Non-Violence

September 24, 2001

Terrorism and Nonviolence
By Arun Gandhi

“When in despair I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won; there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall.” M.K. Gandhi Understandably, after the tragedy in New York and Washington DC on September 11 many have written or called the office to find out what would be an appropriate nonviolent response to such an unbelievably inhuman act of violence.

First, we must understand that nonviolence is not a strategy that we can use in times of peace and discard in a moment of crisis. Nonviolence is about personal attitudes, about becoming the change we wish to see in the world. Because, a nation’s collective attitude is based on the attitude of the individual. Nonviolence is about building positive relationships with all human beings - relationships that are based on love, compassion, respect, understanding and appreciation.

Nonviolence is also about not judging people as we perceive them to be - that is, a murderer is not born a murderer; a terrorist is not born a terrorist. People become murderers, robbers and terrorists because of circumstances and experiences in life. Killing or confining murders, robbers, terrorists, or the like is not going to rid this world of them. For every one we kill or confine we create another hundred to take their place. What we need to do is dispassionately analyze both the circumstances that create such monsters and how we can help eliminate those circumstances. Focusing our efforts on the monsters, rather than what creates the monsters, will not solve the problems of violence. Justice should mean reformation and not revenge.

We saw some people in Iraq and Palestine and I dare say many other countries rejoicing over the tragedies at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It horrified us, as it should. But let us not forget that we do the same thing. When Israel bombs the Palestinians we either rejoice or show no compassion. Our attitude is that they deserve what they get. When the Palestinians bomb the Israelis we are indignant and condemn them as vermin who need to be eliminated.

We reacted without compassion when we bombed the cities of Iraq. I was among the millions in the United States who sat glued to the television and watched the drama as though it was a made for television film. Thousands of innocent men, women and children were being blown to bits and, instead of feeling sorry for them, we marveled at the efficiency of our military. For more than ten years we have continued to wreak havoc in Iraq - an estimated 50,000 children die every year because of sanctions that we have imposed - and it hasn’t moved us to compassion. All this is done, we are told, because we want to get rid of the Satan called Sadam Hussein.

Now we are getting ready to do this all over again to get rid of another Satan called Osama bin Laden. We will bomb the cities of Afghanistan because they harbor the Satan and in the process we will help create a thousand other bin Ladens.

Some might say, “We don’t care what the world thinks of us as long as they respect our strength. After all we have the means to blow this world to pieces since we are the only surviving super-power.” I question whether we want other countries to respect us the way school children respect a bully. Is that our role in the world? If a bully is what we want to be then we must be prepared to face the same consequences that a school-yard bully faces. On the other hand we cannot tell the world “leave us alone.” Isolationism is not what this world is built for.

All of this brings us back to the question: How do we respond nonviolently to terrorism?

The consequences of a military response are not very rosy. Many thousands of innocent people will die both here and in the country or countries we attack. Militancy will increase exponentially and, ultimately, we will be faced with other more pertinent moral questions: What will we gain by destroying half the world? Will we be able to live with a clear conscience?

We must acknowledge our role in helping to create monsters in the world, find ways to contain these monsters without hurting more innocent people, and then redefine our role in the world. I think we must move from seeking to be respected for our military strength to being respected for our moral strength.

We need to appreciate that we are in a position to play a powerful role in helping the “other half” of the world attain a better standard of life not by throwing a few crumbs but by significantly involving ourselves in constructive economic programs.

For too long our foreign policy has been based on “what is good for the United States.” It smacks of selfishness. Our foreign policy should now be based on what is good for the world and how can we do the right thing to help the world become more peaceful.

To those who have lost loved one’s in this and other terrorist acts I say I share your grief. I am sorry that you have become victims of senseless violence. But let this sad episode not make you vengeful because no amount of violence is going to bring you inner peace. Anger and hate never do. The memory of those victims who have died in this and other violent incidents around the world will be better preserved and more meaningfully commemorated if we all learn to forgive. Let us dedicate our lives to creating a peaceful, respectful and understanding world.

