Pointers
- 00:00 Introduction to my Jackal mother tongue
- 03:10 Marshall’s reason for learning Giraffe – I wanted to live in harmony with my values – and Jackal interfered with that goal
- 06:29 Marshall found that people who lived more in harmony with their values spoke a different language. Hhe studied and learned their language. Technically he calls this way of speaking the process of nonviolent communication, but he likes to play with the image of ‘Giraffe’ – The giraffe practices a language of the heart, a language of compassion.
- 07:14 First reason why he likes Giraffe – giraffes are honest to others, without criticizing, judging or blaming – it is a new kind of vulnerable honesty from the heart
- 07:58 When a person wears jackal ears, the chances that we get our needs met are close to zero
- 08:49 Second reason why he likes Giraffe – giraffes can see better into the future – any motivation other than joy, creates ecologically unsafe conditions. In particular motivation by fear, guilt, shame or depression.
- 09:30 Marshall relates his personal story how he grew up as a street jackal in Detroit and then turned into a professional psychotherapist jackal at university.
- 10:48 Song ‘Shrink’ speaks to the missing heart connection in psychiatry
Transcript
It always seems funny for me to introduce myself as a Giraffe teacher, because Giraffe is not my mother tongue. My mother tongue is the language of Jackal. I don’t know if any of you have ever heard Jackal spoken … I hope not.
It’s a language that – I believe – is at the root of violence throughout the planet. Because people who are taught this language of Jackal have a difficult time resolving differences with other people peacefully. And people who are taught this language have difficulty sharing resources in a fair and equitable manner.
So I hope that they have outlawed this language in Denmark, that you’ve never heard it. But just in case you ever come across it, I’d like you to at least be aware of what I mean by the language of Jackal.
Let’s assume tonight that you’re my students and I give you a task to do. But instead of doing the task you sit at your chair, drawing a picture of me with a knife in my back and blood spurting out. Now, how do I evaluate you, if I am a Jackal-speaking person? ‘You’re mentally disturbed.’ This is typical of the language of Jackal. When you have a difference with somebody and you don’t understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, you think of what’s wrong with them. So when you are a Jackal-speaking person, you have a very large vocabulary for judging who is what.
Or let’s say tonight I use some words, that you don’t understand. – “You’re a slow learner.” But what if you use some words, that I don’t understand? – “You’re rude and socially inappropriate.” What if I speak so rapidly you can’t follow me? – “You have an auditory problem .” What if you speak so rapidly, I can’t follow you? – “You have an articulation problem.” See what a violent language it is? When there is a difference, you think in terms of what’s wrong with the other person.
The psychiatrist Gerald Jampolsky says that as human beings we have a major decision to make each moment. Do we want to be right or do we want to be happy? You can’t do both. Jackal is a language of those who want to be right. Because the whole time you’re taught to think and communicate in Jackal, you are always up in your head analyzing who is what. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who’s normal? Who’s abnormal?
Now why did I shift from speaking Jackal to learning a new language? Well I found that this language that I had been taught was not one that made it easy to live in harmony with my values. There are certain things that I value very dearly and I found that this language got in the way. Instead of helping me live in harmony with my values, it interfered.
So what are the values that led me to search for another language? I’d like to clarify the values upon which the language of Giraffe is based, with a song written by a woman in the United States who studied Giraffe with me for a while and wrote this song to clarify the quality of relationships that I value highly, I developed Giraffe to help me live in harmony with.
This is a song called ‘Given to’.
I never feel more given to, than when you take from me.
When you understand the joy I feel giving to you.
You know my giving isn’t done to put you in my debt,
But because I want to live the love I feel for you.
Receive with grace may be the greatest giving.
There’s no way I can separate the two.
When you give to me, I give you my receiving
And when you take from me, I feel so given to.
I’m interested in that quality of relationship. I’m interested in how we can give and receive in that way, in the family, in the workplace, and politically. I think it’s not only possible for us to do business that way, I think it’s our natural state. I think we are intended as a species to relate that way. So I have been interested in the people who are able not only to believe in that quality of connecting between human beings, where people do things purposely to enrich one another’s well-being. They don’t motivate through fear, guilt, or shame. They motivate one another simply being aware that the natural state of human beings is to willingly enrich the life of one another.
So I’ve been interested in the people who live that way and studying them is when I came across this language of Giraffe. I noticed that people who were living in harmony with the kind of values that I described spoke a language that’s quite different than the language that I was brought up to speak. And I studied this language and I tried to learn it myself.
And then – as I mentioned earlier – I’ve now been teaching this language for several years. Technically I call it a process of nonviolent communication, but as you can see this evening, I like to play with this little image of calling it Giraffe language.
And I like Giraffe as a symbol for this process of communication for several reasons.
As we’ll see tonight, Giraffe is a language of the heart. It redefines honesty. When we are Jackal speaking people, when we say we’re honest, what we mean is we tell other people what’s wrong with them. Giraffe defines honesty in quite a different way, as we will see. When we are honest in Giraffe we are honest from the heart. We have a way of openly revealing what’s going on within ourselves, without in any way using language that criticizes, diagnoses, judges, interprets or attacks others. This will be a theme I’ll return to several times this evening, that anytime another person hears anything coming from our mouth that sounds like a criticism … or a judgment – or an analysis – or a diagnosis, the likelihood that we can get our needs met is almost zero. Because when people hear any language that sounds that way to them, most of their energy goes into defending themselves or counter-attacking. And even if they do what we want, if we get them to do it, because we have judged them and criticized them, they are likely to do what we are asking motivated by fear guilt or shame.
And the second reason why I like the image of the Giraffe is a Giraffe can see into the future better than other animals because of its height. And it can see that any time people do what we ask, motivated by fear guilt or shame, we lose. We lose even when the other person does what we ask them to do. Because when people are motivated by fear, guilt or shame, it creates very destructive ecological consequences.
I grew up speaking a rather harsh dialect of Jackal. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan in the United States. There I spoke a dialect of Jackal called ‘Street Jackal’. For example, if somebody pulls out in front of you in traffic: – “You idiot!!” That’s on a good day!
Then I went to the university and I got a doctor’s degree in ‘Professional Jackal’. Now if you pull out in front of me in traffic: – “You pseudoneurotic schizophrenic!!” So I saw that the profession I had been trained in was just teaching me a more sophisticated way of criticizing and attacking others. It taught me a way of mentally diagnosing and analyzing people, which is what I thought was the problem that got them to see me to begin with. So I decided that Giraffe would be a much better process even in the counseling situation, which is one of the reasons I gave up being a professional jackal.
When I went to a shrink in a clinic near me, He said I was a case of total pathology.
I said: “Shrink, I knew that before I came in. I need someone to care – not just analyzing.”
He asked me, if I had any strange habits. Oh, I said, a few! But I was always willing to learn some more.
So he gave me some pills he said to take him each day, But I said pills wouldn’t take my blues away.
I said shrink my blues come from people like you, Who know what I am, but not what I’ve been through …
See folks he was one of those old-fashioned doctors: He still thought you needed a prescription to get drugs.
Well that shrink saw what he was trained to see. He just never got around to seeing me.
So I left that shrink, I wasn’t impressed. And now there’s two who flew the cuckoo’s nest.