Ours is not an empty, disorderly world, but an exquisitely structured web whose design embraces and affects all living things.

–Sally Goerner

WESTERN CIVILIZATION could be considered a grand experiment, culminating in the three-plus centuries of the industrial revolution, to see if the universe could be accounted for without resorting to the concept of a Supreme Being or an overall purpose.  The experiment was a huge success.  It proved without a doubt that the universe can not be accounted for without introducing the concept of purpose; life could not have come about by chance — as Ervin Lazlo puts it, “pure chance…does not appear to be a significant factor in the evolution of life;” the human being cannot be described as a separate, finite, physical fragment doomed to compete for diminishing resources, but a (potentially) conscious actor in the fulfillment of the design that biologist Sally Goerner alludes to above.

If the physical universe were not governed by laws, science would not be possible; in the same way, if there were not laws governing the spiritual universe within human nature (and all nature), great mystics like Jesus, the Buddha, and in our own age Mahatma Gandhi would not have been able to make their tremendous discoveries or, if they did, to communicate them to the rest of humanity.

The existence of these spiritual laws is what enabled Gandhi to say, in 1909 when his movement was at a low ebb and his opponents determined to not yield one inch to his demands, “I was perfectly indifferent to the numerical superiority of my opponents.”  Because, while numbers were on the opponents’ side — along with weapons, money, and the other accouterments of force — every spiritual law was against them; primarily the overriding law of unity to which all sages and most of modern science attest, which is the mother of all spiritual laws and which we can never break, though we stubbornly work at breaking ourselves against it.

This is why soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are killing themselves in record numbers — or living lives of hell when they return.  And why a U.S. Marine who handed out food and blankets to tsunami victims in 2004 said, “I have been serving my country for 34 years and this is the first day I’ve gotten any fulfillment out of it.”  One simple way of describing a future we all want might be, a future where we can get 34 years of fulfillment from our work for maybe a day or two of waste!

Thanks to the universality of these laws any one of us can master the “science” of Satyagraha, as Gandhi did, and be able to redress the evils of our time without perpetuating them.  The science of Satyagraha is harder to master than math or physics, because the latter are objective — and because they are still, at present, so entrenched in our media, our education — our entire culture.  Even some scientists, who should know better, go on describing reality as the motion of material particles a hundred years after the very existence of separate, material particles fled like shadows in the glare of quantum theory.  Such is the power of an entrenched worldview.

But if we practice Satyagraha and explain to others that it is based on principles now supported both by the best of modern science and the enduring wisdom of humanity down the ages, we are bound, in the long run, to overcome the dismal, dehumanizing worldview that is causing vast suffering in the world.  We have somehow created a system that draws upon the lowest, most destructive drives of our evolutionary heritage; but we engaging the best of which we are capable.  We will be holding up a much higher image of human nature and the “compassionate design” of the universe that is not only what all of us deeply want but happens to be grounded in Truth.

We can get far in this work with only two founding principles, which we do not need to take on faith; we can hold them as hypotheses and test them out in our own experiences:  that there are spiritual laws in the universe, and they can be discovered, and used; and that despite all appearances — and here I will use the exact words of my meditation teacher, Eknath Easwaran — “love flows at bottom in the heart of every human being.”

It follows naturally from the first principle, the “compassionate design” of the universe, that “there is enough in the world for everyone’s need” — the cornerstone of Gandhi’s economics.  It follows from the second that there is no conflict that does not have a win-win solution if we can only discover it (which is usually a matter of knowing what our real needs and those of others are) — that there is no offender who cannot be redeemed, no opponent who cannot be won over.

That the universe has a meaning, that it is pervaded by spiritual forces that every one of us can use to fulfill that meaning is the Good News of the 21^st Century.  Nonviolence is as native to this world as violence is inevitable in the “classical” view, often called dogmatic materialism.  That view is clinging stubbornly to life, even though it made us feel “like gypsies in the universe,” as one scientist put it, where the most important things about us — our ability to feel, to love — were explained away rather than celebrated.  It is high time to lay it to rest and we have every resource now at our disposal to manifest the brighter alternative.

RETURN TO METTA’S HOMEPAGE

On the bus from Incheon Airport to Seoul where we were going to participate in a six-nation seminar on nonviolence and the possibilities for reunification we found ourselves across the aisle from a young fellow who was eager to show us pictures of his recent trip to the North where, we would soon learn, groups had been regularly going to try to sew the fabric of the divided country back together.  In fact, we were soon to experience at first hand the yearning for reunification among people in South Korea, and infer that it is at least as strong in the North.  The war games going on right now – at least as far as the Korean people is concerned – is a lovers’ quarrel.