Dr. Arun Gandhi
is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of The Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence.
counterpunch.org/gandhi.html

There are those among us who have the idea that violence brings the conflict that promotes advancement - but I ask: the advancement of what? Is the call for bloody revenge not the completion of a vicious circle leading to the next round, and the next, and the next? And isn’t the call to turn the other cheek the challenge to either do something 100% or stop? Either wipe me out, or accept my right to exist, to be here, to have a different world view, a different vision of the Divine?

And is the cross not a statement that some things are of more value than my individual life. Some things must be opposed in a manner that gives my opponent the chance to turn, to revise his deed, and learn from his mistake. Because only then will my child, or the children of others find a different perspective - and the song of life will continue to be sung and heard, coming from the grave of the witness to life.

From the above, I found this statement very clear:

Baal Shem Tov wrote: Only he finds peace, who searches nowhere else other than in himself.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
wrote: I am a child of peace and will keep peace for ever with the whole world, because I have made peace with myself.

Voltaire wrote: You have enough money to send onehundrethousand men to slaughter. But not enough for tenthousand hungry men?

Shalom
Bob

Hear Hear

“We Have Got To Bring Corporate America To Its Knees” - Harry Belafonte on Racism, Poverty, the Elections, War and Resistance

2004 Human Rights Award by Global Exchange in San Francisco.
HARRY BELAFONTE

Being in the Freedom Struggle, I’ve discovered it is not a part-time job. And it’s certainly cannot be treated as a hobby. Fortunately, there are many in our nation who do just that. They are all decent people. They mean well. They believe in many of the great American ideals. And they also choose not to see or to hear or to taste or to believe that we can perpetuate and involve ourselves as a nation in the kind of villainy that is so dramatically identified in so many parts of the world. To be honoured by your peers and those who believe as you do is, in itself, the only rewards, I think, that one needs.

Paul Robeson, my mentor, who influenced me greatly, once said to me get them mean people. Get them to sing your songs and they’ll want to know who you are. And so “Daio” and “Havanaguila” and others, all the songs that were sung on the tongues of others or from the tongues of others in their language, all of the songs that were sung by people who were trapped in the abyss of poverty and songs, glorious songs of courage to extricate themselves and their oppression, all these forces in the world that have inspired me to put my life in the service of freedom are the ones who deserve this award. I am just an instrument in which they speak. I should find it very easy to speak here this evening, after all, I’m among people who share so many of my beliefs. And are prepared to struggle valiantly for our beliefs. But I find it difficult not because you are who you are, but because we find out at this moment that a place that is very unfamiliar to me in many ways. It is not the oppression that is alien to me.

It is not racism or sexism or poverty. All that has been a constant. I was born into much of that. Poverty was my mother’s midwife. She had her children in poverty. But she also found a road to bring us a sense of purpose and she taught us how to be valiant in the face of oppression.
Her courage was translated vigorously to us and with her launching of our lives, she directed me to places that eventually came to be seen many positive and rewarding ways. From Roosevelt to Martin Luther King Jr. And Alan Baker and by so many who are great and courageous people who have been shot at and beaten and others have been so exposed, it was worth the price, it’s worth the journey, it was worth getting them to hear the song and to follow the melody and to sing the lyrics of life. That’s what it’s all about. I thought at this time in my life, I would be somewhere in the Caribbean on the beach, sipping a rum, reflecting on the good deeds that have transpired in a lifetime. But I find that no such luxury has afforded itself to me. I cannot sit on a beach because each motion of a wave on a surf, I hear the voices of many who do not have such opportunity.

