Theory

PURPOSE: Gandhian nonviolence or ahimsa has its origins in Vedic Hinduism and in the 6th century BC Jain philosophy of “doing no harm” to living things. Jainism was a popular sect in the Indian state of Gujarat where Gandhi was born and raised. Gandhi did not like the word nonviolence, sometimes written as non-violence, which might be said to compound the misunderstanding. A better reading of ahimsa might be not-violence, admittedly awkward, but nonetheless conveying the sense that nonviolence is all that which does not belong to the category of violence, rather than its opposite. A satyagrahi needs to cultivate virtues, habits, and practices that are nonviolent; paramount are patience, forgiveness, and satyagraha or holding to the truth. Gandhi spoke of nonviolence as a way of life and virtue, in part as a counter-reaction to Rabindranath Tagore’s injunction that nonviolence could be used for good or evil. Those who would practice nonviolence must make themselves nonviolent to forestall its misuse. This section of our web site hopes to engage these sorts of definitions, discussions, and the effect of interpretation on current practices. Your contributions are welcomed. The Theory page is edited by Joseph Geraci.

Gandhi’s Art: Using Non-Violence to Transform “Evil”

Posted November 20th, 2012 in Gandhi, Theory, Tolstoy

by William J. Jackson

Gandhi c. 1945; photographer unknown;
a public domain image,
courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

 

“Changing the world begins with changing yourself; you have to become the change you want to see in the world.”  M. Gandhi

 The most Gandhi-like person I know is a very patient and gentle yogi who lives in New Delhi. When I wrote to him to say that I was preparing this article, he replied, “Making an honest and sincere attempt to practice exactly what one preaches is not easy—but Gandhiji did it to near perfection; at the cost of enormous physical as well as mental hardship, he examined his life in light of his convictions with brutal honesty, and underwent enormous inner suffering whenever he found himself wanting. That can give much greater torture than giving up physical comforts voluntarily, in which he also went to an extreme.”

Why was Gandhi so scrupulous? He himself said: “You have to become the change you want to see in the world.” Gandhi said that he thought Leo Tolstoy was the embodiment of truth in the age in which they lived: “Tolstoy’s greatest contribution to life lies, in my opinion, in his even attempting to reduce to practice his professions without counting the cost.” Gandhi said that reading Tolstoy’s writing “The Kingdom of God is Within You” changed his life, turning him from a votary of violence to an exponent of non-violence.  Like Martin Luther King Jr., whom he inspired in turn, Gandhi always seemed ready to put comfort aside and to put his life on the line, without counting the cost. For example, when a leper came to his door in South Africa, Gandhi fed him, offered him shelter, dressed his wounds, and looked after him.

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Communication Ecology of Arne Naess (1912-2009)

Posted November 16th, 2012 in Arne Naess Project, Biography, Natural World, Theory

by Alan Drengson

 Tore Juell. “Portrait of Arne Naess;”
courtesy of the artist.

 

“Self-realization is not a maximal realization of the coercive powers of the ego. The self, in the kinds of philosophy I am alluding to, is something expansive, and the environmental crisis may turn out to be of immense value for the further expansion of human consciousness.” Arne Naess (In Drengson and Devall 2008, p. 132)

From his earliest major work, Naess used a deep and comprehensive approach for studying languages and communication. (The work is, Interpretation and Preciseness: A Contribution to the Theory of Communication, 1953. Now SWAN Vol I in The Selected Works of Arne Naess, 2005.) He united disciplines to explore languages as part of diverse communication systems in the natural and human world. These systems are open ended, adaptive, creative and dynamic. They are constantly adjusting to changing conditions in unique communities and places. Communication between and within species involves meaningful variations of qualities (e.g. in sound, light, odor, heat, color, pattern, and texture,) with a wide range of frequencies, intensities and velocities. We now explore the communication ecology of languages with broad analytical and empirical methods, some pioneered by Naess. By studying whole systems, we appreciate the creative, place-based, knowledge skills of cultures woven into the other systems of the natural world. Diversity, complexity and creativity are important for environmental integrity, cultural richness, and personal freedom. Naess noted that when we know the ecological context, it helps us to understand one another without translation, even when from different cultures with unfamiliar languages. Knowing communication ecology helps us to resolve conflicts nonviolently. By having a sense for these whole systems, we are aware of the challenges to precise interpretation; this engenders positive cross-cultural and interspecies communication exchanges.

Naess loved diversity and appreciated the role of dialects in evolving systems of language families. He learned from empirical studies and by knowing many formal and vernacular languages (living and dead), that it is difficult to give precise (universal) definitions.  There are many ways to feel, see, say and write things. He used a descriptive approach to study linguistic communication. He remarked in The SWAN (see the Appendix below for excerpts) that his view contrasted with analytic philosophers in England and elsewhere, who used a prescriptive approach, suggesting there is one right meaning and that a single language reflects reality more precisely than others. Their views were more insular; they did not study dialects and the cross-cultural, natural context of language families (such as Indo-European) that we study in communication ecology. Communication ecology enabled Naess to reach a mature, whole understanding of human life in the evolving, changing Earth. The culture that he grew up in accepted multiple dialects, perhaps because there was no Norse king as authority for proper Norsk. For several centuries the rulers were not Norwegians but foreigners. In the English speaking world there was the authority of the “King’s English.”

