SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO &
VOCAB
(With repeated thanks to
Mark Juergensmeyer who let me copy them from his book).
I cling to Satyagraha,
even though I understand it less well than a Sudanese mother might, the vaccine
for which she would die to save her child.
We have this in common: we have something precious to save,
we both know it works, and neither of us cares whether we understand it or
not—be it vaccine or Satyagraha. Expert
medics may save her child; expert verifactors may save the world. We laypeople can only hope. Bring it on, at any cost!
·
Do not avoid
confrontation. Avoidance simply prolongs
the underlying conflict. Instead,
welcome peaceful contradiction and the light they may cast on your truth.
·
Stay open to
communication and criticism. Each side
has only a partial view. The perspective
of the Other is essential to allow us to sort truth from untruth.
·
Find a resolution and hold onto it. Once a better
alternative becomes apparent, seize it and base your strategies on it. But be willing to challenge it as well.
·
Consider your
opponent an ally. Do nothing to harm and
alienate those who oppose you. If you do
so by accident or bad habit, seek forgiveness as soon as possible and make
generous amends. Remember, your common
goal is to struggle together against untruth.
[Author’s note: avoidance, accusation and confrontation are my worst
liabilities—See the items below, at which I fail so consistently].
·
Make your tactics
consistent with your goal. When
possible, use the goal itself as a weapon.
When not, use only those actions that are consistent with it.
·
Be flexible. Be willing to change tactics, alter
short-term goals, revise your notion of the opponent and even reconsider your
conception of the truth.
·
Be
temperate. Escalate your actions by
degrees. The idea is to keep your
opponents from feeling intimidated.
Their response should be communicative rather than defensive. You want to attract them into friendship and
allegiance, not alienate them, as you have been indoctrinated to mistreat the
fearsome Other.
·
Be
proportionate. Determine which issues
are trivial and which are worthy of your time and energy. The basis for judgment is the degree to which
life and the quality of life would be abused.
Mount a campaign whose strength is equal to that of your opponent and
appropriate to the issue.
·
Be agonizingly
disciplined. Especially when many
activists are involved in a collective effort, make certain that your position
is coherent and that your side is committed to nonviolence. Consistency is one of your major strengths.
·
Know when to quit. A deadlocked campaign, or one with negative
results, may require that you revise your tactics and even change your
goals. There is no victory in concession
to your prejudices without agreement in principle. In a Gandhian fight, you may not claim victory
until your ex-opponents also claim it.
·
Be
circumspect. Mass movements should
practice Satyagraha as a last resort.
They should use it only after every other acceptable method of combating
untruth and violence has failed. Only
individuals may do so on any occasion, once self-qualified through legitimate
suffering.
Once you have absorbed
these ideas, (and I recommend that you review them several times), you will
begin to grasp the enormous moral reeducation we require.
Several times? What am I thinking! At least five times a day for a full year,
under a peace master’s strict tutelage.
That would be the one-millionth part of the weapons indoctrination you
have received since childhood: to react reflexively in exactly the opposite way
of everything you had just read. Good
luck with that!
How can we turn enemies
into best buddies? How do we defuse our
automatic reflexes of distrust and pre-emptive assault? Our Learning prerequisites are staggering;
they surpass by far this poor scribe’s shallow intellect, sermonizing
self-indulgence, off-the-wall temper and craven desire to watch those who
disagree with him submit or perish. We
have a long, hard road to travel.
I kid you not.
Mark Juergensmeyer’s
excellent bibliography covers Gandhi’s writings and those of his foremost
analysts and biographers. In addition,
he questions Gandhian tactics as they might apply to cold-blooded ideologues
and weapons elites who have come to dominate current events and history. He studies the apparent fatalism and divine
patience required to practice Gandhian principles against the disciples of
Hitler and Pol Pot. Those moral ogres
appear to be immune to common appeals to reason that might sway fellow
Learners, even if they disagreed with us.
Wouldn’t it take lengthy
generations of immense suffering, to verifact
successfully with their slightly less crazed descendants? Assuming total annihilation at their hands
did not intervene in the meantime? Which
is where belief in reincarnation (and its implicit immortalization of the
Truth) might come in?
He pushes Gandhian logic
to its limit. Should we make an
exception for benign coercion? Could we
force people to behave better, in their own best interest? Wasn’t that the Grand Inquisitor’s central
error? Can we succeed if we believe
ourselves weaker than our antagonists?
Gandhi thought not, lest we risk the Grand Inquisitor’s moral pitfalls.
People picture Gandhi as a
Hindu saint, a political moralist, a religious ethicist, a rational mystic, a
peaceful revolutionary, etc. These
addle-brained labels don’t fit him at all.
His heart dominated his head.
Gandhi was the ultimate Tragic Lover: a cartoon hero rushing headlong
over cliffs and crushed under rock falls in pursuit of his beloved. Using his body as a stylus and his beloved
India as a slate, he wrote endless Psalms to his Beloved, much the way Solomon
wrote his Song of Songs to God.
During his last minute on
Earth – having held Kali at arm’s length for a lifetime,
and in despair over this bloody-fanged incarnation of his Beloved sated with a
million Hindu and Muslim victims – he bowed to Her latest fanatical emissary
who shot him dead. You can see it on
film; Gandhi recognized and greeted him, as if this fate had been known by him
all along.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld