If we had had peace teams ready to deploy in Boston we would not have had to subject the city to the inconvenience of a lockdown at all. Much more than that: We would have protected ourselves from another shock designed, or used, to tighten the constraints on our freedoms. And even more: It would have pointed a way to a nonviolent future worthy of a free people.

If we want these tragedies to stop we must open our eyes to the connection, not always obvious but not that obscure once you know what you’re looking for, between our cultural disposition to choose hate over love and the actions resulting from such an unwise choice.

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 then he made a fatal mistake, and it is essential to recognize that mistake and to correct it—to make sure that it does not happen again. Obama said, “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.” He is wrong.

We also have to liberate ourselves from the alienating climate of violence that has crept up on us to the point that it now pervades everything from our “entertainment” media to our foreign policy.  Wherever it has come in, we need to push it out: if it’s in movies, boycott them; if it’s guns flooding the nation, outlaw them; if it’s barbaric incarceration rates and death penalties, educate, lobby and protest – and if it’s pilotless drones, “secret renditions” and policies of endless war, never, never vote for candidates that support them.

The big picture is this: we live in a violent system. Overriding the unquenchable yearning for peace and unity in every one of us, and which is arguably much closer to our actual nature, is a distorting culture that possesses the world of our thoughts and emotions.

There is no question that things “cold and lewd” dwell in the psyche.  But so do things warm and creative.  Which part do we want to bring to life? 

What are we thinking? There is nothing to prevent you and me from stemming the flow of violence into our minds, as far as possible, and thinking for ourselves.

When Michael Lerner urged me to reply to “Gandhi Centre Stage,” the article by Perry Anderson that appeared in a recent issue of the London Review of Books, I assented.

Who was Gandhi? A British prelate once made the mistake of approaching him with the words, “We’re both men of God, Mr. Gandhi, aren’t we?” The Mahatma replied, “You are a politician disguised as a man of God; I am a man of God disguised as a politician.” Why did he take on the disguise?

The refrain of the media is that we have no choice. That is because “we” are wedded to the wrong principle, which in turn is based on a wrong vision of reality. Open our eyes to the right vision and it becomes obvious that we can support indigenous nonviolence in and unarmed civilian peacekeeping for areas that need them.

At some point we will have to talk about readily available weapons; at some point we’ll have to realize that a nation that engages in heartless drone warfare, torture, and extrajudicial killings cannot expect to live in peace. But until we liberate our minds from the endless pounding of violent imagery I fear we won’t be able to think clearly about those factors (or for that matter anything else).

After a roaring start, the Occupy movement hit a wall in the form of rough-handling and evictions by the police. Occupiers could have given up on nonviolence—as a small faction will always try to get us to do—or just given up; but instead we have gone back to the drawing board, while continuing to occupy select spaces, this time with advance training. This is exactly the right response.

If truth is the first victim in times of war and violence, women are a close second. It is not possible to have a violent society in which women are treated with respect.

There are spiritual laws in the universe, and they can be discovered, and used. Despite appearances, love flows in the heart of every human being.

Corporate domination of the world, or “globalization from above,” has done two things for us.  It raised consciousness of world unity; inadvertently awakening “globalization from below,” and by progressively releasing all constraints on greed it finally squeezed the economic middle class, taking out from under them the false comfort of “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage,” and thus reawakening, but in a new environment, the class struggles of the 1930s.  Given enough rope, the 1% have begun to expose the inherent contradiction of an economy based on wants

The first lesson an awakened public should draw from the scenes at Berkeley and Davis is really that there’s no such thing as “appropriate” violence that can be contained in a corner and not spill out where we don’t want it—or more accurately, where we are forced to recognize what it really is.

There are patterns of growing sensitivity clearly discernible in all human communities over the long span of time — growth in what we might call moral awareness, or the awareness of connectedness among fellow beings (and, ultimately, the planet that nurtures us).

When Gandhi and virtually the whole leadership was arrested during the Salt Satyagraha of 1930 leadership devolved, successfully, onto every individual. This kind of leadership was one of Gandhi’s most striking achievements. His concept of “heart unity” — that if people want one another’s fulfillment they are one despite any differences of class, status, or whatever — applied to leadership.

If there is one thing characteristic of nonviolence, and a principle that we cannot forget, it is that the nonviolent vision, this form of struggle, awakens the humanity of oneself and one’s opponent. This renewed sense of connection is not merely a fruit of the tree of nonviolence, it is its very core and our highest victory, because from it will emerge new ideals, stronger communities and healthy children.

While the Occupy movement today seems to be just a continuation of the style that is “dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. It has no manifesto or doctrine, no overriding authority to check with.” Can #Occupy provide the framework that will pull these far-flung but inwardly resonant energies together—and in so doing become a force that could, in Gandhi’s terms, “o’ersweep the world”?