The Utility of Art Towards a Nonviolent World

Transcript

Greetings, everyone. This is Michael Nagler with the Nonviolent Moment. Your bi-weekly glimpse of reality. The real happenings around the world and in the world of nonviolence.

I ran across a quote recently from Grace Lee Boggs. She says, “People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way, but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative.” And that's, of course, exactly where we come in.

Another thought that occurred to me this morning. You might be wondering why is such a rich morning? I had a very good panel discussion with a good friend of mine, Rabbi Katz Iverson, with Jim Garrison. And it occurred to me that the world is actually facing a remarkable opportunity. And I don't think it's been sufficiently recognized.

We talk about the transition from fossil fuels to green energy as part of the climate solution, part of the energy solutions. But, you know, it also gives us an opportunity to do a war solution. Because if you look back at history, a lot of wars in the modern period have been around petroleum. We need petroleum to wage wars, and we wage wars to get the petroleum, and I won't go into the details right now because this is the Nonviolent Moment.

But it seems to me that there's a great opportunity when, we’re pivoting away from fossil fuels, to pivot away from the violence and the conflict that is taking place around fossil fuels. It's not the only thing that's led to violence and conflict in the world, but it's been a very prolific source in our modern period.

I'd like to talk eventually this morning with you about art and nonviolence. I'd like to read some poems for you, which is not my usual procedure here, but just a couple of notes before we do that.

A commentator by the name of Ramzy Baroud, in Common Dreams, has a very good list of five – no less than five things that the current war in Gaza is changing. For example, a whole generation of people around the world has been affected by this. The unbelievable destruction and the failure of the international system to stop any of it. As he says, “It will be etched in the collective memory of the world for many years to come.” And I wonder if maybe this is also an opportunity.

You know, when Gandhi was asked about what he thought about the atomic bomb, “Well,” he said, “you know, it's absolutely,” I'm paraphrasing, said “it's horrific. But if people turn from war in disgust, it may have a silver lining.” Now, it didn't happen then, but it might happen now, I guess. It's not terribly likely that it will.

You know, there's an important study by Robert Nordhaus and Robert Shellenberger, a book called Break Through. And there, what they describe very well is compassion fatigue. That seeing all of this destruction may lead to revulsion and a desire to turn away from it, or it may not. And I think what will help it to happen, the transition we want, is if we, as Grace Lee Boggs said, “If we can imagine an alternative. And that alternative is nonviolent.”

To quote one more thing from Ramzy Baroud, he says, “And lastly, one year of war has taught us that while superior firepower may determine political outcomes in the short run, no amount of weapons can possibly break the will of a nation that has vowed to restore its dignity and win its freedom, no matter the cost.”

I think that's a very powerful statement. A lot of it hinges on the fact that the war has taught us this. My question is, will we learn? Will we learn the lesson, or will we continue rolling on with the same mechanisms that aren't working?

On a happier note, but the same region and the same conflict, our good friend Sami Awad from Nonviolence International did an article on Waging Nonviolence last week, in which he said that nonviolent resistance in Palestine is more dangerous than ever, but it's the only way forward.

I'm going to quote Sami now. “We are not going to build a better future for all people in this land by killing or dominating each other. We need a proactive nonviolent movement with vision and strategy.” I just could not agree more. We need a proactive, nonviolent movement with a vision and strategy. He says, “Feeling hopeless is happening, but giving up is not an option. Our commitment to nonviolence must be stronger than ever.”

So, let me turn now to a topic that we haven't touched on very much in the Nonviolent Moment. And that is what is the relationship, what is the utility of art in the search for nonviolence?

As some of you may know, if you've been following our work here at Metta for a while, I come from a humanities background. I was a comparative literature professor. I have nothing against art, but I've come to feel that nothing symbolic is going to really solve the compelling delusion of violence. That is, to get out of war, we're going to need practical, hands-on things.

And that's why I'm very glad to see the proposal being put forward now by Nonviolent Peaceforce, to put a team – international team of trained, nonviolent interveners in the West Bank and eventually, in Gaza. That’s what I usually look to for some hope, concrete, practical things happening on the ground.