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Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement: The Street Spirit Interview with Dr. Bernard Lafayette

Posted October 24th, 2012 in Civil Rights & Martin Luther King, Jr., History, Interviews, Strategy & Tactics, Theory

by Terry Messman

 

Dr. Layfayette discusses nonviolence with activists; International Day of Peace, Sept. 2012. Photo by Howard Dycoff.

 

“From my conjecture and my observations, the assassination was designed to stop the work of Martin Luther King. And the reason I went and prepared myself for this work is because I wanted to make sure that those who attempted to assassinate Martin Luther King’s dream — missed.” Dr. Bernard Lafayette

 

Street Spirit: You were the national coordinator of the Poor People’s Campaign. How did you become involved, and in light of Martin Luther King’s assassination in April 1968 before it could even be launched, what do you feel about its outcome?

Dr. Bernard Lafayette: At that time I was working with the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago. They had hired me as director of the urban affairs program, which was the first urban affairs program the Service Committee had. We originally set it up for three months to see what would happen. As a result of the work we did in Chicago for three months, they hired me permanently.

So I continued as the director of that urban affairs program and we established other urban affairs programs around the country. The reason the AFSC wanted to do this was to experiment with nonviolence in the northern urban areas to see how nonviolence could apply to the violence in the North.

What we did was organize gangs and we got them involved in the movement. We trained gang members from the West Side of Chicago because they wanted to be involved. So we trained them to be nonviolent marshals on the marches for fair housing because they already were an organization and they had leadership.

They had already encountered many scars from past activities, and so they could knock down the bricks and bottles and missiles and things that were thrown at the marchers. They would be a wall between the marchers and the hecklers.

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Strategizing for a Living Revolution

Posted October 17th, 2012 in Constructive Programme, History, Strategy & Tactics, Theory

by George Lakey

Otpur (“Resistance” in Serbian) began as hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of young people took to the streets to rid their country of dictator Slobadan Milosevic. Impatient with the cautious ways of many of their pro-democracy elders, the youths organized in coffee bars and schools, posted graffiti almost everywhere, and used their street actions to embarrass the regime.

Milosevic counter-attacked. His police routinely beat up the protesters, in the streets and more thoroughly in the police stations. His spies were everywhere. His monopoly of the mass media meant that the Otpur was described as hoodlums and terrorists.  In October 2000 Otpur won; joined by hundreds of thousands of workers and professionals, the young people threw Milosevic out. His party was in disarray, his police in confusion, his army was split.

From the moment Otpur began it had a strategy. The young people were immensely creative in their tactics and at the same time realized that no struggle is ever won simply by a series of actions. Otpur activists knew they could only succeed by creating a strategy that guided a largely decentralized network of groups.  Cynical outsiders were skeptical when Otpur activists claimed not to have a leader, when the young people said they were all leaders and shared responsibility for their actions and their common discipline. What the skeptics overlooked was the power of strategy as a unifying force, taking its place beside the rebel energy and the lessons of recent history that the young people shared. Otpur activists didn’t need an underground commander giving them their marching orders because they shared a strategy they believed in; they were happy to improvise creatively within that strategic framework.

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The Occupy Movement Stands at the Crossroads: Street Spirit Interview with George Lakey

Posted October 10th, 2012 in Interviews, Occupy Movement, Strategy & Tactics, Theory

by Terry Messman

 

“A nonviolent movement”;
Poster art by Vaughn Warren

“If we do stuff that justifies — in the eyes of the uncommitted — the repression of the state, we will certainly lose. And the uncommitted are most of the 99 percent. We need a lot more of those people. But the only way to win them over is through strict adherence to nonviolent struggle.” — George Lakey

The diametrically opposed strategies of nonviolent resistance versus violent rebellion have seemingly always divided those building social-change movements. The age-old clash between these irreconcilable approaches has erupted anew into a matter of paramount concern for almost everyone involved in the Occupy movement.

Occupy Wall Street has flowered into a nationwide movement that has done more to focus the eyes of the nation on the cruelties of poverty and economic inequality, than any movement since the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. Showing inspiring courage, vision and creativity, tens of thousands have joined Occupy’s daring attacks on the greed and corruption of Wall Street firms, big banks, and corporate capitalism.

Along with rebelling against the unjust domination of the wealthiest 1 percent, Occupy also has demonstrated a heartening level of solidarity and support for people struggling with poverty, homelessness, foreclosures and unemployment. Yet, this young movement already finds itself at a crossroads. While many Occupy activists are deeply dedicated to the principles of nonviolent resistance, a large number have supported the “diversity of tactics” approach, and justified property destruction and physical attacks on the police and media reporters. Everything is at stake for the Occupy movement: its future direction, its chances of success, its identity, and its very soul.

