Amid the endless march of war the United States has undertaken since 1945, there’s been a steady global rise of nonviolence — not just as a tool for national liberation, as Gandhi used it, but in seemingly inexhaustible applications to human betterment at every level, from the individual to global.

TODAY, June 6, marks the anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944.  It is also, given the time difference, the day in 1893 (June 7th, over there) that Mohandas Gandhi was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The former event marked the beginning of the end of World War II. The latter — if we can truly grasp its significance — marked the beginning of the end of all wars.

On Aug. 24, 410 C.E., Alaric with his army of Goths entered Rome and sacked the capital of the empire. The shock echoed throughout the circum-Mediterranean world and Europe: How could this happen to the “eternal city”? Though the scale of the attack was so much smaller, and it failed, many people throughout the much larger modern world today were shocked that this could happen to the “indispensible nation.” There are other differences, of course. The Roman emperor did not call down the attack on his own city!

Disdain for the less educated is embedded in our thoughts and institutions, but for that very reason we have several ways to tackle it.  We can be rebuilding on at least three levels: personal, structural, and cultural.

Long before social media, the soil for losing a grip on truth — and eventually being susceptible to delusion — was prepared by commercial advertising. Its relentless depiction of the human being as a needy fragment concerned only with his or her own material welfare, without agency in a hostile world created a compelling, but dangerously pessimistic narrative about the world and human nature that has come to set the tone of American popular culture.

For some time now, it has seemed that these two forces, the downward drive into chaos and violence and the uplifting surge of nonviolence in practice and understanding, have been growing towards some sort of climax.

It has long been our belief at Metta that the key leverage point for changing humanity from its disastrous course is the uplifting of the human image from that of a separate material fragment adrift in a meaningless universe to an evolving spiritual being inseparable from others and the rest of creation, endowed with the privilege and responsibility of playing our role, individually and together, in the unfolding of human destiny. 

Point Number Two: Learn all you can about nonviolence.

Point Number One: Use extreme caution with violent and degrading media.

Emergencies can be times of emergence…

We need the worldview that’s always been there, but is mostly buried in what are called the world’s wisdom traditions — and that have now, for the first time in over 300 years, the solid backing of science. The core of this worldview for our purposes is its strikingly different image of who we are as human beings. We are not primarily separate bodies, as advertisers and others try incessantly to tell us. We are body, mind, and spirit, or consciousness — indeed primarily consciousness. And that has tremendous consequences.

Today we have quite a few thoughtful souls working out this story of the unity of life, the interconnectedness of meaning and the fundamental benevolence of the universe.  King was essential for not only giving it a public voice but showing what it can do.

As more and more people come to believe that our disastrous political, moral, and ecological situation is based on how we see the world, the vision of ourselves as evolving spiritual beings with the ability to pilot our own destiny in an extremely meaningful universe is taking on tremendous appeal.

After centuries of neglect, we are now seeing a lot of useful writing about “the most powerful force at the disposal of humanity” as Gandhi called nonviolence. Its long neglect deprived us of a badly needed set of tools and way of being. Why, then, was it so long neglected?

People make heroes out of those who represent most conspicuously the values of their culture.  This was true of earlier Presidents whose values have disappeared into the quaintness of past history: honesty, competence; in the case of ‘probity’ the very word has dropped out of common vocabulary.  And it’s true today.

How could a huge number of Americans fail to see through the “charisma” of an egocentric, substance-and-person abusing, self-serving individual who so devalued the life of others that he would order his followers to death?

Michael Nagler offers a personal reflection on Pittsburgh, and how it is helping him to deepen his commitment to nonviolence.

On October 2, 2018, I was invited by the Indian Mission to make some remarks at the United Nation’s International Day of Nonviolence meeting. It happened to be Gandhi’s 149th birthday. Here is my speech

There are five things each of us can do to recover a saner image of who we are, whether we think of ourselves as peace activists or not. We can all do them, every day, and thus they answer somewhat to Gandhi’s famous charkha, or spinning campaign at the heart of his work to reform and liberate India. Organizations and campaigns will grow out of this kind of personal change.

The film "Faith Under Fire," which tells the true story of a woman who prevented a school shooting, is a reminder that nonviolent approaches to conflict resolution remain largely unknown.