But there's no question that art plays a role. It can affect our imagination and our way of seeing the world. The first two poems – actually, I just changed my mind. We're going to read another poem first because it's very heavy and hard to bear. But it's extremely interesting and really a brilliant poem by a young English poet who, I believe, was going to become the poet laureate of the age, except that at the age of 25, he was killed in WWI. He was killed in France on November 4th of 1918. And he was only 25.

But he wrote a number of very compelling poems, including some about his experience in the war. And this one draws upon – I think, is a brilliant connection. He draws upon the connection between the sacrificial institution, and in particular, the sacrifice of Isaac and what is going on in Europe.

So, let me read you the poem. I need your support here because it's sometimes hard for me to get through it. But I'll read you the poem and then comment a little bit. Falling back on my old career.

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.

And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns:
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

That's an extremely compelling poem by someone who is one of those of the younger generation who was being sacrificed in vast numbers by the senior officer staff, and the other people – we won't go into it, who were causing the war.

So obviously, one of the things that could stop the war system is if people would refuse to go. And there was a slogan in Germany in the Cold War days, what if they called a war and nobody showed up? I think it's just a wonderful idea. So, the poem I’ll read is by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It's called Conscientious Objector.

I shall die, but

that is all that I shall do for Death.

I hear him leading his horse out of the stall:

I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.

He is in haste: he has business in Finland,

business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.

But I will not hold the bridle

while he cinches the girth.

And he may mount up by himself:

I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,

I will not tell him which way the fox ran.

With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where

the black boy lies in the swamp.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death:

I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends

nor of my enemies either.

Though he promise me much,

I will not map him the route to any man's door.

Am I a spy in the land of the living,

that I should deliver men to Death?

Brother, the password and the plans of our city

are safe with me: never through me Shall you be overcome.

I think, in a way, the most important phrase in this whole poem is where she says, “I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends” where any of us would be, you know – oh, well, most of us would have the courage not to do that, not to betray your friends. But she goes on to say, “Nor of my enemies either.”

In other words, she's not on one side of a conflict or another. She is against conflict itself, and that is the Nonviolent Moment. That's the nonviolent vision, if you will. That is conflict itself that must be overcome.

So, the third poem I wanted to touch on before I go back and comment on them a little bit – and I'm not going to read this whole thing because it's really not suitable for the airwaves. It's brutal. And it has some language in it which, we don't want to use here in this context. But it brings up also a very interesting point. The poem is by E.E. Cummings, and it's called I Sing of Olaf. Here's the part that I want to read.

i sing of Olaf glad and big

whose warmest heart recoiled at war:

a conscientious object-or

…

Christ (of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see:and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.

So, what Cummings is bringing out, among other things, is that it takes more courage to be nonviolent than to go into battle against people with weapons, to hurt them and defend yourself. The other thing that he brings out, without mentioning it in this part of the poem that I didn't want to quote for you, is how violently conscientious objectors were dealt with.

In the West, in the United States, in context of WWI spilling over a little bit further into WWII, it is just horrendous what was done to conscientious objectors, especially if they were put in military camps. And that's why we have this option now of, COs doing alternative service and not being drafted and stuck in the military.

There's a book that comes out from this era, an autobiographical book called, We shall Not Move. I want to focus just for a minute on this unfortunate phenomenon that people respond with a great deal of violence to someone who is holding up a higher moral image.

That's been the case since times immemorial. One of my favorite Greek poets that I used to – well, he was a philosopher, not a poet. Heraclitus. One of his surviving fragments is, “Dogs bark at those whom they do not recognize.” For some reason, people have a very strong negative reaction sometimes, often, to those whom they regard as a kind of ethical challenge. And this is how we account for the fact that a Jesus will be crucified, for example.

But I want to talk now about how effective this poem of Wilfred Owen's is, remembering this part of it. “Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps.” Now, that image immediately brings to mind the rifle belts and the shoulder straps that were used by soldiers in WWI. And not only that, he then goes on to say, “And builded parapets and trenches there.” You see, this is what we call an allegory. Where you have a set of terms and a set of images, that work perfectly well in two entirely different contexts.

