thread: 2005-05-16 : Violence
On 2005-05-17, Ed H wrote:
Pete and Ben—Ron said:
"I'm talking about the straightforward and undeniable observation that asserting one's position through violence is absolutely required in real life. No ifs. No arguments. No possible bullshit denials. We all know that "finding one's warrior" is part of living life - the alternative is living in some form of fear.
Yes, pacifists too. That's a matter of finding someone who will be the warrior for you. Without machine guns emplaced somewhere, no Mother Theresa. "
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. That is just BULLSHIT. That is a complete misunderstanding of what nonviolence is all about. The nonviolent people aren't the ones who've found someone else to fight for them, they're the people who walk into places where you'd think you'd only dare to go with a gun, and they carry no gun. Gandhi calls the police station to tell them where he's going to be protesting so that they can come beat the shit out of him if that is what they choose to do, but he's not going to let that stop him for a second, and because he is not cowed by the violence he cannot be beaten by it.
Nonviolence is about rejecting either *submission* to violence or *participation in* violence. Nonviolence isn't finding someone else to fight for you. It is taking the "I will walk straight into danger" part of being a warrior and rejecting the "and I will kill whoever opposes me" part of being a warrior.
And it works. The press downplays it but it *works*. The threat of organized nonviolent protests just got the mayor of Mexico City out of prison. Nonviolent protests freed a group of Jewish men from the Nazis. Nonviolent protests played a gigantic and widely unappreciated part in the fall of the Eastern Bloc regimes. Freaking *india*. Civil rights in America. It *works*. It's a powerful force. More powerful than violence.
And it pisses me the fuck off to see Ron shitting on it like that.
It is the conflation of violence and strength that is the big problem. And the conflation of nonviolence and weakness. It weakens people who are wise enough to reject violence, and it corrupts people who are wise enough to seek strength. It hurts both sides. Chris Kubisak is describing one side of that hurt.
BTW, there is some big deep understanding here that I do not have yet. Something about violence, symbolic violence, nonviolence, story and mythic violence, feellings, reality, I feel like I can barely see a big truth in the fog, from my readings on nonviolence and my experience trying to practice nonviolent communication, and thinking about gaming and reading _Killing Monsters_. There's some way this all works that I just don't get yet. And I really wish I did.