But that is the trouble: there is not much room for the Korean people to work this out on their own.  Superpowers rarely show much concern for the nations in whose fates they intervene – or for that matter, much wisdom.  That is why the Korean conflict seems intractable — and also why it has to be resolved.   From this conflict, global hostilities could be reignited.

So it was with interest that I scanned a recent editorial in a newspaper of record listing possible scenarios and four things we (the U.S. and available allies) could do.  The first was violent.  So was the second.  So were the third and the fourth (that the U.S. and South Korea could simply outmaneuver the North with our superior technology and weapons).

Anyone who studies conflict knows that there are two ways to go about resolving one. There is of course a violent path, that leads ultimately to war, but there is also a nonviolent one that leads to reconciliation and the resumption of normal ties.  Scholars and activists alike know that the latter are far less costly, in life and property, and constitute really the only choice if we want a permanent solution without the residue of hatred that follows conquest.  But public discourse and state policy are perfectly innocent of this knowledge, almost as if the world of video games and “action movies” rather than historical experience and scientific logic circumscribed their vision.  So some conflict science, if we can inject it into the discourse, might just work wonders.  What would it tell us?

As in any conflict, large or small, one has to start with the assumption — so far conspicuously absent here — that the people of North Korea, yes, including their leadership, are rational.  They have a problem: they want respect, fulfillment of their basic needs, security and (as far as the people themselves are concerned) freedom.   If they use extreme and sometimes counterproductive methods to achieve these results it is because they do not know any others.  Do we?

If we do, our approach should be not to force them to give up on these goals but to help them find other, less extreme ways of achieving them. So far the approach I’m describing is well known and has a well developed technology, if you will, that goes by the name of  Nonviolent Communication, or NVC.

But what if it doesn’t work?  What if the North Korean leadership clings to their destructive pattern of behavior, as is not uncommon in extreme conflicts?  Then it will be time for what Gandhi called Satyagraha, which has the power, as he demonstrated and explained to “compel reason to be free”  Koreans are no strangers to this science.  They used it successfully in their dangerous uprising against the Syngman Rhee regime in the “April 19^th Movement” of 1960.  Last year Buddhist monks, who for centuries kept to themselves, joined with popular demonstrations against the insane government-sponsored scheme to dig a canal across the Korean peninsula (the results of that campaign are pending).

Popular resistance based on the nonviolent methodologies that have sprung up steadily since Gandhi and King, could be used to compel the government to adopt reconciliatory, mutually respectful approaches to the North, despite U.S. pressure.  In fact, though space prevents me from going into details, nonviolence could be brought to bear both within the two Koreas and between them.

Furthermore, nonviolence is not limited to resistance.  The other string to the nonviolent bow is what Gandhi called “constructive programme.”  There is much Koreans could do – with the judicious help of international non-profits where needed – to build bridges toward northerners, who after all have some dire physical needs that could be addressed in a respectful way (as was done in Sri Lanka by the longstanding Sarvodaya movement).

While I’ve been stressing what Koreans could do without, indeed despite, U.S. or other foreign intervention, it is not to say that we should take a hands-off attitude.  Rather, we should say to the policymakers we can reach, ‘if you want to interfere, interfere usefully.’  U.S. intervention came down (for once) on the side of the student-led uprising against President Slobodan Milośevič in Serbia ten years ago, with the result that he was deposed bloodlessly and inexpensively (after a hugely expensive NATO campaign had failed to do this in much more time than it took the 2000 uprising).

Nonviolence can be learned, up to a point, as can any other method of peace and reconciliation.   At present there are no peace studies programs per se in the educational system of the South (not to mention the North!); the South Korean system could be rapidly brought up to speed, ensuring that the next generation would not have to wait until tensions rose as high as they are now to resolve their conflicts.  Koreans themselves are quite ready for this (the second translation in which my book, The Search for a Nonviolent Future was published is Korean.)

There has been a tentative diplomatic opening between the two sides recently, which we should take advantage of.  But let us not be content with just another standoff, which is about the best normal diplomacy, left to itself, would bring.  The Korean people and the world want and deserve more.  They want and deserve real peace, leading in due course to reunification — and with the right means all of this is possible.

Michael N. Nagler

Rabbi Michael Lerner’s recent call to the progressive community to run a candidate who would put pressure on President Obama to move back to the agenda he laid out, or rather implied, in his inspiring campaign of November, 2008 puts attention back on the natural, but misleading question of his personal style and positions.  We should realize that his rousing success in 2008 was based on political skill, not a concerted attempt to educate the public about the validity of his views.  “Hope” and “change” are emotions, not policies, and while you and I may have read into that hope and change what we wanted those stirring words to mean, others were free to take them as meaning something else, and no one was made any wiser during the bruising electoral process.  (The last political leader I know of to insist that his followers understood exactly what he was doing, and why, was Gandhi – who never stood for office in free India’s government).  The Republicans, smarting from what they perceived as a defeat (in days of yore it might have been accepted as a political decision, not a popularity contest) bent every effort to stonewall his agenda, and despite the enthusiasm that greeted Obama’s 2008 campaign they succeeded handily. The fact is that they can influence the minds of the most voters far more easily than progressives of any stripe.  Whatever may have been his failures and miscalculations, therefore, we must take into account that the President – or any of us for that matter – is not playing on a level field.

