Encourage vs Dictate:

We should encourage people to live better lives. Encouragement is not dictation if absent of force and requirement. I can tell you what to do but you don't have to do it. Now, how I go about trying to persuade a person could be less effective. Therefore, it would be better to find more effective ways of encouraging people. But, at the same time, less effective means of trying to inspire people is not automatically and always coherence, as in dictation.

Legality vs Morality

I focus on legality. You were focus on morality and/or other things. Well, technically, legality could stop you from morality. So, legality will allow or disallow the freedom to be moral or not moral. So, the focus on legality is more important. Because the government could ban you from doing good. And in history, as you study history, you will see that. For example, in the United States, for 34 years, from 1933-1974, gold was illegal. That is bad. Gold is good. It is moral to have gold. It is good. But my government prohibited it. That is only one example. I can talk all day about that. Yes, morality is important. We should encourage people to do what is right. But sometimes, government tries to stop us from doing what is right.

Family

Your work with trying to help couples resolve their relationships which affects children is critical and very good, obviously. So, even as couples divorce, they should be thinking about their kids in a desire to negotiate something.

Interpersonal

Your approach with helping the couples figure things out from a personal perspective, from their point of view, from where they are, without getting lost in legality, is critical, of course, you are right about that.

Guns

Guns save people. You are mistaken. That is too bad. So, you can live without a gun. You are wrong, but you can do what you want. History can show you how you are wrong. There are too many examples. England came to the United States in 1775 for example to confiscate the guns just as the United Nations are trying to do so in 2020. Hitler took the guns from his own people. Stalin took the guns. Mao took the guns. Dick Cheney was trying to take the guns. Obama was trying to take the guns. Lenin did things. You can look at China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, the USSR, and the list goes on. First, they take the guns and then they take over.

Laws

A law can only be as good as the people who enforce those laws. I prefer a republic over a democracy. Kings can suppress people. I don't like tech cartels, money cartels, plutocracies, monopolies, etc. Now, some laws can be selectively enforced. Sometimes, a law, a bill specifically, can have hundreds of pages in the fine print. Sometimes, they steal money from people, AKA taxes, and government ends up not accountable for how they spend the money. They end up doing things that goes against the democracy, the will, of the people. Sometimes, a democracy can become mob-rule, etc.

Picking Battles

Well, you always have to pick your battles. So, you do that and that can be wise in the sense that life is short and you have to have priorities and pick and choose which things to battle first or more often. So, as long as you have your objectives in place, then you are wise to focus on the main objectives as opposed to getting distracted by other things. Choosing to judge can be potentially problematic sometimes if it is not your job perhaps, if you are busy with other main objectives, and more importantly if the judgements are too inaccurate, incomplete, bias perhaps, counterproductive from larger objectives, etc.

Support

Yes, your job is to help them make their own decisions as opposed perhaps trying too hard to force them to do exactly what you want them to do. If that is your job, then I guess that is your job. Now, your job description might be wrong, but a job is a job, perhaps. If I was you, I would take it a day at a time, a couple at a time. I would ponder whether or not I should judge or not. Well, technically, judgement is not personal. Judgement is simply like gravity. I can say, if you jump, you will probably come back down because of gravity. That is not really me judging you or maybe it is. But regardless, it is what it is. Gravity does it, even if gravity is only a theory. I know that people jump up and they go down. People can call that a judgement. And it is good to know judgements. Now, different situations can be different. And life is complex. So, it can be hard to always know which decisions are better. It can be difficult to always know who is right and wrong. Generally, the man and the woman can both be right and wrong in regards to many different aspects of their relationship and the details.

Pacifism

You must be a pacifist. Women generally are and women should be as they're generally the mothers and mothers should have that mindset for the sake of their children. Men should not.

Collateral Damage

Yes, true, parents blow up and their kids are affected by the metaphorical explosion. So, you always gotta defuse those bombs, I agree, for the greater good, to save the kids, to limit the damage being done, some which can be contagious.

Taking Sides

Yes, taking a side as a counselor is generally dangerous because you can be wrong. Even as a camp counselor myself for five years, I was sometimes wrong perhaps. Well, it depends on whether your gut is aligned with what is right. But of course, you may not have enough information that could help you pick a side. And like I said, both sides are generally wrong. But hypothetically, if one side was right, I would pick that side in a heart beat. Well, unless if I was trying to persuade the other person. But in my brain, I would still pick a side. But I may want to sometimes keep that to myself. So, it depends. And it is always dangerous for people to pick sides. Not impossible. It is not that you should never ever, even privately, pick a side. It's just so incredible complex.

Consensus

Consensus is valuable. I agree. That is the value of dialog. I'm a big fan of dialog. Many relationships rot from the inside-out due to a lack of communication. Same thing with families and local communities.