Information dump

I just crawled in from a weekend class - 20 hrs in 3 days - and my brain is feeling like a bag of smashed Fritos. The class was Nonviolence and Public Policy and even though I only sat in (no grade), it was pretty intense. Before moving to Portland and beginning school, I had this idealized version of nonviolence and peace studies. I thought that people involved in these areas were somehow enlightened, evolved to the point that they were able to share their higher perspective with all of us in gentle, loving, and joyful ways.

While that isn't untrue, I've discovered that the much more, or so it seems to me, prevalent view is that nonviolence is a strategy to be used in ongoing power struggles - a practical policy in large because it causes the least loss of life (hopefully) and possibly less bloodshed. During my Gandhian Nonviolence class earlier this year, I didn't get that same feeling. I felt (strongly) that Gandhi spoke to the spiritual aspect of nonviolence - insisting that devotion (spiritual devotion) was as important as both knowledge and action. For me, the perspective turns toward the larger issue - what can we do to help alleviate power struggles?

From what I saw this past weekend, there is a great deal of knowledge and action but they seem disconnected from devotion. I may be mistaken, but the overall impression was devoid of a higher, more spiritual perspective. It's true that there are a wide variety of religious institutions involved in nonviolence work and that all manner of spiritual leaders preach (and practice) nonviolence, but something still seems to be missing.

This feeling is not new for me and is something I'm still pondering, so I'll move onto an observation I heard from one of my classmate and one of my own. The observation from my classmate was new to me and I found it quite thought-provoking:

Is nonviolence actually effective? One of my classmates, a black woman from the South, expressed disillusionment with Dr. King and the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement. She was clear in her feelings that blacks are no better off now than they were before 1964. This was interesting to me because Dr. King's last book (Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos to Community) addressed the beginnings of the same question.

Has there been any followup on the successful nonviolent movements? This was from me and I'm talking about what has happened after nonviolent movements have 'accomplished' their stated goals. For example - what's going on in Yugoslavia since Slobo was deposed in a nonviolent revolution? Has the power structure changed to reflect a true people's government or were the members of the existing structure the only thing that changed?

The same question can be asked of the civil rights movement in the US. Did the movement lose itself because Dr. King was assassinated or would it have eventually foundered, looking for ways to address the more intangible structural inequities of class and economics? What is the next step after the more obvious goal has been reached?

I think that whatever daydreamy notions I had about nonviolence were pretty much shattered by the information from this class. When I made the decision to apply the philosophy of nonviolence to my life, as best I can, it seemed a natural progression - the next step on the path I've been on for several years now. It seems counter-intuitive to me that you can expect nonviolent resistance to create long-term, sustainable results without applying the philosophy at some point.

I'm no Gandhian scholar but I think I remember him saying the same thing. More probably, I heard it while studying him last term and instantly adopted it as part of my personal ethic. When we start looking at how to extend the positive results of nonviolent resistance, I can't stress how strongly I believe that adopting a personal (or societal) philosophy of nonviolence is crucial to long term success. At this point, however, it's just a theory and one I have absolutely no idea about putting into practice.

As a result of all this fabulous questioning, I'm now facing a minor 'dark night of the soul'. If so many people have been working for so long, with so little apparent progress, why bother? I'm no more intelligent, loving, or enlightened than any of them and it just seems so hopeless at the moment. The problems seem so large and the victories seem so incredibly small that I'm wondering if I even want to try.