not apply to children. Also the need to defend some beliefs, serve in the army and help the needy triumphs non-aggression.	OK, but you should not have greater intimacy with anyone than you have with Jesus.
Murray Rothbard	Yeah, obviously, that's what intelligent people generally do.	People have a natural right to fully own themselves.	Not elaborated on other than in an (incorrect) observation that family is a small communism.
Ayn Rand	The foundation stone. Man's main tool of survival.	Good because violence negates reason and also there are no conflicts between rational men.	Admire great people and spend time with them. Have hot sex with them if they are opposite gender.
Ludwig Wittgenstein	We cannot think or articulate in any other way.	Not interesting philosophically.	Not interesting philosophically.
Stefan Molyneux	Equals thinking. No alternative available. Man's basic survival tool.	Good as the only universal ethics (universally preferable behaviour).	A great thing to achieve with your friends, lovers or family. Possible only with virtuous people.
My thinking now	We cannot articulate thoughts in any other way. Also man's main tool of survival.	1) required for intimacy 2) good amongst your social circle, people you directly interact with and people they care about BUT a) there are conflicts even between rational men (I disagree with Rand on this) b) no clear reason why every individual's ethics must be universal. It would be elegant and productive and if they did but moralities of different people can also conflict, like the morality of a lion and a gazelle do (so I do not agree with Molyneux on this)	A great thing to achieve with people. Different degrees possible with different people. Also man's secondary tool of survival.

Cab con

Last Thursday I was coming back home on a late train. I overslept my station and ended up having to return by cab. This is an analysis of what happened next from the perspective of the theory of verbal warning signals.

As I'm walking to the car, a stranger approaches me:

- "Can we do halves?" he asks. Premature introduction of the "we" is called "forced teaming".
- "Sure. Were you on the same train?" I ask.
- "Yes, I fall asleep."

Before getting into the cab:
- "I will need the cash so we need to stop at a cash machine," he informs me.

This is when I first thought that he will not pay his half of the fare. But I wanted to see what happens next. I think that such explicit comment is a perfect warning of a problem but not necessarily of violence.

Inside the car:
- "The quote was for one person, but since there is the two of you, I will need to charge you more," says the driver.
- "OK," I say.
- "Well, maybe you could give us a ride for free?" jokingly asks the stranger.  Dark or negative humour reveals true concerns of a person.
- "Haha," everybody laughs politely
- "Well, it was worth trying," he concludes.
- "Yes, no harm asking," says the driver.

While on our way:
- "So what made you take the last train?", I asked.
- "Something I should not be doing. I'll show you."  

He pulls his Black Berry and shows me a picture of a lady in red lingerie, my understanding is that she is a prostitute he has just visited. Giving too many details is a sign of a person concealing their true intentions.

The car stops next to a cash machine about half way to our destination. The guy gets off a spends about a minute at the mash machine. Then he shouts to the driver that his debit card did not work and we should continue without him.

This is how he breaks the contract with me and therefore steals my £5.

Verbal warning signals

In "Gift of Fear" Gavin de Becker writes that there are multiple behaviours, which verbally signal that an individual may become violent.

Here are some of them:

Forced teaming. This is when an individual starts referring to himself and you as "we" despite you not offering or consenting to becoming a "we" with him. A famous example is "We the people...".

Charm and niceness. "He was so nice" is a very common description given by a victim about perpetrator's behaviour before the attack.

Giving too many details. When people say the truth, they feel no need to back it with additional details.

Typecasting. This means verbal lowering of the social status of someone else through targeting their insecurity in a subtle way. It must appear to have been done incidentally, must be polite, and the edge must appear unnoticed by the attacker. 

Labelling is also a form of typecasting.

The purpose of typecasting is to get the victim to try to refute or live up to the label by behaving in a certain way. For example telling someone that "sometimes it is important to read between the lines" implies that the other person does not have the ability to understand the context of a conversation and can make them prove that it is not the case.

Interestingly typecasting is recommended as a pick up tool by the pick up artist Mystery. He calls it "negging". 

Typecasting is also hailed in "How to win friends and influence people" as  motivational tool. The author Dale Carnegie advises to "give the other person a fine reputation to live up to".

Loan sharking and unsolicited promise. Offering help which comes with explicit or implicit strings attached.

Discounting the word "no". A person who lets his "no" being discarded passes the test for a good victim. This process is called "an interview". This is one way in which victims are selected by process predators.

Mental inflexibility. A person can find it hard to adapt to changing circumstances or people. They can be attached to an idea in a rigid way or they can see themselves as lonely crusades of a cause.

Dark humour. Humour often reveals deep mental attitudes towards the world and people's true concerns. So dark humour can be a sign of a dark personality.

