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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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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by Arne Naess

Gandhi: Merely a Man

We find two diametrically opposed views of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s moral stature. One states that, ethically speaking, he was nearly perfect. Albert Einstein said of him, for instance, that generations to come would scarcely believe that such a man actually walked this earth, and in a collection of essays that appeared under the title Gandhi Memorial Peace Number (Roy 1949), a large number of eminent persons accord Gandhi the highest of praise as a moral being.

We must also ask ourselves, however, what exactly is the nature of Gandhi’s contribution and what is the basis for the tremendous esteem and adulation in which he has been held. For with regard to his own moral achievement, we find a second opinion that is, perhaps, as near the truth as the first: the opinion that Gandhi was often mistaken and that it would be wrong to take him unreservedly as a moral example for everyone.

The best-known representative of this latter and more modest view happens to be Gandhi himself. “I claim no infallibility. I am conscious of having made Himalayan blunders . . .” (quoted in Pyarelal 1932: 133; also in Prabhu and Rao 1967: 9). There are other people also who firmly accept that he fell short of his own very high aims. The best collection of Gandhi’s teaching, The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi, compiled by Ramachandra K.  Prabhu and U. R. Rao (1946, revised and enlarged in 1967), opens with two chapters in which Gandhi speaks of his own personal imperfection, his mistakes, their painful consequences, and his unrequited desire for support.

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by Arne Naess

Truth: Absence of Theology: Pragmatic and Agnostic Leanings

Any adequate account of Gandhi’s ethics and strategy of group conflict must take account not only his most general and abstract metaphysical ideas, but also the religious content of his sermons. His basic ideas and attitudes influenced his concrete norms and hypotheses and his conflict praxis. His numerous public prayers were part of his political campaigns, his political campaigns part of his dealings with God.

Gandhi considered himself a Hindu. He gives a condensed characterization of his belief in Hinduism and his relations to other religions in his article “Hinduism”(Young India 6.10.19 21).

Yet, Gandhi found Truth in many religions and faiths, and this explains why his teaching on group conflicts has no definite theological premises. This passage elaborates: “You believe in some principle, clothe it with life, and say it is your God, and you believe in it. . . . I should think it is enough.” (Harijan 17.6.1939).

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by Arne Naess

Introductory Remarks: Aim of the Systematization

Any normative, systematic ethics containing a perfectly general norm against violence will be called an ethics of nonviolence. The content will show variation according to the kind of concept of violence adopted. In order to do justice to the thinking of Gandhi, the term violence must be viewed broadly. It must cover not only open, physical violence but also the injury and psychic terror present when people are subjugated, repressed, coerced, and exploited. Further, it must clearly encompass all those sorts of exploitation that indirectly have personal repercussions that limit the self-realization of others.

The corresponding negative term nonviolence must be viewed very narrowly. It is not enough to abstain from physical violence, not enough to be-have peacefully.

In what follows, we offer a condensed systematic account of the positive ethics and strategy of group struggle, trying to crystallize and make explicit the essentials. We use the adjective positive, because the systematization does not include a treatment of evils, for instance, a classification into greater and less great evils. (Whereas violence is always an evil, it is sometimes a greater evil to run away from responsibility.)

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by Arne Naess

The Contemporary Reaction against Nonviolence

The period spanning the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s witnessed an upsurge of physical violence and a proliferation of recommendations to use manifest violence, physical and verbal. It inundated colonial, racial, and educational controversies in Europe, America, India, and many other areas. Sometimes it has been systematically and consistently anti-Gandhian, being in part a direct reaction against the limited success of Gandhian and pseudo-Gandhian preaching and practice.

We shall not enter here into the controversies about the causes of this development, which we vaguely characterize as the “new violence.” A symptom, rather than a cause, is widespread dissatisfaction, indignation, and impatience when considering the slowness of the movement of liberation in the colonial, racial, and educational spheres. The imperatives “Do it quicker!” and “Freedom now!” testified to this demand for immediate, radical change. The slogan “Revolution!” has invaded all spheres of discussion. Revolution is generally conceived as a violent overthrowing, idealizing “power over” and coercion at the cost of “power to.” Changes should be forced on opponents; agreement and compromise should be shunned. The slogans are sometimes formed consciously so as to be in direct opposition to the preaching of nonviolence.

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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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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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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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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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