written on September 4, 2008
Aggression is the intent to hurt someone.
Violence is the intent to hurt someone physically.
Nonviolence is the strategy of being prophetic without intending to hurt anyone.
Prophecy is trying to change something that other people do not want changed. Prophecy leads to conflict.
Conflict is when one person takes a stand and another person takes an opposing stand.
Conflict does not need to be aggressive. Conflict is part of healthy involvement with others. The goal of conflict is to create change that will benefit both parties.
The prophetic person takes a stand for change that she judges necessary for her own well-being. The person being challenged to change will benefit if the challenger can live more fully, because when one person suffers, all people suffer.
Rosa Parks was a prophet. She judged that a change in the rules for riding buses was necessary for her own well-being. She took a stand by refusing to move to the back of the bus. The people who made the rules took the opposing stand. The result was that Rosa Parks was arrested and charged with violating the law. She continued to take her stand and was joined by others.
Rosa Parks was not just a woman who got fed up with a situation. She was part of an organization that was studying the tactics of nonviolent resistance with the goal of changing the racial situation in her community.
When Rosa Parks was arrested, this gave her nonviolent fellow prophets the occasion to take a public stand against the rules about riding buses. Throughout the struggle, the goal of the protestors was not to hurt the city officials and those who defended them. The goal was to change the rules. The hope of nonviolent protest is that the people opposing the protestors will come to see the justice of the protest and accept the change demanded.
Nonviolent protest often provokes violence against the protestors. That is the price of nonviolent prophecy. The prophet who suffers violence does not return violence with violence, because the intent to hurt another person is always counter-productive.
It is very hard to maintain a stance of nonviolence. The urge to strike back when you are hurt is very strong. Many, and maybe most, nonviolent movements eventually become co-opted by people who become impatient with the refusal to hurt in return. That is the story of the protest started by Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King was overtaken by Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, who shaped the later history of the civil rights movement. It is the story of nonviolent movements in Palestine, in Kosovo, and in Chechnya, to name some more recent conflicts.
Anger is a feeling.
A feeling is a form of passion. The word “passion” comes from the same word as the word “passive,” which means that one is not in control. Feeling means that you are not in control of the hormonal physiology of your body. Feelings are neither right nor wrong, they just are. Anger is neither right or wrong, it just is. You don’t control it. You control your behavior when you are angry, but you don’t control the anger.
When someone is hurting you intentionally, the natural reaction is anger. The nonviolent protestor does not react by trying to hurt the person causing the pain. The protestor can share the feeling—she can let the opponent know very clearly how she feels about being hurt, but she does not lash out intending to hurt the opponent. She uses “I” statements—“I feel hurt, I feel like a child who has just been kicked by another person.”
Anger is in itself not bad or counter-productive. It can be a powerful aid in staying motivated to change a situation. What is bad and counter-productive is to try to hurt the person you are angry at. The behavior needs to be controlled, not the emotion.
Example of violent protest. You tell me I cannot do something. I react by calling you a slut, or a bastard. Words like “slut” or “bastard” are aggressive words. Their intent is to cause hurt, and they succeed. If words do not seem to be enough, I throw something at you, or I strike you.
The more I try to hurt you, the stronger my anger becomes, and the situation escalates. This is what it means when you say that I am “out of control.”
Example of nonviolent protest. You tell me I cannot do something (for example, ride in the front of the bus). I react by refusing to go to the back of the bus. I am not trying to hurt you. I am taking a stand for what I think is right. You react by trying to hurt me. I refuse to try to hurt you back.
Nonviolence as a political strategy requires the involvement of many other people. Rosa Parks’s protest succeeded because thousands of others in Montgomery joined her by refusing to ride buses. Eventually the cost of the protest became so great for the defenders of the status quo that those defenders gave in and changed the rules.
Changing the rules was painful for the officials of Montgomery, but the goal of the protestors was not to cause the pain. The goal was to change the rules. There is pain on both sides of a nonviolent conflict.
The nonviolent protestor can use several theories to explain the strategy of nonviolence. One theory is that nonviolence leads to redemption. This is the story of Jesus. Another is that nonviolence leads to political change. This is the story of Gandhi. Martin Luther King appealed to both theories. He sought political change and spiritual redemption, for the good of the protestors and for the good of their opponents.
An opponent is someone against whom you are taking a stand. An enemy is someone you want to hurt. Nonviolence uses the term “opponent” rather than the term “enemy,” because the protestor hopes that at some point the opponent will become a friend.
Nonviolence is not non-resistance. The nonviolent protestor resists but does not try to hurt. Resistance can provoke violent reactions, and in fact usually does so. It is striking how violently political officials attack nonviolent protestors.
The Dalai Lama is trying to hold to a strategy of nonviolence, but Chinese officials react by accusing him of fomenting violence. This is the same reaction Dr. King faced. It seems that violent reactions are so ingrained in human cultures that any resistance is interpreted as aggressive, and is therefore met with violence.
“Respect” is a key concept in conflict situations. Many conflicts escalate because one party does not “show respect” for the other.
To show respect is to use rituals of deference. Examples of rituals of deference: paying attention when you speak, not interrupting you, bowing, rising when you enter the room, shaking hands, smiling.
Examples of rituals of non-deference: ignoring you, staring at you, refusing to answer when you speak, calling you a name.
Violence is the height of disrespect.
The nonviolent protestor continues to use rituals of deference towards her opponent. The prophet respects the opponent.
To tell someone, even a child, that she is not allowed to speak is disrespectful.
A child should be taught to behave respectfully. There are rituals of deference that children should pay to parents, but keeping silent is not one of those rituals.
Parents need to be respectful to children. I think one ritual of deference that an adult owes to a child is to listen to the child.
Young people should be taught to engage in nonviolent conflict. Their anger can be beneficial, if it does not lead to aggressive attempts to hurt others. School officials need to experience that anger. We adults want to back up the children in their struggle to see changes made in the bad behavior of school personnel. We want to teach them how to resist bad situations in ways that will be both redemptive and effective. Since we ourselves are not sure how to do that, we must engage them in the discussion of how to do it.
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