I always travel and try to travel with anonymity and go away on what I call my time to distance myself from my passion. To just take a moment to reflect and breathe and to think about where I’ve been and where I have to go. And I do that with the desire for anonymity and I go to these way out places that I’ve never been before and I try to blend in to the ethnicity of the place I’m visiting. And on a recent visit to such a place, I walked in a tiny village that had a record store. And the music was blaring through the speakers and I walked into the store, hoping to find the music of the indigenous, to find the solitude that might be inspiring, to translate it into, carry its melody and its thoughts to millions who may never have heard it. As I leaped through the bins looking at records, I was quite taken with how many were of American artists. They were the most popular. And I began to look through the bins, name after name after name and I became aware of the absence of one. I was a little – I was struck really with some wonderment as to what – why this person was not in the bins in a more plentiful way.

And I walked up to the woman who was the manager and I said to her, “Excuse me, Miss, but do you have any records by Harry Belafonte?” and she looked at me a moment and then she says “Who?” and I said. “Harry Belafonte.” She said, “You know, we have no records here like him. But, you know, a lot of people come in off the Boat and they come in and play it all the time looking for music and they ask quite often for that man. But, you know, I think He long time dead!” Beyond the humility that such an utterance brings – it also made me ponder. It’s to realise that no matter what you do as a singer, you may be able to cage him or her, you can cage the singer, but you may never be able to cage the song.

I sing a song of freedom everywhere I go. The people who I choose to sing these songs to and whom I speak to and for, how wonderful the mark of a human being. I recently took a group of men and women to California and from other parts of the united states, Alabama to be exact, a young man by the name of Alejandro who runs a wonderful organisation called Los Amigoes. A young man from South Central Los Angeles that works in the prison culture by the name of Bo Taylor. We went to Africa to visit with the Ethiopian farmers, to take a look at what was happening to them and to try to understand that they sing the same songs we do and in many ways even more passionately. They are songs of constant, their needs are great, and I’ve come to understand that to care for freedom and pay for it is a never ending job.

Democracy is very fragile. And if we do not tend to it and care for it, it will disappear. Those who are the villains among us do their work 24 hours a day. They are constant in their need to oppress, in their need to cheat, in their need to steal, in their need to rob us of our dignity. Why they are so possessed, greater minds than mind have tried to understand it and to find reasonable explanation that you see century after century fail, in any finite definition, that might lead us to a final cure. I am of the beliefs, however, that if we stay the course, it will be a constant in our defense of democracy and yet we never compromise and refuse to negotiate with the enemy we will prevail…

… Of course, we’re going to vote for Kerry.

Bush has left us no alternative. But I also must tell you that Kerry has not carried my endorsement. He’s a nice guy. He’s done some truly remarkable things. He’s been a Vietnam soldier and his role in the congress, with the Iran Contra. He’s done some remarkable things. But for some reason, it was in our great struggle that he’s chosen to not deal very much with the left. He’s too busy trying to capture the right. And I wonder why he feels that it is more important to spend his resources and to capture the right than to at least pay attention and to make some utterance and tell us he has a vision on what to do with poverty and racial oppression and the plight of women in the 21st century in which he is stepping in to lead us.

When John Kennedy, when the Presidency was decided by 100,000 votes, arguably it could be said that had there been only a handful of black men to vote and women turn out to support him - if they had not voted there perhaps would have been a different President and a different course in our history. To know how critical and how delicate that moment was is to ignore history and to not understand that we sit in the same precarious place at this very moment. It is not the first time we have been touched by the state’s mechanism to owe press. After all, McCarthyism is very much Ashcroftism.

The war in Vietnam pursues the same blueprint that has our government pursuing the wars in Iraq and in other places. What is going on in the reversal of the attempts being made to reverse roe verse wade and brown verse the board of education and all things that we struggled so valiantly for, and is so threatened, is not new. They’re all once again trying to mobilise and get our voices together to make a difference. And I think we will prevail. We are still, however, looking for our leaders and our leaders sit in our midst. If you think and reflect on all those who we admire and have mentioned here this evening, many of them came out of the ranks of the people who are engaged in struggle, who came from poverty, who came out of racism, who came out of a place where for a long time they languished, ignored. I believe that we may march and we may show our numbers in great volume from time to time. We do that. Women marching on Washington in large numbers. Peace activists turning out occasionally to demonstrate their passions of peace. These things go on and we see them. But what we don’t seem to understand is that we have not yet, in some profound and meaningful way, interrupted the way in which the enemy does business.

