Non-violence

Can the world live without violence? That is not a trick question. There is good reason, based on the degree of dependency on it, to say no.

The entire structure of received culture is built upon it. Even when we exclude violence on TV, on the Web and in “arts” and literature, history and economics are themselves rooted in violence. We celebrate with sorrow or joy the anniversaries of violent events. Even the apostles of non-violence are remembered because they fell to assassins. And we invest in corporations whose business is to keep the means of violence on the, er, cutting edge. We are all complicit, both as consumers and direct participants.

If we are to have a world of non-violence, we cannot look to history and economics with sanguinity. We must hypothesize a world in which the ways of violence have been universally rejected. What could precipitate such a sea change?

Something unprecedented. Something that has never happened before.

There is only one thing that has never happened before that could stop violence. Never before have individuals in unprecedented numbers opted out of violence because it is seen as the source of the most absolute evil we know. The taking of life. The bottom rung of our spectrum of evil.

Violence will only become taboo when the world sees it as ugly, anathema and utterly unacceptable. The residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of Israel and Rwanda, and countless others, saw such effects. But nothing has yet taken place to sway billions whose lives have not been devastated by violence to say no to it.

So the question is: What would cause nonviolence to sweep around the planet like a cleansing wind, convincing both high and low to do what they have never been willing to do before? Billions refusing it. DIY actions everywhere. Spurred by growing use of information based on the index of what is good and does not harm descending to what harms, abuses and kills.

The answer is clear. The sea change must move from individual mind to individual mind. The world must be convinced to move from binary to triadic. The DIY nonviolent actions everywhere must begin to capture the imagination of those narcotized by violence. Large investors in harm must sheepishly move to green and sustainable. Binary politics and criticism should be more and more discounted as the same old same old.

Life and life only is at stake. There are no beautiful lovers waiting in some far-off paradise to welcome those who are are talked into suicidal violence. There is no longer any satisfaction in killing an enemy whose eyes reveal the same humanity as your own. Only a conscious decision to inflict the worst harm can create the true enemies of the future, enemies that even non-violence cannot subdue.

The unprecedented can only be the global uprising that has never before taken place. The unprecedented can only be the universal stopping of the world until it wakes up. The unprecedented is the beginning of universal democracy by mutual consent of the governed and those who govern,

The world can and will live without violence. It already does. But this is a primitive stage, punctuated by local and global recrudescences of violent behavior. The Norway killer. Acting on values that were at bottom atrocious. Still and all and over all, though, violence is already showing signs of mortality.

When the unprecedented comes perhaps nobody will notice. It will simply be the day when it is no longer possible to live with violence.

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I have an odd theory about how writers should be reimbursed. Buy their books. I do not copyright my writing and feel there are good reasons for not doing so. But I put the books up on Kindle at a 70 percent royalty. Which means that I can make more on a book that sells for $4.99 than I used to make on trade books back in the day. My odd notions are among the items I have put up on Medium. The book this is from is Triadic Primer: an exercise in lucidity http://buff.ly/1sPPeHF