Another kind of life-alienating communication is denial of responsibility. Communication is life-alienating when it clouds our awareness that we are each responsible for our own thoughts, feelings, and actions. The use of the common expression have to, as in “There are some things you have to do, whether you like it or not,” illustrates how personal responsibility for our actions can be obscured in speech. The phrase makes one feel, as in “You make me feel guilty,” is another example of how language facilitates denial of personal responsibility for our own feelings and thoughts.
In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, which documents the war crimes trial of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt quotes Eichmann saying that he and his fellow officers had their own name for the responsibility-denying language they used. They called it Amtssprache, loosely translated into English as “office talk” or “bureaucratese.” For example, if asked why they took a certain action, the response would be, “I had to.” If asked why they “had to,” the answer would be, “Superiors’ orders.” “Company policy.” “It was the law.”
We deny responsibility for our actions when we attribute their cause to factors outside ourselves:
Once, during a discussion among parents and teachers on the dangers of a language that implies absence of choice, a woman objected angrily, “But there are some things you have to do whether you like it or not! And I see nothing wrong with telling my children that there are things they have to do, too.” Asked for an example of something she “had to do,” she retorted, “That’s easy! When I leave here tonight, I have to go home and cook. I hate cooking! I hate it with a passion, but I have been doing it every day for twenty years, even when I’ve been as sick as a dog, because it’s one of those things you just have to do.” I told her I was sad to hear her spending so much of her life doing something she hated, because she felt compelled to, and I just hoped that she might find happier possibilities by learning the language of NVC.
I am pleased to report that she was a fast learner. At the end of the workshop, she actually went home and announced to her family that she no longer wanted to cook. The opportunity for some feedback from her family came three weeks later when her two sons arrived at a workshop. I was curious to know how they had reacted to their mother’s announcement. The elder son sighed, “Marshall, I just said to myself, ‘Thank God!’” Seeing my puzzled look, he explained, “I thought to myself, maybe finally she won’t be complaining at every meal!”
Another time, when I was consulting for a school district, a teacher remarked, “I hate giving grades. I don’t think they are helpful and they create a lot of anxiety on the part of students. But I have to give grades: it’s the district policy.” We had just been practicing how to introduce language in the classroom that heightens consciousness of responsibility for one’s actions. I suggested that the teacher translate the statement “I have to give grades because it’s district policy” to “I choose to give grades because I want … ” She answered without hesitation, “I choose to give grades because I want to keep my job,” while hastening to add, “But I don’t like saying it that way. It makes me feel so responsible for what I’m doing.”
“That’s why I want you to do it that way,” I replied.
I share the sentiments of French novelist and journalist George Bernanos when he says,
I have thought for a long time now that if, some day, the increasing efficiency for the technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth, it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction and still less, of course, the indignation that cruelty awakens and the reprisals and vengeance that it brings upon itself … but the docility, the lack of responsibility of the modern man, his base subservient acceptance of every common decree. The horrors that we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable men are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile men.
—George Bernanos