The field is unbalanced by two potent factors, one so secret that no one talks about it and the other so obvious that no one seems to notice it.  It is not fun to talk about the first, but we must: whatever may be the democratic structure of our government —and for my money it’s the best in the world, on paper — there is a criminal element operating within and around it, who will stop at no outrage.  I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I know enough physics to know that three buildings of the World Trade Center, one of which was not struck by an airplane, did not collapse from the impact or the ensuing fires of 9/11.  I am not a conspiracy theorist but I have followed the writings of Jim Douglass and others closely enough to know that JFK was almost certainly not felled by a lone gunman firing three incredibly accurate shots from the Texas Book Depository Building on November 22, 1963.   Let’s face it: whatever you and I decide at the ballot box, these people can reverse in the real world.  They can carry out the most outrageous crimes with impunity — their own conscience aside.

The vast majority of Republican voters and office-holders are, of course, no part of these cabals and that is not what I am suggesting.  Most of them would disagree with the actions of these shadowy operatives as vehemently as we do.  Nonetheless they are, simply by the nature of their policies, less of a threat to them than progressives – and consequently less threatened by them.  A George Bush need not fear assassination from this quarter, but a Barack Obama does have to live in the shadow of that threat.

There is little an ordinary citizen like you and me can do directly about this political cancer, but there may be a way to affect the general culture that supports it.  Think about Rush Limbaugh.  This man envenoms the minds of 25-35 million unsophisticated potential voters every day.  And he is only one representative of this brand of hate radio that in the long run can be as damaging, if less overtly so, as the radio stations that instigated the Rwandan genocide.  But he could not do this in a vacuum: he does it in a climate of incivility, a culture where, to quote a colleague of mine at Berkeley, “we are increasing violence by every means possible.”  Every conversation that takes place, every public decision that is made, virtually every thought that is thought inside of us takes place in this toxic environment.

Michael Tomasky recently pointed out in the New York Review of Books that Republicans have the great advantage of being able to speak grandly about “freedom,” “saving America from Socialism” and other exciting themes that are by no means less compelling for being false, while “any sense that the Democrats are now making a coherent argument about what kind of country they want has vaporized.”   But this is easy to understand when the majority of us still subscribe to an image of the human being as a bodily object, struggling for survival in a world of ever-diminishing resources.  How can you rouse enthusiasm about health care when most of our fellow citizens consciously or unconsciously believe that another’s suffering does not affect them and we are doomed to carry out our private struggle for existence in an unforgiving world?  What’s the use of protesting war when most people, however much some of them hate it, believe that war is the only way to protect themselves in a perpetually hostile world?

There is a way, then, that Democrats — or any of us — can start to weigh against the toxicity of our cultural matrix: we can be very bold about the world we believe is possible.  However naïve it will sound to some, we can state clearly that, no: we are not finite, material, separate beings acted upon by random forces in a universe without meaning.  We are spiritual beings, the manifestations of a consciousness that is unitary throughout the universe, and we have come into being to discover that very unity.  Therefore we are not doomed to competition and violence against each other and our natural environment; on the contrary we are destined to create beloved community on a healthy planet.  Without this vision, nothing that we intuitively want makes sense: with it, nothing else does.

Please share this article with friends and consider subscribing to our “Beloved Community Subscription Circle”on our site.  Questions or comments on the ideas presented in this article can be sent to “ask Metta.”

Metta will dedicate 2011 to putting before spiritual activists and all interested parties the following four-fold plan for a concerted major campaign that we see as the best approach to a nonviolent future.  Each of these items will of course need elaboration, and we have been considering convening a strategic council and larger meeting to work on that. Meanwhile we invite your comments.

I. The Vision.

We envision a not-too-distant future where human beings live in “loving community” on a healthy planet.  When people are guided by their culture to look for satisfaction within themselves (and in warm relationships with others) instead of by accumulating possessions prestige – when they become aware of their inner resources – they will naturally put less pressure on the environment and come into conflict much less frequently with other persons.  Seeking happiness where it can actually be found (within us) will have shown the way out of seemingly intractable problems.

