I'm a great admirer of M.L. King, Dalai Lama, and M. Gandhi, and the nonviolent path to which they ascribe. I've been thinking recently, however, about the effectiveness of nonviolence movements in several fields. I'm not about to categorically deny its appeal or effectiveness, but I'm just beginninng to think that it may be quite inappropriate in a number of circumstances, and quite simply useless in the face of many modern dilemmas. I'll list some examples. 1) Environmental protests against logging, whaling, toxic dumping, etc. People are still going to use their toilet paper. Nations are still going to have traditions. Industries are still going to produce horrendous pollution/waste. 2) Animal Rights / Ethical protests against animal experiments, cloning, GM crops, etc. The big Pharmaceuticals and food companies are only going to care about the bottom line. They don't sell to the US or Europe, they will sell it to someone else. They don't do the experiments here, they will do them somewhere else (or someone will). Nonviolence isn't going to sway the stock investors from piling into a stock when its drugs or drought/pest-resistant crops win regulatory approval. 3) Human rights / political causes. When nations like China and North Korea have precious little public instruments capable of supporting political dissent or even checking political oppression. When nations like Israel and its Arab neighbors have a alarmingly high homogeneity in supporting particular destructive political stances. If you're a nonviolent Falun Gong supporter in China? You get imprisoned and tortured. If you dissent against anything in N Korea, you're never heard from again. If you try to stop the Israeli occupation, you get called a traitor to the nation (or worse, crushed by some bulldozer or used as a human shield). If you try to help the Americans in Iraq, you get lynched. I ask, what good is nonviolence in countries like these? I've not even touched on the prevalence of political spin or national culture. Often it's a few conscientious individuals against a whole administration's multi-billion dollar hype machine or against a tyrannical majority that's already made up its mind. What good is nonviolence when you're faced with that? Just wanted to throw the question out there, and solicit some feedback. So what's wrong with nonviolence today? Or has it always been this tough?
I don't think times have changed. I think nonviolent protest is only suitable and effective in some circumstances. Specifically, I think you need to have sufficient numbers to be considered the will of the people. Gandhi and King had many, many supporters. This strategy won't be too effective with animal rights issues because they don't have the numbers. Moreover, it's not the kind of galvanizing issue that could drum up the numbers. I wouldn't say the same about environmental issues. I think we as a country have actually moved a considerable distance as public awareness of the problems have increased. But it's a gradual change. Again, it won't have the galvanizing affect that racial injustice would have. Even here though, I think the newsworthy protests are not the ones really making the change in the society. I think it is (1) general awareness and (2) building systems in which environmental consciousness is accounted for. In China (I won't talk about North Korea, about which I know much less), I think such protest has had an impact and will have one in the future. The days of the Revolution are over now. Though the government isn't precisely built to perceive the will of the people, it likely will bend to that will when expressed. Americans like to see the Tiennemen Square massacre as such an expression, but the students protesting there were more hard-core than the general population. I think the population is more concerned about anarchy and losing their place in the world than they are about democracy. Not that they don't want to head in that direction, but they don't want to follow Russia's lead and repeat their many many failures. But, if you had a general democracy-now sentiment in the population, I doubt the government could resist it, even without violence.
Maybe, maybe no... 35 years ago, I would have said absolutely. Today, I'd like to see Osama in bloody fragments. Go figure.
Non violence is not really directed at others, it is directed at yourself. The hate you feel towards others is really internal. It is self-defeating. That being said, I would really like to take a 2x4 to my bosses' head today....
It works in certain situations as others have said. MLK himself says it would not work under circumstances which he lists. At this point, I think the Palestinians in occupied lands should be using this instead of any violence.
I am not certain non-violence would work anymore in the Western world, for two reasons. 1) It requires an extended degree of attention, and we as a culture have the shortest attention spans ever. We will focus on something like a famine in Ethipia to an extreme for a brief period of time, try a few things to help, and then move on...and ignore the fact that it's still in the same mess the next year. Studies have shown that Americans as a whole can really only pay attention to one or at most 2 serious issues at a time. Additionally we are the quickest to lose patience with a particular issue and move on to the next. With our technological priorization on immediate gratification and sensory stimulation vs. intellectual stimulation, it is unlikely we would pay enough attention for long enough for non-violence to really work on us. It is more likely that we would develop a catch-phrase or soun-byte to summarize a quick opinion and move on. This is also true, to varying degrees, of almost every culture in the Western world. 2) We have become incredibly desensitized. WW's one and two in particular, Hisroshima and Nagasaki, etc. allow us to react with limited response to things like Rwanda. More people have been killed by violence from other men in the 20th century than in any 6 or 7 previous centuries combined. Human suffering, while still causing some empathy, has lost it's ability to engender sustained significant effect. Part of non-violence appeals to our sense of shock and shame as a species, and we simply don't feel that as much anymore, as we've just seen too much like or worse than whatever X issue the non-violence is trying to rectify.
