Non-Violence

Following a link from Tony, I found my self on Annika's site reading her 100 things about me post. Number 64 caught my eye:

64. i am an unrepentant hawk, who has studied the works of Gandhi, King and Merton. i admire these men very much. The trouble, as i see it, is that Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, Osama Bin Laden and Yasser Arafat do not.

This is a good representation of the majority view of non-violence today... "Sounds great, but it isn't practical." This perspective is painfully flawed and the root cause of untold suffering in our world.

Someone like Osama Bin Laden does the horrible things he does because he believes that the United States is causing a great level of harm due to it's aggressive (including violent) imperialist behavior. He hopes to create a level of fear that will change these ways. In turn the United States does the same... fear of retribution as a means to curtail unwanted behavior. While the faces my shift, the cycle continue infinitely (Saddam became a problem due in part to the weapons and training the U.S. gave him so that Iraq could act as a proxy in fighting Iran and backwards and backwards and backwards).

There is no honor in killing the people that disagree with you until an environment for disagreement no longer exists.

There is no real change brought about through fear.

The truth about Hawks is that they're all a bunch of pussies. They are unwilling to take the abuse Gandhi and his followers did in the name of their ideas (Can you imagine George W. Bush fasting for 21 days in the name of Democracy? In the name of anything?). They lack the conviction that would allow them to see past the short term gains of beating said ideas into others. They lack the faith required to see that, as Gandhi often said, non-violence works because it taps into a fundamental truth buried deep within all human beings.

These are not flaws of the people in question, but rather a reflection of the culture we live in. Western society has perverted the definition of strength. It has all but destroyed genuine faith - Replacing it with a list of systematic steps required to play a part. Check off the list and your done. We're ever increasingly creating ourselves as false idols.

95. i try to put up a strong front at all times, but i secretly long for someone with whom i can let my guard down.

96. If i ever find that one person, I'm afraid i may break down and cry in his arms for a very long time. They will be tears of relief and joy as much as anything else.

There's little in the way of a mental leap to see the association between putting up a giant front in the world at large and putting it up in the personal world at small.

In a society that explicitly teaches us not to see our true selves, Gandhi's principle of satyagraha (truth force) is a gigantic leap. Before you can have the faith required to see the beauty in others, you need faith in yourself ...That's fucking scary. It means facing up to the true nature of things... Looking the paradox of control dead in the eye... Realizing that making your way in the world is in fact harder than commercials make it out to be... and you can't simply close your eyes and whack everything with the biggest stick.

It should be noted that I don't know Annika and I don't mean to pick on her personally. I've run into her blog in the past and enjoyed it, even though we have a lot of differences. It just so happened that today it clicked with a variety of things that have been bumping around in my head since the election.