II.  The Goal.

The progressive movement needs a unifying focus; and there is no question what that focus must be: to rebalance and protect the climate of planet Earth. This task cannot be accomplished if it is not made our number one priority; and if it is not accomplished nothing else will even be possible. This does not necessarily mean dropping all other concerns: it does mean working on those concerns in a way that is at least indirectly helpful in the struggle to restore the planetary climate and to with full awareness of the Vision that is our ‘big picture’ and how one’s own work is part of it.  In that way, we can solve this urgent problem at its root, which turns out to be the root of almost every problem that we face.

III. The Strategy.

Mahatma Gandhi developed an extremely successful model for a major campaign.  In the freedom struggle that led to India’s independence he kept two ‘wings’ in balance.  One was Constructive Programme, a set of eighteen projects designed to help Indians take back their culture, their self-sufficiency, and their hopes for a healthy future.  These positive ways to rebuild their own society depended on no outside source or permission.  They could often be carried out ‘beneath the radar’ of the British Raj but had a powerful effect in positioning Indians to call for, and work on, the withdrawal of the occupation.

Satyagraha was the more obstructive ‘wing’, and is better known (though very few are aware of the power it contains or how it works).  As a general rule we should do constructive work whenever possible (which is practically always) and obstructive resistance when necessary and strategically advisable.

IV.  The Method.

Actually, nonviolence is much more than a method or a tool.  It is a whole way of life arising from the type of Vision we outline above.  But as a method of struggle in entails unconditional respect for the person of the opponent or opponents even, or especially when their behavior must be resisted.  Much has been learned since the days of Gandhi and King about this science – for such it certainly was – but few have enough exposure to this knowledge to make it a practical reality.  We have to rectify that, for it is only through nonviolence that we can push back the forces that are destroying the quality, if not the very existence of life on Earth gently but firmly, and above all permanently.  In this way, also, we can emerge from the successful campaign to rebalance and protect Earth’s climate with a community of activists ready to move on to whatever issues call for our attention.

Violence is puzzling when we can’t see the forest for the trees. If we focus on just this event – and it’s certainly a shocker – we may not realize that it’s part of a much larger pattern. We must take a step back – in fact, two steps – and take in the whole picture.

What these men did is only one of many signs of breakdown in both of our long, drawn-out wars in the Middle East. In Iraq, for example, from a report filed by McClatchy’s Washington Bureau on September 17:

• Drug and alcohol abuse in the ranks, and the associated misdemeanor offenses, have risen alarmingly in the nine-year course of the war.”Drug and alcohol abuse is [now] a significant health problem in the Army,” stated a 350-page report the Army released in July.

• Sexual assault tripled in the period 2001-2009; and most telling:

• So did suicide. There were 148 Army suicides in the first six months of this year and the toll is expected to surpass last year’s grim total of 160.

Moreover, record numbers of veterans from both wars are “broken” or dysfunctional – unable to work, maintain relationships or stay out of jail.

At least now the Army is starting to lend some humane attention to these men and women, after a decade of denial and neglect. Said Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the Army:

We can’t use these people up, have them develop a problem and then throw them away and not take care of them. There is no way. I can’t be part of an organization like that. Part of the reason they’re having the problem is the situation we put them into.

And what is that situation? These soldiers lose it because they were put into a war that should never have been fought. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – and our leaders knew it. Similarly, it was not necessary to destroy the entire Taliban movement – assuming that military force could accomplish such a thing – to capture Osama bin Laden (which, of course, has not happened anyway).

But to get the final answer, we have to step back yet again. We have to recognize that there is such a thing as moral progress. Slavery was considered normal from the earliest records of history down to the 19th century of our era, when a small band of Quakers in London started a movement that broke the spell and suddenly brought to light the horror of enslaving another human being. Slavery still happens, but that’s because of other factors; it was formally abolished in the 19th century because the time was right for people to wake up and stop looking on a whole race of human beings as objects, as possessions.

Today, we are reaching a similar crisis with the institution of war. Despite appearances, people are becoming more aware that we cannot solve problems by waging war on them. If you are not aware that this is happening, you are not alone; watch any news or “entertainment” program and you’ll see that competition, violence and war are still considered “normal.” It’s rare to spot nonviolent, alternative methods, since they are so rarely featured in mainstream media.

It is significant that a good number of the troubled veterans we just mentioned are not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), exactly, but a variant recently uncovered by psychologist Rachel McNair that she calls PITS: perpetration induced traumatic stress. Simply put, when we do violence against others, we are in some psychological way hurting ourselves – and that pain is becoming more evident as the patina of glory surrounding war wears off. One brigade commander correctly pointed out that the drug problem is “just a symptom of the disease.” But the name of the disease is not dysfunctional leaders or lax discipline or a particular conflict that should not have been fought; it’s war.

