[solardev]

IMO the book itself addressed that point by suggesting that you try to find something to genuinely like about each person you engage with. The formulaic approach isn't meant to be the end goal, it's just a way to go from zero to some sort of common ground, from which a genuine connection can develop. It's really helpful for people who are totally inept at human conversation (like me) but it's just a starting place.

Nonviolent comms is similar... techniques for lowering people's defensiveness upfront and finding connection so that you can actually move forward with discussing the meat of the issue instead of being caught up in mutual dislike based on first impressions and preexisting biases.

[coldtea]

Dale's book is generic heuristics, hacks, and common sense advice mixed.

Nonviolent communication is more like cult/pseudoscience/horse manure mix.

[solardev]

Maybe they're not for everyone, and I certainly don't think they should be followed literally to the T like a cookbook recipe.

But Dale's book helped me go from virtually no friends to having many treasured relationships in my life, across interests and divides that I never would've even bothered to have explore if not for that book. It made me receptive to actually getting to know people outside my interest groups, and was as illuminating as it was humbling. It was the book that helped me realize there was so much more to people than the tiny bubble I was in. What may be common advice was, to me at the time, completely unheard of to me. If your parents and social groups don't naturally teach you this stuff, and you're an introverted computer nerd, it's a whole lot better than nothing. Are there better books out there? I'd love to hear about them.

Nonviolent comms can definitely feel cult like and wishy-washy. But it's been tremendously helpful for me in engaging with people across ideological gaps (chasms these days). And it may have saved my life on occasions when conversations got especially heated and emotional and violence was a very real possibility. For all of its teletubby tendencies, in the real world, it is much more able to establish slash remind people of human connection than the bitter street protests we've seen over the past few years. Its underlying message is to simply seek common ground and work outwards from there to solve common problems, rather than digging further into ideological trenches and seeing everyone outside it as the enemy. That particular part isn't necessarily cultish. It's just really hard to practice in the heat of the moment, so the rest of the book is a bunch of deescalation techniques mixed with, yes, fluffy feel good stuff.

Shrug. Just my review as someone whose life and relationships were made much more enjoyable after those two books. Not because I can manipulate people (still can't and wouldn't even if I could), but because they opened ways of thinking and feeling about people that I didn't have before. Together they taught me way more respect and empathy for people outside of my own comfort, interest, and ideological zones.