Hopelessness. Pessimism is a predictor of problems, including violence.


So how do these verbal signs fare as predictors of violence in real live?

The analysis of just the first 60 seconds of a random David Cameron's (prime minister of Britain) speech shows how common these violence signals are in the language of politicians.




00:00 -- forced teaming in the title "Let us deal with debt"
00:00 -- charm and niceness, this goes without saying.
00:12 -- forced teaming again
00:18 -- typecasting x7
00:44 -- loan sharking and unsolicited promise x2 or x4, depending how you count it

So to be fair to them, they do warn people of their traits. Unfortunately most people have the tragic ability to ignore these signals.

A counter example for NAP

It is possible that the non-aggression principle is not as universal as some people believe.

Here is an example of an individual for whom violating NAP seems to be working OK. Meet Prince Harry of Britain who basically violates NAP for living. First he parasites on the people who live in Britain by using the state to coerce them into supporting his lifestyle. And then he shoots at people overseas. (I do not have anything particularly against this individual. He is a just a representative of the political class whose face behind a monocular gun happened to greet me from a newspaper yesterday.)

At least superficially, violating NAP seems to be working OK for Prince Harry. Most of his life needs are being met: him, his family and friends are safe and secure, he has access to all the resources of the world, he has a nice lifestyle and can spend his time as he pleases. Or at least more so than other people can.

Perhaps habitually violating NAP makes him unhappy on some deeper level, but it is not necessarily so. Even if he understood the damage the state does, he might view the state the same way a farmer sees a goose force feeding pump -- as a tool of extracting resources from a different species.

Would Prince Harry be more happy if he stopped violating NAP? Would it increase his standard of living or gain more influence? Perhaps. After all Gandhi managed to achieve an enormous social position by being more NAP-friendly than others, so maybe this is a valid strategy for political persons. But equally well giving up privileges would be an awful idea for Prince Harry by any objective standard.

Or perhaps NAP is just not universally beneficial? Maybe it is wiser to only apply it to the people who one is vulnerable to i.e. the inner circle of friends, family and to be aggressive towards everybody else if it suits one? Most political people do that (knowingly or not) and it seems to be working well for them.

I find it hard to claim that no professional human parasite or predator benefits from violating NAP in some significant ways. But if some people can benefit from violating NAP, then:

• in what circumstances is it so?
• in what sense is NAP a "principle"?

Any answers -- please let me know.

Does NAP apply to language?

Our language carries a legacy of the authoritarian societies of the past. It has historically evolved to reflect what the ruling members of the society needed expressing: demands, dominance and intimidation. This language is still disconnecting people from each other today. This causes conflicts and makes the state grow.

If the anarchist evolution is going to happen through anarchistic means then the best step towards social change is to make room for more anarchy in our private social networks. This can be best achieved by applying the non aggression principle to these relationships.

I came across some good ideas for what this could look like in an excellent book by Marshall Rosenberg called “Non Violent Communication”. I do not believe Rosenberg is an anarchist but when reading his book, I could not stop thinking how deeply anarchistic his ideas are. He believes that linguistic violence leads to inefficient, unsatisfactory and unpleasant interactions. In extreme cases linguistic violence is a prerequisite for physical violence.

The most obvious form of violent language is making demands or telling people what they “must”, “should” or “are supposed to” do. The “must” is violent because it is an attempt to exercise authority and take away choice. Rosenberg believes that the “must” word was introduced by kings or other tyrants to allow them control their subjects. Without a “must” it would not be possible to give orders to soldiers or extract taxes from individuals. This word and its derivations are simply not used in non violent communication.

A similar example of aggressive language is giving uninvited judgement. For example saying “you made a bad decision” means that the speaker puts himself in a position of a judge of the behaviour of others and hence claims a position of authority. Claiming authority in this way is linguistic violence even if the judgement pronounced is positive.

Violence committed by the state goes unnoticed by the majority of people. They consider it a normal state of affairs. In a very similar way more subtle forms of linguistic violence escape most people’s attention.

One example of more subtle linguistic violence is labelling. It is easy to understand why labelling someone a “murderer” is the first step towards denying them empathy. The “murderer” becomes an abstract category. Everything he does or says can be from now on explained by him belonging to this category so there is no need to understand him as a person anymore.

But it might be less obvious that calling someone “a good programmer” can also be considered violent. One reason it is the case is because this means acting as a judge again. Another reason is that once someone is labelled “a good programmer” we start paying less attention to their actions. Hence the quality of the interaction with this person deteriorates.