Early on, I was introduced to a song in my youth and I was aspiring to find my place in the world as an artist. I remember a song that said calculate carefully and ponder it well and remember this when you do, “My two hands are mine to sell a major machine and they can stop them, too.” It is – it is the stopping of the machine that we seem to falter. For some reason we have not understood clearly what the blueprint was when we recall and think about what happened in the Civil Rights Movement and the Labour Movement and the Women’s Movement in its early manifestations. The one thing that all those movements had in common was that they stopped the machine. And until we stop the machine, and in the way in which they – they hungrily pursue profit, until we tell them you will not turn another moment of profit until you deal with our spiritual bankruptcy as a nation, until you find a new codes of honour in which to deal with the world, we will not tolerate any longer your banks, your institutions, we’ll no longer tolerate your military interventions and your military impositions.

And we are ready to put our bodies and our lives on the line to do that.
It was Rosa Parks and what happened in Montgomery, Alabama, and the fact that people picketted and refused to let the machine, the profit punks easily. That we found our earliest victories and as we escalated our movement and we escalated our targets, we found more and more those who sat in the places of power troubled by the fact that we had the power to disrupt their machines and to stop them. And I think what we must do, as we pursue institutionally an organisation, we have goals that we have set for ourselves, is for us to collectively picket that time and that moment when not for a day, not for a moment, not for a march just to demonstrate that we exist, but to use our might and our powers strategically to make sure that nothing functions, nothing runs, nothing works until we find a way to end poverty and we find a way to end racism, until we come to the table and agree to do that.

There, in fact, is my dilemma on what to say here this evening. Certainly we should all be applauded for what we do. They’re honourable people, we say. We care about our world and our planet. Everything we’ve done and the other honorees who are honoured here this evening demonstrates that. But we have missed an important, strategic component. As I go around the world, which I do with great consistency, when I go to Somalia and to Rwanda and Kenya, when I go to the places that I go, when I go to the oppressive places in Eastern Europe and in Latin America and Central America, I’m aware how vast America’s villainy extends itself because I see in the faces of the wretched millions who make up poverty globally, who are languishing from H.I.V.-AIDS, hunger animal nutrition.

Always I look at what causes this and as much as we can ascribe the most to nature and to some peculiarities of contrast. Nothing is clear to us as is the fact that what our military industrial complex, led by the United States of America and our lackies around the world do in the impression that most of the world experiences. How do we stop their machine? And there are times when we would speak about doing it violently. It was romantic to think that we could grab an M5 or M6 as we go up in the mountains somewhere and have a shoot-out and make our mark and to have the freedom. There was a time, perhaps, when that could be done. Certainly in Africa, the periods and the struggle against colonialism. All the up risings and the rebellions in Algeria and Vietnam and all those places were about. Soldiers and men and women taking to the streets and the villages of mountains, hamlets, abusing weaponry, the violence to meet violence.
So now we come to know that that’s not possible. It doesn’t work.

Certainly a gift that has been given us demonstrates for us that we have the most powerful weapon of all – and it’s at our disposal and it’s ours for the taking. It’s called NONVIOLENCE and if we reach deep into the strategy of the Nonviolent Movement, as declared not only by Dr. King and Gandhi, but listening to the other instances about the 10th anniversary of South Africa. Had it not been for the application of Nonviolence, and what the people Of South Africa did, we would never have had the transformation that took place in their society when – without the firing of one shot, the evil empire folded and a New Democracy emerged to lead this great country into an – into a place of envy in the 21st Century.

