Chapter 1: Hard Questions, Hard Answers

8: What is Violence?

Why is it getting worse? And how can we make it stop?

9: Evolving Consciousness

Violence and war, once seeming normal and part of a way of life, is now seen as something that can be changed.

10: Bearing a Higher Image of Humankind

What causes violence? Michael poses, “Rage, frustration, and especially alienation. The glamorization of violence on the one hand, and the separateness that it leads to in our feelings for one another on the other hand.”

11: Pains of Losing Dignity and Unity

“The Cloud of Unknowing” and the importance of dignity.

12: Humiliation Ripples

Here, Michael hints at the key to dissolving hatred.

13: Delegitimizing Violence

How does raising dignity delegitimize violence?

14: Experiments of Cooperation

Research by Joel R. Davitz on kids and an experiment on cooperation.

15: Learning from Monkeys

What do Frans de Waal's findings on monkeys teach us about nonviolence?

16: In Search of Prevention

What are the causes of violence, separation, and humiliation?

17: Slowing Down Our Initial Reactions

Exploring converting negative emotions into positive ones.

18: Getting Beyond the Moral Framework

A quote from Wendell Berry, warning that the moral framework when dealing issues of violence can be playing with fire. It's a short leap from calling something evil to calling someone evil, he states, and what we need to do is to understand why violence is happening and how we participate in it.

19: Strength to Defy and Forgive

Reflecting on the moment when Nelson Mandela shook hands with his former enemy, De Klerk, in front of the world, saying that he was proud to do so, reveals a lot to us about the kind of strength that nonviolence requires.

20: A Life-Affirming Orientation

The nature of our task is to discover our capacity for nonviolence, which lies at the basis of our nature. Our challenge, however, is to overcome an unconscious death orientation in our society.