Talk:Nonviolence

From Academic Kids

There seem to be a variety of entries describing nonviolence (or non-violence), some concerned with nonviolence as a personal philosophy or lifestyle, and others with nonviolence as a political technique.

It's been suggested that these pages be merged. Instead, hows about keeping the primary focus of Nonviolence on the method of social struggle, and edit Non-violence so that it has a broader perspective? This would be in accord with the distinction between the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of nonviolence generally accepted by nonviolent types.

Contents

1 A couple of points that I take exception to 2 Diversity of tactics 3 Other forms of nonviolence 4 Criticism 5 Non-reactionary nonviolent change? 6 The recent addition to the "Criticism" section 7 Merge with Global Green Charter?

A couple of points that I take exception to

As someone who is critical of nonviolence as a tactic for meaningful social change, there are a couple points that this article raises that I feel the need to respond to. The first is this comment:

"The critics falsely characterise nonviolence as passivity and tend to ignore the historical success of nonviolence against dictators and repressive governments, they say."

Now, I cannot speak for all critics of nonviolence, but I do not simply equate it with passivity. I realize that nonviolence is proactive in many ways. However, my position is simply that nonviolence doesn't go far enough. It is easy to talk about "historical success" when you don't elaborate on what goals people were trying to attain in their exercise of nonviolence. Perhaps the goals were modest enough in certain situations that purely nonviolent action was all that was necessary. Perhaps the opponent against whom people were nonviolently struggling did not feel that their interests were being sufficiently threatened so as to warrant a violent offensive attack. The fact of the matter is that there is no way to predict how every single opponent is going to react to people nonviolently struggling against them. If every single person on the face of the planet who is engaged in some sort of social struggle suddenly pre-decided to remain nonviolent in all possible situations, a situation would eventually arize where someone somewhere would hit a glass ceiling and have to decide between violent self-defence or being trampled. In short, I do not dispute that nonviolence and passivity are not one and the same thing. However, in the event where there is a choice to be made between violently fighting back and being trampled, nonviolence stops short of being effective. In essence, it becomes passive, though only in given situations.

Second, when discussing Ward Churchill, the article suggests that critics of nonviolence base their arguments purely on "pragmatic grounds". The fact of the matter is that the arguments against nonviolence are both moral and pragmatic; and in an interconnected manner, no less. Granted, critics of nonviolence maintain that the privleged middle-class types who typically advocate nonviolence ignore the fact that there are people living in more subjugated areas of the world who cannot afford to be nonviolent. This certainly is a pragmatic argument. However, it is also a moral one. In the words of Malcolm X, "it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks." It is, in fact, an act of violence to do so. In fact, it is an even worse act of violence than violently resisting an oppressor. Instead, you are perpetrating an act of violence against the oppressed by telling them to simply turn the other cheek when they no doubt will be brutalized and possibly slaughtered if they don't fight back.

Diversity of tactics

"none of these tactics, it should be noted, were injurious to human beings, only to property" This may well be true, but its impossible to substantiate. A section on "controversy" or "debate" eould be a good place to cover the property damage question. Dirtbiscuit 13:10, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Other forms of nonviolence

What do you folks think about a section on other forms of nonviolence? For example, the Veg*an lifestyle as nonviolence. I know that would be covered under some of the other topics listed in the main article, but it would be interesting to talk about nonviolence as a practical lifestyle choice that people can apply. Any ideas, here? --Viriditas 11:05, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I say, put it in print and let's have a look at it. --Gary D 18:25, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps vegetarianism and/or veganism would fit better in Ahimsa. Dirtbiscuit 09:13, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right, but what about a mention regarding a veg*an diet in the Living nonviolence section? Wouldn't that make sense, too? --Viriditas 09:33, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Criticism

One of the possible reasons that such criticisms are levelled against nonviolence is that it tends to be a slow, gradual means of achieving political change, and thus the connection between action and effect is less apparent than for violence.

That nonviolence is too slow is a criticism frequently levelled at nonviolence, but one that can certainly be disputed. Dramatic, nonviolent political change can and does happen quickly - see EDSA Revolution for example. Dirtbiscuit 14:41, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Non-reactionary nonviolent change?