Back when he was campaigning, soon-to-be President Obama said that we must “not only end war [in Iraq] but end the mindset that leads to war.” Of course, he did nothing of the kind. And, so, it’s up to us.

I encourage anyone who hasn’t already done so to familiarize him- or herself with the alternatives to war that fall into three broad categories: 1) living more lightly on the earth, since most wars today are fought over its diminishing resources; 2) diplomacy, mediation and international institutions that can keep disputes from turning into wars; and 3) nonviolent mechanisms to deal with the wars that nonetheless break out, like the unarmed interventions just mentioned that are helping to reduce violence in trouble spots all over the world now.

I recommend that we all learn about these things and talk about them with family, friends and our Congressmen or women. You may not get anything but raised eyebrows at first, but remember what Gandhi said about a real innovation: “First they ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they fight you — and then you win.”

NV + V = V.

More seriously, this effect is a serious problem for nonviolent actors today, as witnessed by the disruption by a very small number of ‘Black Block’ anarchists of the large, well-disciplined protestors at the Seattle WTO meetings in 1999, and more recently, as it seems, the few passengers of the Free Gaza flotilla who attacked invading Israeli commandos aboard the Mavi Marmara in May of 2010.  In both cases the disruptive element succeeded in capturing the lion’s share of media attention and thus changing the character of the event in the eyes of much of the public.  The ‘law’ identifies something deeper than just media attention, however: as with other aspects of active nonviolence and Satyagraha, they are like a conversation with opponents, and mixed messages can badly disrupt communication, especially the mixing of, as we say, even a little violence with an otherwise nonviolent movement or event.

For details of the Upcoming June 11-14 NSP conference in Washington, D.C., including the impressive roster of speakers, go to this link.

“Remember our humanity, and forget all the rest.”

Albert Einstein

The decade has not begun with a paean to human wisdom.  Two recent acts of folly in particular share a deep and pernicious connection that bears some pondering, and I am not even referring to the capture of Ted Kennedy’s seat in a Massachusetts.  I am referring to the 5-4 Supreme Court decision on Thursday last week ratifying an absurd and dangerous notion that had been let loose in the public discourse almost by accident nearly a century ago, namely the legal ‘personhood’ of corporations, and secondly to the introduction of full-body scanning for ‘security’ that is coming soon to airports near you.

The first decision will unfetter corporate influence over policymakers (all in the name of populism, ironically), an influence that was already operating almost without let or hindrance under the present rules.  The second decision reflects is a serious misunderstanding of security (we can know real security only when we pursue peace and justice, not by walling ourselves in with ever-more-invasive technology), and was apparently arrived at, in unseemly haste, through the kind of corruption that has all too commonly accompanied post-9/11 ‘security’ measures: as Randall Amster reports in his Op-Ed News article, “Invasion of the Body Scanners,” former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff  is a vocal and influential proponent of Rapiscan, the firm that stands to make huge profits from the scanners, and has promoting their cause since long before the Christmas bomber set off  the recent panic. The Chertoff Group, his consulting firm, has Rapiscan as one of its clients!

The damage these decisions will do to us, however, goes even deeper; and it may be only when we peel back the covering on that deeper significance that we may really be able to understand  — and overcome — the challenge they represent.  When dissenting Justice John Stevens said that the majority had committed a grave error in treating corporate speech on the same level as that of human beings, he was hinting that they have dealt a blow not just to democracy, but to humanity.  I am an embodied, conscious person endowed with judgment and responsibility.  A corporation is none of these things.  It is an abstraction, a collection of individuals who have surrendered precisely those qualities. It is more than a political mistake to grant corporations the status of persons: it is a spiritual delusion.  And as such, it has dealt a blow to the very basis of freedom and democracy, the inviolable dignity of the human person.

These dehumanizing measures  do not come out of the blue.  They have been a part of our culture for a long time.  The very term ‘human resources’ that is a standard technical term in corporate vocabulary implies that humans are resources for corporations, and not the other way around; while anyone who flies knows that body scanning is only the ultimate militarization and humiliation of airport ‘check points,’ like the yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany after they had been suitably prepared by a series of escalating insults.

As the revered religion scholar Huston Smith pointed out at an education conference some years ago, no further progress will be made in our culture until we can formulate a higher, mutually accepted image of the human being.  Seen in this light, we have just been handed two steps backward in that essential progress.  To quote Amster again, body-scanning “is essentially a form of high-tech voyeurism masking as security, and it portends more such incursions into liberty and privacy.” Without liberty and privacy, what are we?