We have got to bring Corporate America to its knees. Not just in defeat, but perhaps in prayer. To understand that we can come together, we can make a difference, a world that is filled with people who are nourished, a world that is filled with people who can read and write and debate and have exchange and dialogue. There is a place in which great profits can be earned. After all, people who can read and write, the people who are healthy are people who consume. In the consumption, we can find that we have great markets everywhere and that we would sell them food that was not grown by Folger’s and Maxwell House but grown by people who worry about organic earth and truth and the beauty of our mountains and rivers and what we put into our bodies. There sits the great profit that will be earned in the 21st century. And it is the forest, the institutions of capitalism that know that they can no longer continue to do business unless they do business with the poor. Unless they do business with those who sit disenfranchised.

In a few days, I will go to the middle east. I go as a servant of the united nations where i have been working for the last 17 years and it’s perhaps the reason that lady in the Caribbean thinks I’m long time dead. One of the reasons that most people don’t know whether I work or not is because the instruments of communication in America has tenaciously contained us on the airwaves, on the phone, on television. All those things which we have found necessary to enhance our voices and to be heard. Once they shut down on you, most people don’t know where you are. Unless they happen to read some momentary, brief report in a newspaper about something we may have done. I’m going to these places. I have to tell you that most of the places that I go to in the world are looking more like San Francisco and the Bay Area every day.

They are people – in Germany, in France, in Ireland – England and Ireland and Poland, many places where I go whose voices are being heard mightily in their rebellion against the American Policy. Because the policies of oppression are speaking out and speaking out loudly. They’re transforming their government. They’re changing their leaders in Spain and Brazil and Argentina and Nicaragua, in Venezuela, in many places and we must and can do the same here. We must just understand that the sacrifice we have yet to make is demanded of us.

Somebody is going to have to, in cleaning up the air, talk about not driving anymore. Somebody, in trying to get a better price for good, is going to have to say that we just can’t keep running after the fast food market. Somebody is going to have to make a sacrifice. Somebody is going to have to put their body in front of the machine. Somebody is going to have to die. It’s the way things are. It’s the way things have been. And we, in our efforts to try to change and make a better world, will have to pay a price. Truth is – we must ask ourselves, are we willing to go all the way?
Ask yourself if you are truly willing to die for what you believe and you might come up with an answer that will explain to you why we haven’t quite moved as far ahead as we should be moving. What are we prepared to give? What are we prepared to do? And should it be any less than those who have gone before us and who were willing to pay the price? I hope the next time that I come, there isn’t a Global Exchange. We might be looking at a different draft chart. A lot of people in the world are dying, children in particular. Nothing is said about the lives that are lost among the Iraqis, among the Afghanistan people. Very little is said about the women and the children. We say it among ourselves, we sit somewhat better informed. But we do not have an America in a major part of the world that understands what it is that we understand. And we have come to let the world know this.

And the places that I will go, it will be important to let them know that we, in America, are made up of different people other than the ones they have come to know who carry guns and bombs and lies and deceit. That there are honourable people here making honourable efforts to make a difference in the world in which we live. And to that extent, I thank Global Exchange for being here and doing what it is you do and to give me an opportunity to battle on about the world in which we live. Thank you so very, very much.

democracynow.org/article.pl? … 15/1410245

HELL(O) F(R)IEND(S)

Bob, I greatly respect you and admire you. You and Tentative have helped change my perception of god and religion…

So it pains me to say that I have rarely read such hippie drivel. I want to believe that a utopian society could exist where we are all unselfish and non-violent; however, there are times when aggression cannot be met with anything but force.

Although I personally believe in free will, I often think that the human condition cannot escape its trappings because deterministic forces are at play. Hypothetically, if we start from the point of a utopian, non-violent society I would have to say that it could be as little as one event that causes a web of other events that would lead to our current state. In a sense, just one bad apple… I would almost venture to say that perhaps mankind has free will only at the point of choice but that everything in between is the inescapable web of events. In a sense, all it would take is one act of free will to set of a reaction of corresponding acts that forces persons into action (thus free will exists but is subsequently reduced to a minor player, a minor effect). But I digress…

Asking the U.S. to do what is good for the world still leaves open the possibility that what is good for the world = what is good for the U.S. Again, in my opinion, your suggestions/observations are overly simplistic of world affairs.

