Preparing Ourselves for Our Nonviolent Moment

Transcript

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to your next episode of the Nonviolent Movement. I'm Michael Nagler with the Metta Center for Nonviolence. And I think I'd like to start us off today with a verse from the Bhagavad Gita, a favorite text of Mahatma Gandhi’s, who regarded it as his spiritual reference book.

And this verse is from Chapter 13, Verse 7, giving you a few minutes, moments to whip out your pocket Gita and read along with me. And as soon as I read the first line of this two-line shloka, as they call it, you're going to hear two words that you're going to perk up your ears at and realize why I chose this verse. Okay, so here we go. [Sanskrit] And now what did all that mean? 

Absence of pride. Freedom from hypocrisy. Nonviolence. Forbearance. Shanti. Peace. Uprightness of speech and mind. Devout service of the preceptor. Internal and external purity. Steadfastness of mind, and control of body, mind, and senses.

So my point is, assuming that I have a point, that these personal qualities go along with our capacity to exemplify and practice ahimsa and shanti. 

So that by way of a kind of spiritual introduction to our little conversation today about the nonviolent moment. We had a non-violent moment, that is not an active love of the opponent, but at least a stepping back from extreme violence, which came from an unlikely place. The chief executive of the United States of America, who yesterday recommended a 50% reduction in military expenditures. 

That really won't make a whole lot of difference in terms of our military capability. We could go down to 15 or 20%, I reckon, and still be the firstest with the mostest in terms of destructive power. Nor does it indicate a total change of mind in the person of the chief executive, because, you know, he's the one who boasted back in 2016 that we have the most powerful military in the world. Other countries don't even come close.

But it does point to a very significant, perhaps the second most significant aspect of militarism, and that is the enormous expenditure. What I said with a German colleague of mine recently [German] a waste of human resources where there are things that are crying out for some financial help, education, healthcare and so forth. This shunting of all of that capacity towards the capacity to hurt others is the tragedy of our modern economic system.

And if you want to read something about that, which is eye-opening and not a new one, there's a book called Report from Iron Mountain, which purports to be the results of a presidential commission that was actually just kind of what we call a framing story.

But it does lay out, very clearly, the reasons that at this point in time, the way we have constructed our system, it really isn't possible to eliminate our commitment to violence financially. We're just too wrapped up in it. I won't go into all of the details now, but I think mostly what you can read in “Report from Iron Mountain” is still accurate today. And that means it's going to be very interesting to see what the results of these suggestions are if it is in fact followed.

And of course, you could say that the president has, in this case, possibly done the right thing for if not the wrong reason, at least the second-most right reason. That is, he is downgrading our military capacity in terms of economic efficiency, not in terms of what the Bhagavad Gita just said, ahimsa and shanti.

But, you know, in our situation, I think we have to be grateful for small things. And that was a step in the right direction. And it would behoove us to appreciate that step, especially since he's going to get a lot of negative feedback and kickback from the military and people who are emotionally and/or fiscally invested in our militarism.

For some reason, I frequently remember that the final reason that caused Albert Einstein to leave Germany was that Hitler had circulated a petition he required everyone to sign onto. And the purport of this petition was German culture is German militarism. So, that was, you know, very kind of classic fascism on many levels, starting with the downgrading or the reduction of all human creativity to the enterprise of hurting one another, otherwise known by its euphemism, defense.

So, the question on everyone's mind right now is, since we have a regime that is inimical to nonviolence, what do we do about this? In terms of the nonviolent moment, what is our nonviolent movement? What is it going to look like, and when is it going to come?

And I'm not sure that I can offer a concrete answer to that. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I can't. But at least I think I can make some suggestions to help us frame the question. Because clearly, the time for us to mount a successful resistance against militarism and other aspects of violence coming from the present regime, that time is clearly not yet, for at least two reasons.

The most important one being that we're not ready. There's also a reason that this is, although it's his second term, he's in kind of a honeymoon phase. And it would behoove us to wait until he does something, and he inevitably will, that will really be unacceptable, really irritate people.

So, another criterion says the time, it's clearly not yet, we need to build up to it. Another question is there is such a multitude of issues now running across the entire spectrum, which is the issue that we should engage on. And I think for emotional and humanitarian reasons, but I'm open to other suggestions.

I think what I'm seeing and what I myself personally am feeling is that immigration might be the issue that rouses us to resist. And I'm thinking of this visual image that I have in my mind the photograph that was taken outside of a monastery, a convent actually, in southern Germany some years ago when I was there. And it showed a row of police who were coming to a convent to deport a family from Turkey which had taken refuge at the convent. And the nuns from the convent were kneeling in the street in prayer to block that phalanx of policemen.

And it reminds me of a political cartoon I saw yesterday, which was a takeoff on the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square. Everybody remembers that image. This fellow with, like, two flags in his hand, standing and blocking a whole column of tanks. Only in this case, it's a column of these new Tesla machines. I'm going to leave that without further comment.

But I think, although we could join issue on any number of issues, it behooves us to think of one where – and here are the criteria for us choosing one, it should be, on the one hand, something where we can succeed, we stand a good chance. It might be a struggle, might require sacrifice, but it's something we can succeed at. And something which would be what I call the keystone issue. In other words, that it makes a difference. 

Often, I'm sorry to say, the issues that rouse us into action are more symbolic than practical. It's a little bit like a red flag being waved in front of a bull. We get distracted and carried off while something else is killing us. So, we have to think of something that is symbolic enough to rouse public opinion. 

And Gandhi was a genius at this. You know, he would go on marches, so we go on marches. But we forget that he was actually marching people who were on strike from one place to another, from their worksite, the mines in South Africa, to his ashram, his community, to take care of them. So, it was a very practical step.