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Introduction to Non-violence

Posted October 3rd, 2012 in History, Theory, Tolstoy

by Theodore Paullin

The purpose of the present study is to analyze the various positions found within the pacifist movement itself in regard to the use of non-violent techniques of bringing about social change in group-relationships. In its attempt to differentiate between them, it makes no pretense of determining which of the several pacifist positions is ethically most valid. Hence it is concerned with the application of non-violent principles in practice and their effectiveness in achieving group purposes, rather than with the philosophical and religious foundations of such principles. It is hoped that the study may help individuals to clarify their thinking within this field, but the author has no brief for one method as against the others. Each person must determine his own principles of action on the basis of his conception of the nature of the universe and his own scale of ethical values.

The examples chosen to illustrate the various positions have been taken largely from historical situations in this country and in Europe, because our traditional education has made us more familiar with the history of these areas than with that of other parts of the world. It also seemed that the possibilities of employing non-violent methods of social change would be more apparent if it was evident that they had been used in the West, and were not only applicable in Oriental societies. It is unfortunate that this deliberate choice has eliminated such valuable illustrative material as the work of Kagawa in Japan. The exception to this general rule in the case of “Satyagraha” has been made because of the widespread discussion of this movement in all parts of the world in our day.

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Blessed are the Meek: On Christian Nonviolence

Posted September 17th, 2012 in Religion, Theory

by Thomas Merton

 

 

It would be a serious mistake to regard Christian nonviolence simply as a novel tactic which is at once efficacious and even edifying, and which enables the sensitive person to participate in the struggles of the world without being dirtied with blood. Nonviolence is not simply a way of proving one’s point and getting what one wants without being involved in behavior that one considers ugly and evil. Nor is it, for that matter, a means which anyone legitimately can make use of according to his fancy for any purpose whatever. To practice nonviolence for a purely selfish or arbitrary end would in fact discredit and distort the truth of nonviolent resistance.

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Thomas Merton and the Wisdom of Nonviolence

Posted September 17th, 2012 in Religion, Theory

by John Dear

Like all of you, Thomas Merton has been one of my teachers, and it’s a blessing to reflect on his exemplary life and astonishing witness.

I’m 45, have been in the Jesuits almost 25 years now, went to college at Duke University, decided one day that I really did believe in God and that I wanted to give my whole life to God, and the next thing you know, I was entering the Jesuits. I’m still trying to figure out how that happened! Before I entered the Jesuits, I decided I better go see where Jesus lived, so I decided to make a walking pilgrimage through Israel, to see the physical lay of the land, only the day I left for Israel in June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and I found myself walking through a war zone.

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The Source and Development of Japan’s Philosophies of Non-Violence

Posted August 31st, 2012 in Education, History, Religion, Theory

by Shinichi Yamamuro


“Philosopher’s Garden: Kyoto, Japan, 2012”; original photograph, by Michael Sawyer.

 

Non-violence often comes to mind when we think of the term ahimsa, which, for example, Gandhi used. The word himsa in Hindi means, “to inflict injury on a person,” in other words to hurt a person. The word ahimsa,  “non-violence,” is formed by adding the negative adverb a. What exactly is  “inflicting injury”? Naturally, it is easy to understand physical violence, such as war, in which people are harmed, but are there other ways of inflicting injury? If so, how should we understand non-violence?

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Discovering the Unexpected Power of Nonviolence: The Street Spirit Interview with Erica Chenoweth

Posted August 23rd, 2012 in Interviews, Occupy Movement, Strategy & Tactics, Theory

by Terry Messman

“We found that during the period of 1900 to 2006, nonviolent resistance campaigns are about twice as effective as violent ones in achieving their goals. We also found that these trends hold even where most people expect nonviolent resistance to be ineffective—for instance, against dictatorships and highly repressive regimes.” Erica Chenoweth

In a groundbreaking effort to systematically study and compare success rates of violent and nonviolent social-change movements, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan carefully researched 323 social-change campaigns from 1900 to 2006. Chenoweth and Stephan’s astonishing finding is that campaigns of nonviolent resistance are nearly twice as likely to succeed as violent uprisings.

 

“Silent No More”. Poster art by Nora Tryon

In their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, the authors found that far greater numbers of people from more diverse parts of society joined nonviolent campaigns than violent ones. This greater level of participation translates into more people who can demonstrate for change, and withdraw their cooperation from an unjust regime.

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“When planted in the garden, the mustard seed, smallest of all the seeds, became a large tree, and birds came and made their home there.” Luke 13:19

“For me whatever is in the atoms and molecules is in the universe. I believe in the saying that what is in the microcosm of one’s self is reflected in the macrocosm.” M. Gandhi