Mahatma Gandhi and Non-Violence

[Mohit Pandey]

The birth anniversary of MK Gandhiji (popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi) is on 2nd October. Let us pay homage to this very great person by knowing about him and his philosophy of non-violence.
Mahatma Gandhi is known as the father of the nation of India. He was a leader and a friend to all throughout his life. He dedicated his life to fostering the philosophy of nonviolent action, and spreading this concept throughout the world. Born on October 2, 1869, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did not live an easy life. He played an important role in freedom struggle of the India against British Empire. He struggled to find freedom for his countrymen and to spread his belief in nonviolent resistance. Given the name Mahatma, meaning “great soul,” he spread his message across the globe.
So, after all what is non-violence?

In its own words, Gandhiji said,
Nonviolence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil-doer, but it means the pitting of one's whole should against the will of the tyrant. Working under this law of our being, it is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour, his religion, his soul and lay the foundation for that empire's fall or its regeneration.

According to wikipedia,

Non-Violence is a moral philosophy that rejects the use of violence in efforts to attain social or political change, and proclaims others means such as disobedience or the power of persuasion.

Now, I think we can vote that whether non-violence has relevance in today's world(21st century) or not?

For more information on Gandhiji, click this Google link
For more information on his philosophy of non violence, click is Google link.

[Mohit Pandey]

Here comes my 50th post on the Hypography. Time passes so fast on the Hypography that I do not know how I reached my 50th post.

I did not hope such a low response from Hypography members on this thread. Please post your comments and express your views. I will love to hear from all of you.

[Kriminal99]

How threat of violence might solve a problem

The violent approach looks like this.

You have two sides who can either kill each other, or work out differences. So they choose to work out their differences in lieu of killing each other. The violence occurs when one side uses force of some kind and breaks this agreement. An example of a use of force that breaks the agreement is violence, any kind of deception, and refusal to do something or stop doing something in a way that affects the other party negatively combined with refusal to listen to why the affected party believes it should be stopped. The latter includes pretending to listen, but using straw man fallacy to deem the argument incorrect without convincing the affected party.

How does non violence address these scenarios?

So in the non violent approach:

A) What happens to passive aggressiveness, ie things like deception and doing things that affect your neighbor negatively without regard for your neighbor?

B) What if the other side just doesn't care if they hurt you? I believe there are some situations that are not easily answered by Ghandi's typical response that nonviolence is about altering your action not your enemy's....

Firstly say you have a government like nazi germany next to you who tries to take you over and execute all of your people. How is your non violence going to affect them, who already has a supportive population that you cannot influence very easily and is easily capable of wiping you out? Especially in today's age where such a government could use a variety of tactics to kill your population with little effort? You can't affect their government or their ability to kill you by altering your behavior. Isn't the only way to stop this violence?

Non violence more effective the more consious effort it takes to hurt someone and the more you see your victims reaction?

In ancient times you might have a scenario where if you refused to fight someone that was mad at you and wanted you to do somehting they would quickly lose their desire to beat on an unwilling opponent and feel terrible.

I have often had similar dreams to this... someone or something has made me angry and I start out violently attacking it. But whatever I attacked, though it is hurt from my attack, does not die and instead expresses how hurt it is by my actions. Until eventually I feel horrible and cry and will do anything to help it.

However the model seems to depend on the difficulty in harming the opponent. In today's world there seems to be an infinite number of ways to press a button and kill large numbers of people. Without even having to face the consequences of such actions, it seems as though non violence is less effective than ever.

Half and Half

If non violence advocates argued that lack of violence in spirit (don't hate the person in addition to not hurting them, forgive them) was equally important, what would they say about violence committed out of necessity with a lack of violent spirit?

[hallenrm]

I tried to address the same issue in my thread Do you dig violence? Hypographers do not like to respond to multiple threads on the same subject. So if you want people to respond make sure that the subject of your thread is novel, to say the least!