I agree with the sentiment. But unless the rest of the world was willing to play nice, it wouldn’t work. And sinisterly - those who say “We are working for the good of the world” Are with the same breath saying - “we are the one’s who will decide what is good for the world.” Also - the populace of a country whose government decided to persue such an altruistic ideal (to the at least short-term) detriment of society - would rebel at the polls - people just aren’t that nice.

“…to trust to innate goodness is to invite evil, just as to ignore Thracymacus’ assertion (in The Republic) that “justice is the right of the stronger” is to invite its realization.” [size=75](thanks İmp.)[/size]

Also - I hate to say this but it could be argued that Ghandi and his non-violent disobedience movement were lucky, or at least timely… look at the dates:

The British empire was recovering from WWI, and then fighting WW2 when the show-down occurred. Maybe if they’d had less to do, and more of an economy to do it with, Ghandi may well have met with a different response.

Hi T4M and TR,

You seem to have missed the fact that I was quoting Harry Belafonte. I didn’t write that myself. I did however consider it worth reading, and yes, Harry was around in those hippy years.

On the other hand, people in America are convinced that no other poilitics could have worked, other that what has happened. Looking into the released historical documents, America built up such an army of secret services in the cold war that nothing but complete control should have grown out of it. The fact is that through this attempt at complete control, they have often supported exactly the ones they didn’t want to support and caused their own problems.

I agree that somethings were perhaps unavoidable, but there is a great deal of racism and blatant fascicm in some policies of the past. No wonder then that America has so many enemies!

By the way, save me the sermon on the land of the free :wink:

Shalom
Bob

Hi Bob,

I can certainly agree that non-violence is ultimately the answer to humankind’s evolutionary needs, but I doubt that we will have the patience to ever get there. To begin that journey we would have to have universal education and at least a subsistence level that would allow people to have survival stability.

Everything I’m looking at suggest’s that we are on a downward spiral. As our population grows and our resources continue to diminish, violence will be more, not less, prevalent. At some point, we will have a catastrophic die-back, and perhaps the survivors will be able to construct new ways to help end the violence cycle, but until that happens…

I know this isn’t what you wanted to here. Sorry.

JT

JT,

If we look outwards to that which we have absolutely no control over i.e. those so-called people who govern our world, non-violence can never be achieved. Only if we turn our gaze inwards and practice non-violence can we begin to experience it. The world is changed one person at a time. It is not a miraculous over night event. It is one step, one day, one person at a time.

Peace

A

Dear Bob,

After reading your posts on this thread, I fear that a reply of mine on another thread may appear to have had a tinge of condescension. If it did I sincerely apologize. What I wrote there is in total support of what you have written much more eloquently here.

All the best.

Hi JT,

It is because we know this that we have to talk about alternatives, yes indeed, we need to live those alternatives. As I said above:

Hi Liquidangel,

Exactly, it is about making a difference. It is about utilising my life to do that, whether I see the fruition of my deeds or not. Selfless love - I have heard that phrase before… :wink:

Hi Waterlover,
Have no worries, we are at peace. :slight_smile:

Shalom
Bob

Hi Bob

Actually it is the opposite. The coming into being of a person’s life can give real value to some things.

From Arun Gandhi

But of course the question is “how”.

I’d like to bring Simone Weil into this. I’ll admit to an ulterior motive. I know there are many bright young people and university students on this site and some women probably look in that don’t post… So many papers are written of the same thing and the same people that to make matters easier, they are often just copied from Internet sources. However, Simone Weil is not well known but I would say if I had the chance to speak to ten women of the past, she would be right up there. So for many of these young women that would like to learn of a woman who in college could easily out Hillary Hillary and with a mind that could tower above those around her with an idealism to match, I advise you to read up on her. She is just so incredible and fascinating that there is no reason to fake it. She is a gem.

