Violence (you know the holidays make you think it too)
I’m having a lot more contact with Quakers than I’m used to, and this raises many questions about peacefulness, pacifism, and violence. Me, I’m a Taoist philosopher looking for meaningful peace within myself; I’m also a martial arts student (expanding slowly but surely into kungfu the longer I study w/ the Shaolin folks) and civil rights enthusiast — and I refuse to ignore that many of our rights were won by violent force, and may again have to be kept that way. (Please don’t apply that to any recent U.S. military actions, which did more to hurt the civil rights of Americans than help them — sometimes freedom is just a buzzword, like anything else.)
So where to stand? Not so much as squashing a fly, or swinging the sword of courage? And where is violence, anyway — is it in your actions, or your self? Can you violently speak, or peacefully swordfight? (I think so.) Is courage a virtue when it punches that bully right between the headlights? Is pacifism not so, when it lets the bully hit your sister, or the government strip your rights?
I think I know where I stand — I would say, tentatively (having not been very much tested in matters where violence is appropriate), that nonviolence is always better than violence, BUT that courage is always better than cowardice, and that it is worse to be a nonviolent coward than to be courageous and violent. The reason being, that good things have come from courageous violence; but not from nonviolent cowardice that I can think of. So I would choose nonviolence except when to do so meant to be a coward.
Quakers would tell me, in general, that there is no such situation, where it would be cowardly to forego violence rather than to take up the proverbial sword. And up until now, I wouldn’t have had a good answer to that, other than my own gut…but en_ki was kind enough to post this quote, from a man I think I’m not alone in considering the king of nonviolence philosophy, and wow, it seems he agrees with me!
I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. Hence it was that I took part in the Boer War, the so called Zulu rebellion and the late war. Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier. But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish, it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature. A mouse hardly forgives cat when it allows itself to be torn to pieces by her. I therefore appreciate the sentiment of those who cry out for the condign punishment of General Dyer and his ilk. They would tear him to pieces if they could. But I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature. Only I want to use India’s and my strength for better purpose.