The concept of non-violence is tough for me. Why? - well for a start i am an aries tiger so getting worked up is never difficult, getting worked down is much harder. I truly believe you cannot create non-violence through violence. This beautiful quote from Gandhi, supplied by Quoth the Raven within the comments of this post at the Standard.
"The science of war leads one to dictatorship, pure and simple. The science of non- violence alone can lead one to pure democracy…The states that are today nominally democratic have either to become frankly totalitarian or, if they are to become truly democratic, they must become courageously non-violent. Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by fear of punishment and the other by arts of love. Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than power derived from fear of punishment….
When a respectable minority objects to any rule of conduct, it would be dignified of the majority to yield…No organization can run smoothly when it is divided into two camps, each growling at each other and each determined to have its own way by hook or by crook…The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart…My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest. That can not happen except through non-violence…It is a blasphemy to say non-violence can be practiced only by individuals and never by nations which are compose of individuals…The nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on non-violence…A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be the purest anarchy…."
When I think about papatuanuku getting abused by miners, when i think about the trees being cut for money and the rivers getting dammed, lakes getting drained and when i think about the people... well lets just say that i really have to find my happy place :)
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