So these decisions, and the wrong momentum behind them, have to be resisted.  But how?  Actually, this is a no-brainer.  We must resist by means that bring back to light the meaning of the person even as they work toward ends with the same purpose.  Those are the means of nonviolence.  They alone allow us to resist the actions of our opponents, even to point out their follies, without diminishing them as persons.  British historian Arnold Toynbee said astutely of Gandhi’s methods: “He made it impossible for us to go on ruling India; but he made it possible for us to leave without rancour and without humiliation.” More: nonviolence is the method that humanizes as it creates change.  It humanizes those offering it, those to whom it is offered, and — to the extent they are alert — the ‘reference publics’ looking on.  I therefore heartily endorse the current proposal to amend the Constitution to do away with this confusion once and for all; but should it fail, or not be sufficient, we must be prepared to carry out more creative, and sterner methods in this humane spirit.

In an important article in the Huffington Post my colleague George Lakoff states that the first principle of democracy is empathy.  Yes, but a more etymological way to define its core principle is, the locus of value and responsibility of the human being, considered in his or her self without reference to social category or status.  A democracy is made up of empowered, responsible individuals, or else it is no more than an empty structure composed of ciphers who have lost their true significance politically and are in danger of losing their very humanity spiritually – a ‘democracy’ in name only (and quite possibly the more dangerous for clothing itself in that sacred name).

And now for the crowning irony.  If I were gay, the people who would deny me the right to marry a same-sex partner because it isn’t ‘natural’ are now telling me that corporations are equal to persons — the grossest denial of nature one can imagine.  They are telling us, for that matter, that life is sacred until you are born — that we must be allowed to live until birth but once we’re out of the womb the death penalty, war, and a flood of cheap handguns can have at us.  I guess if you deny evolution and global warming it’s only a short step to denying your own humanity.  And we know from history where that will take us.  The brilliant political scientist and holocaust escapee Hannah Arendt said very clearly that totalitarianism… “strives not toward despotic rule over men but toward a system in which men are superfluous.” Nonviolent resistance, anyone?

There were many noble thoughts resounding throughout President Obama’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. The knowledge he revealed of some of his great predecessors, particularly Martin Luther King and Aung San Suu Kyi, was astounding for someone in his position; but at this point he makes a fatal mistake, and it is essential to recognize that mistake and to correct it. to make sure that it does not happen again. He said, “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.” In this I make bold to say that he was wrong. In March,1943, Gestapo headquarters in Berlin ordered the arrest and departation of the remaining Jewish men who had been left out of the roundups so far because they were married to ‘Aryan’ wives. But then a totally unexpected thing happened. First one, then another of those wives began to converge on the detention center at 1-2 Rosenstrasse demanding their men be released. By the end of the weekend they were nearly 6,000 strong, and refusing orders to disperse though Gestapo headquarters was only a few blocks away. And the Gestapo caved in. They returned the men. Moreover, as we have learned only recently, in Nazi-occupied capitals all over Europe officials carefully watched the failed experiment and decided to leave their own Jews who similarly had aryan spouses alone. In other words; a primitive, weak, unorganized form of nonviolence carried out spontaneously by untrained people with no organization and no followup “stopped Hitler’s armies” in their most virulent form, saving tens of thousands. On one level, it should come as a surprise that such a sophisticated President, who speaks knowledgeably about King and Gandhi, should come out with the oldest objection in the book, ‘it wouldn’t have worked against the Nazis’ — the most frequently heard cavil, the most knee-jerk reaction that people like me who advocate the ‘sweet reasonableness’ of nonviolence can hear in our sleep.

There are several problems with the logic of this apparently imperishable argument, but it will do for now to simply say that it is patently false: nonviolence did work against the Nazis — when it was tried.

The issue is not just philosophical. In the next breath The President adds, “Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.” This is how those who can see no recourse but violence always justify their actions. Was it not Hitler, in Mein Kampf, who said, ‘We Germans have learned to our cost that the British will not listen to anything but force’? We may as well give this mistake it’s proper name: dehumanization. You cannot be violent toward another unless you adopt the fatal mistake of denying his or her humanity; and no peace will be possible as long as we persist in doing that.

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes,” President Obama said to frame his position; but that is pure speculation. Parallel to that was his projection of the same pessimism backward, to the imagined past: “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history…” No it didn’t. Modern research has shown that there are forms of conflict resolution among our primate ancestors that are more sophisticated than any some groups of Homo sapiens care to use — or acknowledge that they have. And the archeological record says that whole civilizations lived on what is now European soil for thousands of years with hardly a sign of large-scale conflict.