From what I read, nonviolence seems to be about reacting to existing regimes. I'm interested in past ideas about people nonviolently beginning new power structures (instead of fighting existing ones). An example might be oppressed employees who begin a worker's cooperative. Are there any examples of non-reactionary nonviolent change on a broad scale? Or schools of thought about this issue? -Chira

I don't think the issue of force or violence comes up until there is a dispute between parties, hence until the parties find themselves in a reactionary situation. I would imagine it extremely rare for people to agree in advance they won't ever employ force or violence if and when a dispute should arise in the future (depending in large part on whether you include legal/court enforcement within "force or violence"). --Gary D 00:34, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry for my confusing choice of terms ("non-reactionary" may be a poor choice).

For example, when nonviolence is used in a social struggle, a "reactionary" reaction would be to oppose the other party in a non-violent way. A "non-reactionary" reaction would change the paradigm-- e.g. finding another way to meet your needs without involving the other party, or changing the realm of conflict into an area with greater strengths. Etoy.com's war with etoys.com is an example of this of the latter strategy.

A common viewpoint is that we achieve change by causing the leaders or institutions to change. For example, the Agape Foundation (http://www.agapefn.org/) wants people to confront the root causes of social problems by challenging the responsible systems and institutions. I'm trying to find schools of political or social thought that take the opposite approach of taking personal responsibility instead of blaming or waiting-- similar to Mother Teresa's aphorism, "Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person."

Perhaps what I'm looking for is existing philosophies which proscribe becoming the new authority peacefully, rather than wasting attention on an oppressive authority. Some areas of economics already works this way, what is the political/social equivalent? Thanks. -Chira 10:41, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure what there is that is precisely on-point for the system or philosophy you describe above; I can suggest some Wikipedia articles perhaps approximating it:

• non-resistance - taking nonviolence to the next level, going beyond opposition
• The Kingdom of God is Within You - Tolstoy's thinking in this area (the Wikipedia article itself is poor and incomplete, but click on the translation link and peruse the online book)
• Responsibility assumption - positing the change/power point as being totally within the individual self

If you do find something that precisely fits your description, perhaps you may want to come back and write a Wikipedia article about it. Good hunting. --Gary D 19:14, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the excellent suggestions. I'll see where this takes me. --Chira 19:24, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The recent addition to the "Criticism" section

is rather wordy, and its English needs some help. It also tends a bit toward POV. I think it is not quite appropriately encyclopedic, but could become so, so I'm moving it here for the time being:

According to Trotsky that right to self-defense included military invasion on entire Europe, which actually started in 1920 (with the initial goal to unite the revolutionaries of Russia with those in Germany), and almost succeeded, but the Red Army was defeated by joint armies of Poles, "White" Russians and Ukrainians.

<i>The history disproves this, since the civil rights, equal in America for all races, were brought by the action of US President John F. Kennedy, who acted of the sense of justice, whereas his firm resistance to the extreme and immediate military treat by USSR during the Cuban Crisis shows that if the protesters had acted violently, the resulting atrocities would have turned most of the American society and the US Government against the protesters, That case is just one of numerous example of the past experiences of human societies, where violence proved counterproductive from the viewpoints of their proponents, that is, while the situation before the acts of violence was bad, it became much worse in the result of the violence. Since the assumed goal of protests of any kind is an improvement, then violence (which always escalates) does not bring the adversaries closer to one another, but, in contrary, brings ruthless extremists to power in both conflicting groups. The result is more suffering, mainly in the protesting group. Peace, social cooperation, and physical well-being become worse, which is welcome by the extremists, who say (or believe without saying this) in the notion: "The worse, the better!" As a rule in all violent protests and revolutions, the moderate people and factions are considered more harmful for their cause than the enemy side, which in their opinion must be "destroyed, not befriended". This clearly illustrates that extremists in most or all of movements, value mutual destruction, with disregard to well-being of their own people. In other words, for extremists of any kind, the priority is their doctrine, and not the people that the doctrine claims to be fighting for.

--Erauch 23:22, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Merge with Global Green Charter?

Seems to me nonviolence is not purely a party-political green concept. I am thinking the article should be merged with Global Green Charter, or should have Global Green Charter in its title. Laurel Bush 12:46, 11 May 2005 (UTC).

That would be inappropriate. This article is much more general. --Erauch 17:29, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Which is why I decided to delete the Greens box. Laurel Bush 10:12, 12 May 2005 (UTC).