I wrote about nonviolence back in July, and every day since then, I have continued to think about the topic...evidently, many people are trying to come up with better words and processes for addressing society's problems, ones not directly referencing violence. That's encouraging! I've tried a few possible options on for size, such as "loving action/communication".
There are stumbling blocks. The first is, coming from my background, I am supersensitive about only wanting to use words like "love" when I really, really love something or someone. Gosh, I refer to love all the time, and yet I also know that there is no word more twisted up in knots in this world. There is no word more misused by people who are completely incapable of love. (It's no accident that in George Orwell's 1984, the Big Brother regime's Ministry of Love is in place to torture people.) The most tragic moment of my life came about two years before my father's death; after nearly 60 years of pouring love, support, and spiritual effort into the man, I had to turn away. I could no longer act or communicate lovingly with him, because all my energies had disappeared down a black hole. I was no closer to genuinely connecting with him than I had been 20, 30, 40 or 50 years before. And assuming that a lot of the people in this world doing the most vile things have a lot in common with my father, it's likely that my efforts at loving communication would similarly go nowhere with them, and might end up making me feel insincere or passive-aggressive at best, infuriated at worst.
Another big block for me is this whole issue of constantly reacting rather than acting. Constantly in a place of, if person A is doing such-and-such, I need to react/push back/neutralize their action. Needing to be nonviolent because someone else has chosen to be violent. As a woman, it's bad enough that most of my life has been dictated by masculine principles that I didn't understand and couldn't operate within. It has taken 66 years for who I really am to emerge from under the rocks...if my role going forward were to continue to be only "responding and reacting", I don't think I could go on. What does it feel like to be the primary actor? The star of the show? To actively embody principles of love, beauty, joy, truth, acceptance, etc.? To have agency and power? This effort -- in the world as it is -- is incredibly hard and exhausting. (And it is absolutely not the dreaded "doing nothing", even when there are painfully few positive outcomes, and others may not see or understand what you are doing.)
I guess what it boils down to is, everything is a stage in our human spiritual journey. Nonviolence is far better than violence. Grappling with the limitations of the term "nonviolence" is another step forward. And once enough people individually create lives aligned with Love, and gather together to create institutions aligned with Love, there will be less and less violence to react to. The knee-jerk instinct to react against will start to fade away.
