Regarding Baltimore: Black people have the moral authority to call for nonviolence-whites don't.

[MFrohike]

131. Ok

From reading both of your posts, I think what you're describing is pacifism, not non-violence. Pacifism involves a renunciation of violence and its substitutes. To me, it's akin to the Jainist priests who wear masks over their mouths so as to not to injure or kill insects. Pacifism has its merits, but it's not non-violence.

Non-violence, as we've seen it practiced over the last century, is a thoroughly active and aggressive method used to change the status quo. That word method is really key. You use it because it's the best available option, not because it's some overarching idea of life. Gandhi, lest we forget, chose non-violence not because he viewed it as morally right, but because he determined violent resistance to the British would fail. He wasn't trying to rebel to make a point, he was rebelling to WIN. Viewed in that context, by its first great practitioner, it gets hard to take people seriously when they harp on this method as though it's some great philosophy or ideology. Non-violence requires taking the violence inflicted by your opponents on yourself, rather than inflicting it on them, as both a means of delegitimizing them and strengthening yourself. It seeks to absorb the violence in order to create the opportunity for change. That ain't pacifism.

Note: I'm not advocating violence at all, not even implicitly. I want people to be realists. There are multiple methods to make change happen. Each has its merits, each has it demerits. Non-violence is completely ineffective if not done on a stage or if facing completely malevolent intent. Violence does solve problems, but it always creates new ones that take the place of the old. Non-violence requires discipline and self-sacrifice. Violence requires the most inhuman of all acts, namely hurting and killing other humans. Non-violence has the potential, only the potential, to create a change that doesn't rely on force to maintain it. Violence can rarely say the same, unless it's been overwhelming. These are examples of some drawbacks of these methods. It does no one any good not to be informed about them, even if you find one or the other repulsive. If nothing else, an examination of the possible methods to be used can inform about possible methods to be used against you.





Edit: I should mention that there is a philosophy, of sorts, of non-violence. You can see it in some of MLK's speeches and writings, particularly when he mentions the necessity of love as a part of the strategy. It's sort of "no greater love" as action, not just words.