Naturally, being human, she exaggerated certain things in her youth IMO which is completely understandable especially since her mind was so advanced it was hard for her to look up to anyone around her.

Her idealism resulted in anarchy and an association with communism. She was involved with all sorts of resistance movements and was lucky not to get herself killed in the Spanish Civil war. She wanted equality and to learn from the factory the “people” would do. She lived a life for the purpose of understanding.

Naturally she could spot naked emperors from a great distance so it was no wonder that she could say:

She was so much a “black sheep” that she understood what is called “civilization” far better than those around her:

She really understood what was essentially necessary to give non-violence real meaning.

But she didn’t pontificate but instead voluntarily participated in order to experience the suffering itself.

She lived a short life. She died at 34 years of age. Towards the end she began to become more and more intrigued with the depth and meaning of life beyond just the physical existence and societal battles. She loved Plato and became involved with the Gita. Esoteric ideas began to be so much a part of her that she taught herself Sanskrit in order to read source material. This quote introduces something new:

For example, her writings on Plato’s Cave Allegory are extraordinarily profound. For a William James type in midlife it would be one thing, but from a person who dies at 34, I can only marvel at such a mind.

rivertext.com/weil4.html

For mankind to truly profit from nonviolence requires a certain degree of self knowledge. We have to admit to what we are BY EXPERIENCE and to admit to and invite the help that is necessary.

She wasn’t perfect but damn she tried to be “Real” and we can learn a great deal from her experience. Hers wasn’t the caring of experts and fine speeches, it was the caring of a brilliant woman that wasn’t afraid to live in the trenches for the cause of equality. I can only wonder what that mind would have come up had she not died so young.

So I introduce her here since her life is important in considering the question of non-violence. If some female student wants to take up the baton and learn of a real woman for its own sake and an get an A from a professor tired of reading the same things over and over, sink your teeth into her. She’ll bite back but it will be worth it. No cutsey pooh here! Just lays it on the line.

Oh what the heck, I may as well add an idea that is sure to deserve an A if you do justice to it especially since the prof. has probably never read another paper like it. Actually it can also refer to the non-vi0lence question.

Rene Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”

Simone Weil: “I can, therefore I am.”

Is a person who “thinks” non-violence the same as a person who can live it? Is thinking enough to say “I am” or does it require the ability to do (can)?

Do justice to that and you’ll knock the prof on their butt.

Bob, I’m reminded of this gem.

Then said a rich man, “Speak to us of Giving.”
And he answered:
You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?
And what is fear of need but need itself?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable?
There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.
It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;
And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving
And is there aught you would withhold?
All you have shall some day be given;
Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors’.
You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.”
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?
And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life - while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.
And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father

  • Kalil Gibran, On Giving

A

Hi liquid,

Let me first agree that non-violence must be in every heart, and that is the only sustainable answer.

That said, I will reiterate that for this to become a possiblity there must first be survival stability, and there must be enough education that individuals become capable of looking at alternatives. A great deal to accomplish in today’s world.

And something I didn’t say in my first post. A paradox exists, in that those who have chosen non-violence must confront those who would threaten violence. To look inwardly is a given, but there must be a willingness to confront violence as well. If I threaten violence, and you do not confront me, your silence is interpreted as confirmation or acquiessence. Silence ‘legitimizes’ violence.

And so, what do you do when I approach you, machete in hand?

JT

No, silence gives us the tools we need to listen. When we listen we know what is needed. If I cannot listen, then I buy into the threat. The one who would threaten violence simply does not grasp this concept and runs off to find someone else to threaten.

Like attracts like. I would probably not be home. Timing favours those that are truly peaceful. The peaceful keep company with the peaceful. End of story.

