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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 575
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WCL 575 Jan 2008
Non-violence for world citizens
A recent book Mark Kurlansky is a valuable reminder of some useful truths. It has an illuminating discussion of 19th century attempts at building a peace movement and some insights that come from someone who is looking at those attempts from a new viewpoint. As an American, he gives details and facts that will be little known to many Europeans.
The book starts off well and analyses the phenomenon of non-violence before tackling the history. That gives it strengths but leaves some weaknesses. The initial discussion non-violence is sound but not exhaustive and raises questions left unanswered. But it then proceeds to a very interesting account of 19th century American exponents of non-violence, often people not mentioned in earlier accounts of the subject.
Not being violent is not necessarily non-violence, so what is? That remains unclear, despite the author's stabs at answering the question. But most importantly it requires much discipline and that is stressed. World citizenship requires non-violence, since it needs law and stability, but above all social justice. Which is the point at which this book falters.
Law is almost never mentioned and thus its crucial importance is ignored, perhaps an indication of a traditional association of non-violence in some quarters with anarchism. Instead there is a concentration upon the political and other fears that can, and do, lead to the abandonment of non-violence when it is likely to be most needed. The analysis thereabouts is shaky. It tends to be an all-or-nothing approach: pointing out that when war begins, all rational thought about violence tends to cease. It does not look closely enough into why and how this happens.
Thus the basic need of people to feel secure, almost certainly the key to successful peace-making, is not considered. Nor is the role of the state analysed. Indeed, the confusion in use of the terms 'nation' and 'state' is a recurring blot upon this otherwise admirable survey of the situation of the professors and practitioners of non-violence. But getting to grips with the elusive reality of the subject remains difficult.
The author rightly emphasises the enormity of the human acceptance of violence as part of the way of life of virtually every society and the incredulity of most people in imagining any alternative. But the vigour and viciousness with which those practitioners are treated is a clue to just how dangerous this idea appears to rulers of states - the exemplars of the use and practice of violence.
There is a parallel here which is shown in a book about 'La dangera lingvo', the international language Esperanto, which was persecuted by German Nazis and Russian communists. Both saw it as a threat to the nationalist ideology upon which they based their own power and persecuted the adherents of the idea of a non-nationalist language, consigning many of them to the concentration camps where they often died in company with other 'enemies of the regime'.
Because, in the final analysis, the opponents of non-violence are the defenders of power - their own power or the power of like-minded rivals. Power is the key, which is seen almost universally as essential. Which is why the meek are treated so violently: if they refuse to react violently they must be provoked into doing so. Then they will fall into the pattern of power- seeking and can be dealt with by the usual strong-arm tactics.
John Roberts
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