One context is the sacrificial ritual, where you did in fact build structures to hold the sacrifice and might include trenches. And you did bind the sacrificial animal. But on the other hand, belts, straps, parapets, trenches, and not to mention knives, these are all paraphernalia of WWI. And so, this is how an allegory works.

You know, the French poet, Paul Verlaine, was asked to define poetry, and he said, “Poetry is [French],” a long suspension between the sound and the sense. That is the sound of these words is one thing and the meanings that they have breaks into two different worldviews, two different visions, two different parts of reality.

And so, you know, the tragedy of this poem is that – here's one word toward the end of the poem that kind of belongs only in the war framework or war paradigm, and not in the sacrifice one. “Offer of the ram of pride instead of him.” In other words, Wilfred Owen, going to his death amidst thousands, tens of thousands of colleagues. English, German, French, some Italian. He knows that's the force that's driving them into this war is pride. And there's no economic reason that could not have been resolved if people would simply, you know, just withdraw their pride, feel open to the other, be willing to come to make some compromises.

But it's because people can't make compromises when pride kicks in that this holocaust, this cataclysm, was launched on Europe. And of course, as we know, it was not the end of the story by any means.

But I think on one level, this is what Owen is saying, that if we could only overcome pride, we would be able to put an end to war. And I believe that's true. Along the way, he's also shedding some very interesting light on the whole question of sacrifice. Literally, animal sacrifice.

People have taken two views on animal sacrifice. Is it a way of getting rid of your violence, putting it on a scapegoat and sending it out into the desert? Well, we know that that doesn't happen. It doesn't work. The sacrificial ritual was an attempt to offload our own violence and conflict onto other parties, or onto just sheer destruction, make it happen to an animal, and then you won't have to do it to one another.

But as a matter of fact, if you study sacrificial science and the history of sacrifice, as I have done by reading around in René Girard, what you see instead is just the opposite. That when you have put yourself in a framework to be cruel to animals, there's no way you're going to be able to prevent that cruelty from escalating to cruelty to other human beings.

And so, the sacrifice, you know, which was an attempt to ventilate violence, get rid of it, that was a complete failure. The only way is to do the internal struggle of overcoming pride.

So, again, I do think that art has a very useful purpose that it can serve, if we allow it to, you know, sink in. I can remember, for example, sitting and watching “Fiddler on the Roof.” This is long before it was really widely known in the United States, how much violence was involved in the formation of the state of Israel.

And there's a very powerful scene in that film where a wedding is being prepared. It's the first daughter of Tevye, you know, who is living in a little Russian community in a shtetl in Russia, where a lot of Jewish people eventually came from, who ended up in Europe and America.

And the wedding is being prepared on a lavish scale, and the musicians are playing. And Hebrew music itself is already very, very, moving, and very, very musical. And when it's being used for a wedding, or a whorl dance or something like that, it can be just so much fun.

And suddenly in the middle of this, the Cossacks come crashing in, smashing everything, knocking over the tables with their lavish preparations and so forth. And so there I am. I'm sitting in the middle of a theater in San Francisco, just arrived in California. Not many people around me. And I – if I could put it this way, I came to. I suddenly realized that I had sprung to my feet, and I was shaking in every limb.

And the words that just kind of exploded in my mind at that moment were, “Never again, never again.” But after a minute, when I had settled down a little bit, I added something. This is the Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Nor my enemies either,” if you will. I said, “Never again to anyone.”

And that I think – I hope I'm not, you know, making some kind of great nonviolent actor out of myself. But I think that this transition, if I went through it, everybody can go through it. And that is the pivot to turn against that ram of pride, that source of violence within ourselves. And never to believe for a moment that we can expunge it from other people.

So, that is the Nonviolent Moment for this episode, friends. And I look forward to talking with you again in a couple of weeks and maybe sharing some more poetry and art. Who knows? Until then, as my friend Stephanie would say, “Take care of one another.”