Nonviolence - the most viable and most ignored principle

October 2 marks that it is 139 years Gandhi was born. Non-violence, or peace by peaceful means, is the most viable alternative to the problems our world faces. It is also the most ignored - in media, politics, economics and public debate. Said Gandhi: "Non-violence in politics is a new weapon in the process of evolution. Its vast possibilities are yet unexplored." Why? Because a tiny minority would be threatened if they were.

People in power want us to believe in TINA - There Is No Alternative. Some of us continue to believe in TANVA - The Are Non-Violent Alternatives.

The MIMAC - Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex - continues to diminish humankind's chance of survival. But not even in these 'BailOut' Crisis days, do we hear the obvious - namely that MIMAC, wars, bases - production for destruction - is a major cause of the crisis, if for no other reason, because of it's sheer size. MIMAC annually costs more than the BailOut package, US $ 700 billion, if you add what the U.S. must pay back on the loans that finance its militarist empire.

Let me advance a fundamentalist point: Anyone who does not study non-violence - in politics, conflict-resolution, economics, etc - is not seriously interested in change. Non-violence of course does not solve all problems and violence will remain an element here and there - like medicine cannot combat all diseases. But we shall not be able to survive globally without a radical reduction in the world’s violence –against other human beings, cultures and nature.

Science has always been much more on the side of violence than of non-violence. Even peace research focuses more on wars and weapons than on studying peace and devising peaceful solutions to the world’s ongoing conflict. SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, says in its statutes that it shall do research “with the aim of contributing to an understanding of the conditions for peaceful solutions of international conflicts and for a stable peace.” But with a few exceptions, all its publications are much closer to security and defence studies, most of the titles containing words such as “arms” or “military” etc.

Funding for research into non-violent alternatives probably amounts to 1/100 of 1 per mille of that of military research and development. There is no grant maker for such studies even in peaceful Scandinavia. At the Danish Institute for International Studies, for instance, all research programs in this field are financed by the Ministry of Defence. It does not increase pluralism.

Evidently, all around the world, there are some who are extremely afraid that more than a few specialized citizens should discover the vast potential of the theories and practises of non-violence. Isn’t it strange in a world where 99,9% of the people – if asked - will say that they personally abhor violence, that they are depressed that there is so much of it and that war is something we should put behind us?

If there were equal chances for funding and free research, we would “risk” ending up with fewer wars, less killing, fewer totally meaningless and mega-consuming black holes such as the Ballistic Missile Defence, much less poverty and suffering. We might even meet the Millennium Goals. Further we would most likely have avoided things like the U.S. economic crisis that threatens to turn the rest of the world into a series of dominos. How threatening for the TINA advocates – whose physical power seems inverse to their intellectual and moral power!

Gandhi argued that the coward should take to violence because nonviolence requires a lot of courage. One could add that the intellectually lazy fellow chooses violence before even thinking of nonviolent options.

Be this as it may, some of us celebrate Gandhi and all other towering TANVA philosophers. TFF is proud to have a series of them as our Associates. Today we want to highlight these and hope they will inspire you. TANVA is the future – no matter how weak it may appear. And we begin the list with Glenn D. Paige’s moving plädoyer for a new science and politics for a Nonkilling World.

Glenn Paige Video
Nonkilling: A Better Way + Nonkilling For A Better World

Johan Galtung – TFF Video Channel
50 Years With Peace Studies

Glenn Paige - Video
Nonkilling Society

Jonathan Power
The dreadful simplicity of today’s warmongers

Jan Oberg
So much peace knowledge, so little implementation - Thoughts at the...

The Transcend Peace University, TPU

Richard Falk
Horizons of a grand theory of peace

TFF’s Plan for Peace In and With Iraq

TFF Associates on non-violence – scores of TANVA articles

TFF Link Library


[JO # 1229]