We think of the spinning wheel as a symbol, and it's now a symbol on the flag of India. But before it was a symbol, it was a real thing. You know, people were actually spinning cotton, getting themselves free of the stranglehold of British exploitation.

So, those are our criteria. I'm going to just mention the leave it with these two for the time being. Well, if you allow me maybe three, it should be one that we can all join forces on. It should be one where we stand a good chance of succeeding, and one which would really kind of knock the keystone out of the arch of the destructive system in which we find ourselves.

So, in the meantime, while we are choosing this issue and getting ready to mount a serious protest – this is the question that I'm getting on from all sides now, how and when? What should we be thinking?

We should be thinking about our individual preparation. And if you are familiar with the Roadmap model, that we have on Metta Center’s website, it will kind of display this in a clear way. There's plenty of room and time for us to strengthen ourselves individually by learning, by spiritual practice, by bracing ourselves for self-sacrifice and suffering. That's one thing we should be doing, and I think it's the most important one.

And then also, of course, we should be getting organized. And one of the essential and heartwarming features of organizing today is the way that people are forming alliances. Because clearly, we're going to have to operate on a fairly large scale. Mind you, I'm always the one that's saying that a single individual is enough to overcome an empire. And we saw that in India. But remember, that single individual had to rouse millions of people in order to do that. 

So, while it has to start with an empowered individual, and people are looking around nowadays for a leader and are thinking that we're going to have to operate leaderlessly, we may. But remember what Gandhi said at the Salt Campaign. He said, “As soon as this thing starts, folks, I'm going to be arrested. And then the 70 people right after me are going to be arrested. And everybody who shows up is going to be arrested. So what is to be done?”

What's to be done is everybody is to become his or her own leader and be ready to operate without leadership. It'd be wonderful if we had a leader. At the moment we don't. But we must not let that hold us back. 

And then another criterion, there's plenty of scope for operating, first of all, legally. And then when necessary, advancing to civil disobedience and to the possibility of serious self-sacrifice if our argumentation, which is, you know, within the democratic process, submitting petitions and so forth, hasn't worked.

And incidentally, I have a suggestion to share on this point also. And that is, even if we are just pretty, pretty certain that the opposition is not going to listen to us, it is not a waste of time to state our position and submit our petition in the form of our demands first. And then when they haven't been met, then advance to civil disobedience.

To just go ahead to civil disobedience without giving the opposition the opportunity to respond is not good strategy for a couple of reasons. One being, in nonviolence, in a nonviolent campaign, which I foresee that we may be in for quite some time now, it is always a good idea to uphold an image of the opponent as more humane and more cooperative than that opponent may seem to be.

In other words, if we say to somebody, “Oh, you'll never listen to me. So, I'm going to do this to force you.” That is a bad approach. It's much more successful to say, “You might well be willing to listen to this.”

And I know there's one famous instance that comes to mind is about 25 years ago now, I think. A group wanted to bring their attention to a particular issue, and I don't remember what the issue was. I only remember that this is taking place in Texas. And they felt that they needed to really do something that would get attention. And they figured that the most effective way to do that? Hold on now, folks, this can be a bit of a shock, would be to assassinate the president. 

Fortunately, they were intercepted before they were able to carry out that scheme. But then the important thing is several of their representatives and senators said, “Hey, we're going to take that issue forward for you.” So, in other words, that was a really bad judgment of where they were on the escalation curve. They had jumped way ahead to the farthest verge of that curve, where you're actually talking about killing or being killed, when all they had to do is submit a petition and it would have been listened to.

So, we need the strength of character to avoid being dramatic and avoid looking like heroes. This has been a strong, strongly felt issue of mine ever since my participation in the Free Speech movement decades ago. Because I remember the very moment when we got good coverage in the local newspaper, the Oakland Tribune. And when we were in the headlines, I remember my fellow free speech protesters running triumphantly onto campus and pointing to the headlines and saying, “Look at this. Look at this. We're famous.” I felt insecure and nervous about that. 

And sure enough, to the extent that we shifted our attention to being famous, we were stealing that attention from the issue. You know, fortunately, in the end, we succeeded. But it was a good lesson for me in how to, above all, in terms of not doing this personally, for our own personal benefit, which is kind of on the spiritual level, the absolute key to successful action, whether it's protest or support or cooperation or opposition, not to make it personally. 

And in this civil disobedience, as we move forward with it, another thing to think and have at the back of our mind, it might be useful, is the extreme contrast of what we want to do with what happened on January 6th.

So, there are a couple of things that I've been thinking about in terms of our history and the state of our country, which are not particularly to be proud of. I just want to mention them in passing and then talk about what I'd like to focus on for our next show.

The two things are, first of all, I was myself stunned to learn this. The Nazi Party never won an election. They never got more than about 35% of the vote. Hitler felt that it was more than enough for him to seize power, and he seized it. But here we've elected someone who is pretty darn fascist in his approach to life. We've elected him twice. Which the German people never did. I just want us to ponder that.

Another thing to ponder – and again, this isn't going to be particularly pleasant. But if you look at the nonviolent insurrections of the last, 50 or so years that have succeeded in regime change and done very significant things, election fraud was almost always the issue that they reacted to.

So, leaving us with those two thoughts in the back of our mind, I would, I think for our next program talk about something that I'm writing a lot about recently, and that is what is democracy? Democracy comes from a Greek word, based on two words. Demos, which means the people, the district and its population, and kratia, or regime. So, let's be thinking about democracy. Which is, A, a good thing to think about anyway. And B, the issue of our time. And C, the issue that will probably feature our next Nonviolent Moment. 

So, I look forward to engaging with you on that issue. Look forward, as always, to hearing from you, at Info@MettaCenter.org, and wishing you well in the struggles to come.