Agree with some of your points. I think our attention span is ruled by TV and resolutions of problems within a 30 minute time-frame. In life, some problems take decades or sometimes are never solved. I think the opposite about the violence, however, because the American Civil War was godawfully bloody, both in terms of killed and horribly maimed by the horrifyingly effective weapons of the day. So it could have started there. I think this effective also comes from television, but also that more people acknowledge that violence is a part of living in an imperfect world, ruled by imperfect beings with desires and emotions that are not always wholesome. Nothing's really changed in that regard. As long as people are capable of it, there will always be violence. Now could a non-violent protest method work? Doubtful, unless they had both staying power and had a way to emotionally connect with the vapid masses out in TV-land more worried about who's going to get eliminated off Survivor or American Idol.
Although I disagree about the violence...( the CW was bad, but nowhere near as bad as either WW, or even the Napoleonic Wars, for that matter..we just know about it more because everyone dying was American.) ...it is, in my mind, beside the point. It's not the violence in and of itself which has desensitized us to these things, but exposure to it. WWI in particular was the first example we had of wide spread exposure to mass violence and death, and WWII was worse. Pictures and newsreels of mass graves, bodies tonr to bits etc. which were uncommon before that time.
Macbeth, I'd disagree, or at least say your examples are not applicable. During the era of Gandhi and King, when nonviolent protest was en vogue, the US would not have had much reaction to starvation in Ethiopia or massacres in Rwanda. If anything, we pay more attention now than we would have in the '50s and '60s.
I disagree. I think we have the technological capacity to pay more attention now, but not the mentality.
I think non-violence should be MORE effective today than in the past. In the 24/7 news world it's harder for the aggressor to simply stomp on the non-violent protest. Environment: Publicity campaigns are huge! Companies concerned with their 'bottom line' don't like to be connected to practices deemed unacceptable -- logging from old growth forests, etc. They, in turn, pressure their suppliers to adopt better practices. Environmental impact studies and other 'red tape' are all the result of the non-violent protest. Animal Rights: Again -- Fur coats, seal hunts, whaling. Big public backlash -- primarily due to protests. 30 years ago the public would never have concerned themselves with whether cosmetics were tested on animals. Now they pressure the fast food companies to demand 'more humane' practices from their suppliers. Human Rights: Ever heard of NIKE? Tiananmen Square? NIKE had to adopt better conditions in their overseas factories as a direct result of pressure from consumers. China still can't shake the aftermath of their actions in Tiananmen Square. Falon Gong is actually an example of non-violence beginning to have an effect -- a little known practice receiving huge international support. Tibet, i would argue, is similar -- no 'victory' yet -- but more support (and less carnage) than had they attempted a violent insurrection. Unless it's a monumental event, the effects of non-violent action sometimes just seep into our psyche. Even dictatorial regimes need the 'support' of their people. Remember, violent action, is often no more effective, or more swift. How long did the IRA bomb Ireland? How long as the mid-east situation gone on? How long have African nations been in civil war? It seems hopeless sometimes. Things take so long. They're never simple. But nothing's changed for the worse in terms of the effectiveness of non-violent action.
It seems like nonviolence didn't work in the civil rights movement. I could be remembering wrong but I thought it took the assassination of King, Kennedy and the segregationist attacks on federal marshals to mobilize the President and Congress to action. And the southern states would have happily kept Jim Crow and lynching around if the feds had not stepped into the fray.
"work" or "not work" is the wrong view. Non-violence is the means, not the ends. That's what, Apostle Putz.
Hey, our best buds the Pakistanis are trying it now in the fight against terror. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040503-629329,00.html?cnn=yes Truce on Terror Rooting Out Al-Qaeda By TIM MCGIRK AND GHULAM HASNAIN Monday, May. 03, 2004 A Pakistani general helicoptered into a village in the Pakistani mountains of Waziristan last weekend to meet with a stubborn enemy. Lieut. General Safdar Hussain came to sign a truce with Nek Mohammed, a tribal leader whose pro-al-Qaeda fighters had eluded capture for more than six weeks and had killed about 80 of the general's men. The Pakistani army agreed to halt its operation against Mohammed's militants, repay Wazir tribesmen for war damages and set free most of the 160 suspected al-Qaeda supporters who were captured. The tribesmen were also allowed to keep their weapons. In exchange, Mohammed and his clan promised to refrain from attacks on Pakistani forces and the U.S. troops in nearby Afghanistan. Gleeful rebel tribesmen accepted the easy terms—and then treated Hussain to a meal of rice and slaughtered sheep. . . . And so are the Bushies in the fight against terror. I guess this is what they called striking back in a time and place of our choosing... http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040426/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=716 U.S. Extends Fallujah Cease-Fire 2 Days 1 hour, 54 minutes ago By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press Writer FALLUJAH, Iraq - The U.S. military extended a cease-fire for Fallujah on Sunday for at least two more days, backing down from warnings of an all-out Marine assault and announcing that American and Iraqi forces would begin joint patrols in the city. . . .