As mentioned, this President displays more awareness of the nonviolent alternative than anyone who has held or could conceivably hold that high office in our lifetime. From what other President could we expect to hear these words in a highly public speech: “As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak — nothing passive, nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.” And yet, as he follows out of this logic he runs into a tragic block. He simply declares, again without evidence, that nonviolence would not have stopped Hitler’s armies and cannot stop a ruthless and determined opponent, although it stopped Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, Slobodan MiloÑevi… in 2000 and about a dozen other dictators who were, like these, ruthless enough. He likewise bemoans the fact — and I am not accusing him of insincerity — that when a Darfur or a Rwanda happens we have only two choices, to stand by and do nothing or to use deadly force, because “inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.” Yet for the last twenty years the practice of unarmed civilian peacekeeping has been steadily growing, saving lives and moderating conflicts all over the world though only individual donors and a few enlightened governments (not including our own) keep them going. One global effort, called the Nonviolent Peaceforce, says plainly that they represent “what you can say yes to when you say no to war;” but the deafening drumbeat of violence and materialism, blaring at us in every medium, dutifuylly repeated in most every history book, is overwhelming, and we do not heed them.

Again and again, the contrast between the President’s sophistication and his failure to apply it startles: “security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive.” Yes, this is called “human security” and is a far deeper and more practical promise than the folly of bombing enemies into undying, if helpless enmity. Recently Jeffrey Sachs, along with many other respected writers, has pointed out that development has a far, far better track record at stabilizing societies than any amount of military intervention — again at a fraction of the cost. As Sachs says, even if we spent $200 on every villager (which is more than enough to give them the economic security the President cited) we could help 5,000 of them for the cost of a single U.S. soldier stationed in Afghanistan: “That’s right,” he concludes, “the approximate trade-off is meaningful help for an entire village versus stationing one more US soldier.” But where is the conclusion, that we should withdraw our troops and begin development in Afghanistan?

But my point is a little different. I am talking about our addiction to violence, an addiction that is fed to satiation and beyond every day by our own mass media (the extremely violent new video game, “Modern Warfare,” which features ‘players’ massacring civilians, sold seven million copies in the first few hours), and has blinded us to the point that we cannot see the way out of our quandary even though it is happening, with a rising tempo, here and there across the planet.

Having watched with admiration how calmly the President-to-be delivered his brilliant (albeit often evasive) speeches during his many campaigning months, it was painful for me to see for the first time a numbing strain invade his features. It was painful not just because of the admiration and, yes, affection in which I, for one, still hold President Obama: it was painful because in that agonizing tension between his personal vision and the tired, clichéd party line on which he is forced to walk we see reflected the tragedy of our civilization, where more and more of us can see a better world almost taking shape before our eyes but others of us, not always very many, maintain their death grip on the public discourse. So my point is not to criticize President Obama. Far from it. My point is to condemn the culture that has entrapped him, forcing him to betray his high intelligence. And that I do, not to stand in judgment on that culture or anyone who has fallen into its clutches, but to alert every one of us to the danger it poses — to encourage each of us to learn all we can about nonviolence and personally begin the shift, as Martin Luther King urged, from a ‘thing oriented’ civilization to one based on the infinite potential of the human being.

The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States opened a door to a much brighter, nonviolent future. We have to pluck up the courage to walk through that door before it closes once again, perhaps for the last time.

Shortly after 9/11 we got a letter from a friend of ours who was in western Pakistan helping Greg Mortenson, of Three Cups of Tea fame, build schools.  People from the village streamed in to express their condolences, and the local mullah came hastily back from a long trip to assure my friend that ‘this is not Islam.’  I remember commenting during a lecture shortly thereafter that the people in that part of the world seem to resemble human beings: if you build schools for them, they like and respect you; if you bomb their schools and homes with drone rockets…well, you take it from there.

I have friends who advocate pulling our combat forces out of the region, period; but while I completely understand their feelings there seem to me to be two things against that policy.  It would send a message that the United States is capable of doing great harm but not capable of doing good, which is not true as I will be outlining in a moment.  Second, if we go about it in the right way we can help repair the damage we’ve been partly responsible for causing and help that country find its way to a stable solution, and if we can, we should.  I am not arguing from guilt here: I follow the moral reasoning laid out by Roger Fisher of the Harvard Negotiation project some years ago (and many others down the years, of course), that the obligation to help others arises not from any prior harm we may have done them but simply because we have the capacity to do so.  We are human beings, after all – do we need special reasons to help others when we have the capacity to do so?