A particularly violent form of labelling is making comparisons. Telling your son “you are a worse student than your friends” is likely to hurt him deeply. In addition to all ways in which labelling usually retards an interaction, making comparison will be perceived as unfair because the person being judged has zero control over other people, whose performance now contributes to his assessment.

I recommend Rosenberg’s book to anyone interested in reforming the way they communicate. Adopting a verbal non aggression principle makes inter human connections stronger and harder for the forces of social coercion to corrupt. And developing stronger and happier relationships with fellow men is a logical strategy for building a voluntary society.

I posted this text initially on the anarcho-capitalism-blog.

Two bad policemen

Policeman 1 lives in London and is a brother of my colleague from work which is how I heard about him. Policeman 1 often raids people's homes in search for illegal drugs and by doing so, he regularly violates the non-aggression principle. According to his brother, what Policeman 1 really likes about the job is seeing the scared faces of the drug dealers when their homes are being invaded. He interprets their emotional expressions as guilt and gets his satisfaction from watching it.

Policeman 2 lives in Wroclaw, Poland and is an acquaintance of my sister who related me a story he told her. Policeman 2 believes that one needs to be tough with the punks. One night he was walking home without the uniform and as five young men were passing him on a sidewalk he purposefully rubbed shoulders with one of them thereby actively engaging in a monkey dance. It took them some time to decide that they were offended and once they turned around to chase him, he did not run away, as he should have done. He did not apologise. He also did not tell them he was from the police, which would definitely end the confrontation. No, instead Policeman 2 chose to fight and because he was a trained martial artist he beat up one guy and the rest of them run away.

I am sure that there are good policemen out there who are emotionally mature and see their role as protecting people from violence as opposed to creating violence. Sadly that's not the case with the two stories I have recently heard.

Handling verbal abuse

It is possible to violate NAP through the medium of language. Any initiation of unwanted communication, which is not a response to prior violence, is verbal aggression.

Below is a fantastic example of verbal abuse I borrowed from Steve Pavlina's blog together with my analysis.

I really need help! I have a problem with confrontation. Its not that I want to be violent or anything (!) I'd just like to be able to think on my feet and hit back at people who seem to want to put me down at every opportunity. The other night I was at a rugby match when I asked this bloke if he was in the queue for the tickets (he was pretty close- hence the question). He said no, and then added for good measure "does it look like it?" and laughed. Now I thought of a dozen things I could have, should have, would have said to him after, but at the time, I was completely lost for words - which trust me, in a non-confrontational situation is a very unusual thing for me! Why can't I hit back with those fantastic one-liners that make arrogant and rude people squirm as much as their one-liners hurt and embarrass me? Why can't I stand up to people who make me feel inadequate and small? Why can't all those things I can easily think about afterwards come to me when I need them most?

Everytime I'm put on the spot about something I'm not really prepared for, I fold and my mind goes completely blank. Am I just a big woos, or a doormat, or too nice, or too shy? My own brother takes pleasure in telling me I have a fat arse,(which people say I don't have) or my hair's a mess, or that my opinions are "screwed up" - and I just laugh, and say nothing - can someone tell me how I can deal with people who actually hurt and embarrass me without being a complete ♥♥♥♥♥- I really hate to upset people, so prefer humour to angry reposts - so that I can stop looking like I'm the stupid one!!

I really need lessons in assertiveness!!!

My analysis: both the stranger and your brother attacked you verbally. The stranger implicitly said that your perceptive skills are impaired and your brother said that there is something wrong with your arse.

In general the best strategy against violence (including verbal abuse) is:
1. Avoid dangerous situations if you can.
2. If you are already in a dangerous situation then leave the area as soon as possible (flight).
3. Only if you cannot flight then defend yourself (fight).

So in case of the stranger, you should just leave the area. Say nothing, keep straight. Move on to do your business. Do not let the predator waste any more of your energy.

In case of your brother, assuming you want to maintain contact with him, you cannot escape and therefore you need to defend yourself. The assertive defence is to reject the claim "I do not believe that my arse is fat" and not to counter attack. It is important that you do not explain or give reasons why you do not think this way. Assertive responses are short and they do not invite a further debate of the issue.

And then you have three options:

a) abandon the conversation "I do not feel like talking to you after what you said",
b) show honest curiosity "why do you say my ass is fat, help me understand why you keep saying this",
c) show your feelings if you think your brother will not hurt them again "I felt uneasy after you said this because I need respect, I would prefer if you tell me nice things in the future instead".

I recommend a) as a good start on the path of verbal self-defence. It is simple, low risk and it feels great.

The question why you are sensitive to verbal abuse is a separate one. I suspect this has a lot to do with your history and if you had been verbally abused by your family as a child. If this had been the case then I sympathise with you massively. If it is of any conciliation, many people have similar problems.