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The project has been playing the three minute game, which while notionally about consent, is that and SO much more. To say that it wiggles away at every aspect of my sense of who am i in this world, is an understatement. There is my sense of desire, or lack there of. My sense of entitlement or lack there of, and that aged old perennially thorny question: what (the heck) do i want.

Knowing what i want, when viewed through the lens of the game, seems to hint at the very act of creation itself. Such is the truly infinite scope of the question. Perhaps this post should be called: There's more to 'what do i want' than meets the eye. Instead, lets choose a smaller battle, and just look at what exactly is a request.

Evolving a language of request

The classic request syntax, that we all have had etched into our psyches by decades of exposure, it's so simple: Please can you... Done, right? Every one of us recognises that this is a directive or instruction that we want to take place now. Just how respectful of each others agency this is, is 100% determined by non verbals. We will return to non-verbals (as we always do).

On the other hand Martin, as one half of the consent package, offers us the simple stem "Will you...". Because of it's dialed down sense of directiveness (ie. zero hint of a demand), to the untrained eye this stem can easily appear not as a request, but as a question. It has a question mark on the end of the sentence, it invites a consent response. Yes or no.

This 'will you' form also tends to leave a bit of a void where the instruction to begin would normally sit. Or at best its taken as read.

To avoid going down this worryingly deep rabbit hole, i would love to just make a quick survey of where humanity is at socially and culturally around HOW we ask for what we want.

Lets start with a quick round up, starting from the most directive, instructional or imperative in tone.

Legacy forms of request

These contain varying degrees of power differential. Mostly they come from a time of class hierarchies, of monarchies and feudal aristocrats.

A couple of things to note here. 'Could', speaks to capacity. 'Would', speaks to willingness. The latter is a tad bit more directive, but as we shall see this misses the point.

The two naked "could/would you" forms are the only ones of this list that might ever have a question mark on the end. The please versions are softened forms of the others, but are in one sense more transparently directive than the ones with question marks. The please says simply, this is a request.

Before moving on I want to take a quick look at the history of 'please'.

The word please

The word please comes from Latin, via Old French, via Middle English. The Latin placere means "to please, to be agreeable." The Old French noun plais carried the same sense, giving rise to the polite expression s'il vous plait ("if it pleases you").

By the 14th century, English speakers were saying things like "As it pleseth you," "If it ples you," or "Would it ples you to..." These forms were used mainly among peers or by subordinates addressing their superiors.

By the 18th century the phrase had been shortened, and interestingly, co-opted for use by superiors to subordinates. That's how we ended up with the modern butchered form: simply "Please...".

Please, pleasant, and pleasure all share the same root word. This tells us that the original syntax contained an element of invitation that has since been lost. It went from an invitation to a directive, and completely lost its original meaning!

When i learned of this i confess to shedding a tear for the loss of the word's original goodness.

If the nicety 'please' was added to requests so as to impart less of a sense of dominance, this was maybe a result of the gradual transition away from unbridled royal imperialism, that took place after the English civil war, the French revolution etc.

Anyhow, my take away, rightly or wrongly, remains that 'please' is a major part of what makes a sentence containing the word, up til now, so clearly identifiable as a request.

Then modernity arrives

By the early to mid 20th century, even the word please became optional. The naked forms "Could you and Would you" crept into common use. These were directive requests disguised as questions, cynically perhaps, marking the beginning of the era of political correctness.

My reading there, is again, that the human psyche is aching to evolve, but its not quite there. The idea of mutual consent is still some way off. This was the time when bosses ruled over workers, and parents ruled over children with an iron fist. It finds those of us born last century much more likely to bear scars. Scars that so readily bubble to the surface, that say in a simple quiet voice: what i want doesn't matter.

The problem with the could you / would you form is that the extent of directiveness is ambiguous and again very much reliant on non verbals to ascertain the intent.

Carl Rogers

Now, by the middle of the 20th century, psychologist Carl Rogers was quietly spearheading something of a revolution around all this. He gave us the important concepts: empathy, unconditional positive regard and client centered, all of which imply a radical flattening of the power structure. He believed that empathy heals because it acknowledges our inherent biological wisdom, wisdom that had previously been buried under layers of oppression.

Sidenote: With his hippie era experiments in group therapy and encounter groups, Rogers forms a direct lineage behind modern day circling.

Ok, i promised a shallow dive, so moving on.

Rosenberg

Now a guy by the name of Marshal Rosenberg just happened to be a student of Rogers, at Wisconsin University in the 1950s. Rogers was his doctorate supervisor .

Rosenberg was inspired by Rogers trust in the human impulse toward growth, and the conditions we need for that. NVC was his interpretation of Rogers work.

While it is clear that Rosenberg gave us the phrase "Would you be willing to", what hadn't been clear to me was that, according to my reading, for its time this was so much more than just a piece of grammar. It was a seismic shift in culture, which placed NVC smack in the middle of a brand new paradigm that spoke of mutual autonomy, personal agency, and consent.

And here, i am just so struck by just how incredibly recent, in biological terms, theses ideas of interpersonal and relational development now seem.

Authentic Relating

So this part is easy. AR gives us:

We could think of the request here, as having three separate parts:

• Owning desire: "I'd like..."
• Naming the action: "...you to X."
• Inviting choice: "...if that is good for you."

Unlike NVC's version, these are statements not questions. Revealed statements, as in, Reveal your experience. They also: "Express desire without attachment". The without attachment part means, like in NVC, there is no expectation of compliance. And so a typical response is just another instance of reveal my experience: eg: "Actually that feels good to me", or "I'm noticing some reservations".

The wheel of consent

Alright we get to wrap this up now. Finally.

Martin gives us twin forms : May i... and Will you... May i, seeks permission. Will you, seeks help, ie. a request. 'Will you', as i mentioned at the start, to the untrained eye, can seem incomplete. That's because it is.

So instead lets look at the full process:

In the game we generally see a clarification stage, where the giver makes sure they understand the receivers request. And there might also be some negotiation.

But, here we can see that a full request involves a, sometimes extensive, handshake process. By a process of successive reveals we are iteratively constructing what AR calls a shared reality. And it works without even a single directive statement.

The tectonic plates of bio-psycho-social evolution are shifting beneath our feet. As the dust begins to settle, we can just so clearly see how AR with its long form request syntax is calling us to hold precious our own and each others choice, agency, and desire.

Friend, if it pleases you, will you agree that this is indeed a brave new world?