A

C’mon liquid,

You’re sliding off the questions. I’m not asking about our personal responsibilities. How can we expect non-violence from those in abject poverty, who, for mere survival, must commit violence? My family or yours scenarios. These are played out every moment of the day. For too many, violence IS life. Not in pursuit of some abstract ideal, but simple survival. What do you say to them?

And what do you say to the mothers of Darfur who have watched their children slaughtered before their eyes? Bad timing? You should have been somewhere else?

JT

I’m all for non-violence but have a few questions as well.

  1. how far do we carry non-violence. In example do we stop killing animals for food?

  2. How do we make non-violence a universal thing? Like tentative’s example, if I approach you and you are bent on violence then you are going to respond with violence.

“Hi” joe says.
“WHAT.” Jack moodily replies.
“Easy, Jack… How was your weekend?”
“Like you care, jerk.”
“Jack, what’s wrong with you.”

---- Jack is trying to initiate confrontation.

Some people (like those in power in the US right now.) are bent on starting confrontations. Not every confrontation is needed.

At the same time though there will be those that approach us as individuals or countries that are bent on our destruction. No. Korea for example that is trying to arm itself with nuclear weapons. or venezuala, which believes that capitalism is the absolute world evil and if they could would wipe it out.

If someone approaches you with a gun, it’d be folly to think that because you act non-violent, your life would be spared.

The only way nuclear war was staved on the cold war was the “mexican stand off” of nuclear weapons. How should we approach such a situation?

obviously we’ve got to promote peace. but we can’t all together drop all of our defenses as the packs of wolves out there would devour us the moment we did.

JT,

You’re not listening. I’m talking about a solution to violence as a personal responsibility. I’m looking to myself as the cause of this violence which is reflected in the world outside. Of course the obvious is that I am a non-violent person. Yet who really knows what thoughts race through my mind over any 24 hour period or any 24 second period for that matter. If someone cuts me off in traffic, what kind of thoughts go through my mind? I might have a very aggressive attitude in whihc case I might hoot and shout out the window etc. etc. The person that cut me off was simply lost and a bit nervous for example but now I’ve aggrivated them. They in turn have become angry and have suffered an accident further down the road, thus causing harm to yet another person. This accident has caused a traffic jam and now countless people miss their appointments and have become aggrivated perpetuating this energy with every person they encounter. Do you see how unknowingly this is all because I lost my temper? The whole thing wouldn’t have happened if I simply observed that anger was arising in me, centred myself and turned my mind (focussed meditation). I’ve expanded myself to include the other person - yes we are ONE - I have understanding - the whole outcome would have been different.

On a deeper level it is our thoughts that create. People in powerful positions who have the responsibility of nations are merely a reflection of our collective consciousness. I know this is a little out there for y’all to cope with - but if we observe our thoughts for 24 hours, we will become aware of how we are collectively creating our environment.

As for atrocities that are committed against innocent people…I don’t know anything about their backgrounds and their soul journeys to even comment.

I do know that like attracts like - whether in this life or in another life, we would have had to have created the seeds in the past for them to ripen. Seeds always ripen under the right conditions and with the right timing. This is nature’s law. It’s very ordinary and natural. It’s called cause and effect.

A

Sorry Skythe, read my response to JT. And yes, we stop killing animals for food.

A

Hi liquid,

I do understand the personal affecting the larger whole, and I’m not suggesting that how we are personally doesn’t affect the consciouness of a community, a nation, the world.

Perhaps this is about perspective. You’re seeing the long-term answer and I’m looking at how the short-term violence controls the long-term possibilities of non-violence.

We all have our personal responsibility to control our violence, and that certainly does have its’ affects in the larger community, but…

Consider Tibet. Probably the most non-violent culture in the world. And yet, they have suffered unimaginable violence at the hands of the Chinese.

Our understanding and personal committment to non-violence is overwhelmed by those who would use violence as a means to an end.

It may be a bit more complicated than our personal committment.

JT