What can we as a nation do, then, to help Afghanistan instead of  following this mad policy of throwing gasoline on the fire?  Fortunately, there are many ways – as long as we know where to look.  There are methods that have worked around the world, though the mainstream media are remarkably slow to notice them and hence they remain off the margins of  public awareness, including the awareness, to all appearances, of policymakers.  The mechanisms I’m about to list (and I’m sure there are others) assume that we completely halt aggressive military action in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and start a steady build-down of military forces there.  Ideally, we would phase military forces out as we phase the following non-military alternatives in that render them unnecessary.  And there are two ground rules, both gained by much practical experience in non-military intervention over the last thirty or so years: 1) Don’t go it alone.  This is not America’s problem, it’s the world’s problem, and the world’s people must be involved in solving it.  Virtually all the successful intervention teams of the type I’m about to mention have been multinational.  2) Don’t do it uninvited.  The term “peace imperialism” has been coined in the field of peace studies for the idea that we can parachute in and bring peace somewhere without local invitation and cooperation.  Afghanistan today is not a unified country.  If the Karzai government is unwilling to issue an invitation to civil-society groups to come and help them elements within Afghan society would most certainly do so.  Here, then, is the scheme:

• Rebuild Afghanistan through micro-lending.  It’s much harder for corrupt warlords, or politicians, to make off with small, dispersed loans than highly concentrated, government-to-government ones.  As Rebecca Griffin, of Peace Action West has recently put it, “Right now in Afghanistan, military officers walk around with pocket money to throw at poorly developed aid projects because we don’t have enough trained civilians to do the work. Contractors are pocketing millions of dollars through fraud and waste. It’s time to stop paying lip service to development while bombing communities.”  Micro-lending is working very well all over the world.
• Offer two kinds of peace-building services: 1) the intervention of trained nonviolent civilian teams such as are in the field today in Sri Lanka, Mindinao, Colombia, Southern Sudan, and a dozen or so other places thanks to organizations like the Nonviolent Peaceforce, Peace Brigades International, the German Civilian Peace Service (Zivile Friedensdienst). 2) Mediation groups, again civil society, like Johan Galtung’s TRANSCEND or the Washington-based Search for Common Ground.  Like everything else I will be listing here, these organizations have inspiring track records of success.
• Offer to send teachers, agricultural experts, carpenters, medical personnel and whatever Afghans say they need.  There are thousands of volunteers ready to go in all of these fields: only make sure they get some training in cultural sensitivity, and make sure they understand that they are going where no one can guarantee their safety.  By and large, aid workers are much safer than soldiers, but in these violent times they are not safe completely and it will be crucial that the volunteers understand this.

Who will pay for all this?  We will.  A soldier costs a million dollars a year; a highly trained field team member from Nonviolent Peaceforce costs $50,000.  (Not to mention that the unarmed civilian type of intervention actually works).

Advocates of force often throw up their hands and say, ‘we have no choice.’  But we always have a choice.  If we paid poor farmers in Colombia so that they did not have to grow Coca to survive, they doubtless would – but instead we pay twenty times more to eradicate their crops (and cause much additional damage).  The cost for each year that we maintain one soldier in Afghanistan is twenty times greater than the cost of building a school.  And, as mentioned, twenty times greater than the cost of a trained civilian unarmed peacekeeper.

Why don’t we stop paying for death?

The Search for a Nonviolent Future has been published in Arabic! Soon to be distributed in Syria, Morocco, Jordan, and Lebanon.  We are also working on connections in — yes — Iraq, through our friends in La’Onf, and Palestine.

Also, this Thursday November 19th,  Michael will be giving an interview with host Bettina Grey for the Spiritual Resources webcast series at the Interfaith Center in San Francisco. It will be streamed live at 6pm PST. There is already a discussion thread started on the Spiritual Resources page where you can voice your questions now!

At that site and on YouTube you can watch and hear his recent talk at the University of Rhode Island.

We are so pleased to invite you to stop by our lovely new office on — yes! — 1730 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way in Berkeley (betw. Francisco and Delaware).  Our phone number and emails remain the same but we have much more room and can have meetings of our own.  The front room will soon serve as a Nonviolence Resource Center for the Community.  We have already held a film screening there (see the attendees, from a recent hope tank) and a visit from two Iraq veterans on a bicycle tour across the U.S.

It gives us great pleasure to note that Rick Stein, owner of Just Carpets in San Rafael, has donated a beautiful new carpet for the main, office room.  We have also received a full set of kitchen ware — and our own copy of the long lost documentary, Mahatma Gandhi, Prophet of the Twentieth Century, which Michael considers the best of its kind.  It had fallen from view for forty years until its recent rediscovery by an Indian researcher.  Help us housewarm! While we get ready for a party for you, here are things that we could still use:

• a microwave
• a small couch
• folding chairs
• the services of a good electrician!
• …and of course, your company.

As Pancho said in the ‘Hope Tank‘ discussion this morning, this is not India’s or U.S.’s, it is humanity’s holiday.  Yet so few of us humans are aware of it.  If we were, we would be well on our way to a nonviolent future.  That is the work of Metta, and many of us around the world: to make humanity aware that it has a brilliant, nearly untapped potential, a cause fully worthy of our life.  Our booklet, Hope or Terror, is available to download on this site as a gift we are giving to the Earth Community; and we are here to work with you and offer you opportunities to work with us in liberating that potential.