The Search for a Nonviolent Future
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THE SEARCH FOR A NONVIOLENT FUTURE THE S EARCH FOR A NONVIOLENT FUTURE A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World R MICHAEL N. NAGLER INNER OCEAN PUBLISHING MAUI, HAWA I ‘I • SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA Contents R Foreword ix Inner Ocean Publishing, Inc. P.O. Box 1239 Preface xi Makawao, Maui, HI 96768-1239 Acknowledgments xviii © 2004 by Michael Nagler Introduction xxi All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means or in any form whatsoever without written permission from the publisher. 1. Hard Questions, Hard Answers Book design by Lisa Schulz Elliot/Elysium 2. Hope in Dark Times Publisher Cataloging-in-Publication Data 3. No Power to Describe: The “Nonviolent Nagler, Michael N. Moment” as Peak Experience The search for a nonviolent future: a promise of peace for ourselves, our families, and our world / Michael N. Nagler. — 4. “Work” Versus Work 2nd ed. — Makawao, HI: Inner Ocean, 2004. p. ; cm. 5. A Way Out of Hell Originally published: Berkeley, Calif.: Berkeley Hills Books, c2001, under title: Is there no other way?: the search for a 6. Constructive Programme nonviolent future. 7. A Clear Picture of Peace Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 1-930722-40-0 1. Nonviolence. 2.Violence. 3. Pacifism. 4. Passive resistance. 8. Fighting Fire with Water I. Nagler, Michael N. Is there no other way? II.Title. HM1281 .N342 2004 9. Toward a Metaphysics of Compassion 303.6/1—dc22 0410 Epilogue D ISTRIBUTED BY P UBLISHERS G ROUP W EST Action Guide For information on promotions, bulk purchases, premiums, or educational use, Notes and References please contact Special Markets: 866.731.2216 or [email protected]. Resources and Opportunities Index To my beloved teacher, Sri Eknath Easwaran January 2, 1911–October 26, 1999 Foreword R I TMAYNOTbe the perfect analogy but I can’t help feeling that the state of the world today resembles the state of an individual who is terminally ill. Well, you might say, what is new about this? Namely, that the world is terminally ill with violence? We know this too, per- haps. But my imagination has gone wild with the similarities. The individual is an inveterate smoker. He or she is well aware of the hazards of smoking but he continues nevertheless in the brazen belief that nothing serious is going to happen. He is more or less forced to believe this, because in fact the habit is more than he can control. (I had one friend who became so panicked when a doctor told her she had only a few years to live if she didn’t quit that she ran out to have a smoke!) However, when the individual does get lung cancer he rushes to the doctor and pleads for a cure. The doctor suggests a complete recovery might be possible only if drastic changes in lifestyle are sin- cerely made. Beginning with no more smoking. For the moment the patient swears he will do everything the doctor wants. Just as we recoil right after a war or a particularly heinous act of violence—for a while. The patient goes home with a new lease on life. Once cured, though, the old habit reasserts itself and he finds himself smoking once more. As we all know, this tragic scenario can end in death. Do you see the point I am trying to make? The world is terminally ill with violence, and when the disease assumes a virulent form we plead for a remedy; but when we are cured we go back to our old destructive ways. As in the individual, so in societies; cures can only be as effective as one’s determination to change bad habits into good. For centuries the world has been saturated with a Culture of Violence to such an extent that it has seeped down to the very core of our being. Or so it seems. But violence is no more natural than letting your innards be destroyed by constant smoking. If we persist in living, Foreword ix thinking, and being in the Culture of Violence then we will not find Preface the way out of that culture; it is almost as impossible to find a patch- work solution as it would be to stay dry in a swimming pool. R To understand the insidious nature of the Culture of Violence it is important to realize that violence has many facets.There is not only the physical violence of wars, fights, riots, beatings, rapes, murders, etc., S OME THREE MONTHS before the horrific events of September but the more destructive “passive” violence, where we hurt people 11, I attended a panel discussion at the “J School” (School of without using physical force. This is more destructive because it is as Journalism) on my campus that the dean, Orville Schell, had arranged unseen as cancer. Passive violence manifests in a thousand different in order to open a debate on the new president’s resurrection of “star ways, like wasting resources, overconsumption, hate, prejudice, name wars,” space-based missile defense.The first speaker was a representa- calling, and hundreds of seemingly innocent acts that hurt people even tive from the Lawrence Livermore labs, one of the nation’s two unconsciously. Passive violence fuels the fire of physical violence, which nuclear weapons facilities, where, of course, there is stake in promot- means if we want to put out the fire of physical violence we have to cut ing such projects. But there is also a strong undercurrent of alarm off the fuel supply. How? “We must become the change we wish to see about them among nuclear scientists, some of whom I had had the in the world,” grandfather Gandhi said. pleasure of speaking with during the Cold War when a group of us, Think again of my analogy, for a moment.You can make someone professors like myself, along with theologians and weapons scientists, stop smoking temporarily by scaring him.You can make him stop a bit participated in a floating roundtable that went on, at one retreat or longer by using a nicotine patch, but that still does not address what- another, for several years. It was one of the most intellectually satisfy- ever drove him to smoke in the first place. Finally, you can give him ing give-and-takes of my career. But this night I was in for a shock. something to live for—some higher purpose—so that he finds the The speaker, a well-informed scientist with a flair for public will for a permanent cure. speaking, took complete command of his audience.The first question This book, written by my good friend Dr. Michael Nagler, does all up for discussion was, Would the technology work? “Of course it three. It makes us feel how repugnant and how unnecessary violence would,” he sneered. “Technology always works.” (Hmm. Has anyone is in all its forms. It tells us many stories that explain how nonviolence here ever used a computer? I mused.) Then it got worse. “We [the works and reports on many organizations and projects that are United States] have so much money,” he went on, “we can do pretty coming up with creative, constructive alternatives to violence in much what we want and nobody can stop us.” I will spare you the rest. many forms—including forms we may have thought were inevitable, It was, all in all, the most abrasive and vulgar display of arrogance I or “justified.”And it inspires us to find our way to the kind of reward- could remember seeing before a campus audience. He acted, and even ing life that will permanently protect us and our families and our looked, like Mussolini, whom I had seen in newsreels that I had had world from this cancer of violence. I hope this inspiring book will be the misfortune to view over and over again in high school, and now he read and used around the world. reached the climax of his talk: “Welcome,” he crowed, “to the next American century, and if you don’t like it, maybe you should wait A RUN G ANDHI another hundred years for the next one.” Founder and President, M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence By this time I was flushed with fear. From somewhere deep in my x The Search for a Nonviolent Future Preface xi mind a thought spoke itself in a voice that was almost not my own: Oh analysis happened? Have we asked ourselves, why was our nation so God, we’re going to be hit. Before my inner eye flitted the image of a cruelly attacked—and what must we do now to secure ourselves from tackled giant, crumbling to earth. such violence? Three months later I sat gripping the seat in front of me on the One of the reasons I felt so terrified listening to the lab scientist commute van as one of my fellow riders, who had a portable radio, was that I know that people in his position are close to White House stammered out that the towers had fallen.As we left the van and stood policy and reflect the mood of officialdom; and, as most of us know in shock on the sidewalk in front of my office, Noel’s comment was, by now, the word arrogant is heard very often when commentators “The world will never be the same.” He was so right. outside the United States—and sometimes within it—seek to charac- But in another way he was exactly wrong. The world is still the terize the second Bush administration.