General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Obama vs Hersh [View all]H2O Man
(73,537 posts)so many interesting and important points, I'm going to try to respond to various ones individually. For it would be easy for me to get carried away here, and risk losing focus. Old men are prone to doing just that. Yet all of those points deserve responses .....and while the responses are not "the answer," that is because the answer is only found in you. And while I suspect that I have valuable parts of the answer -- for me -- the best I can do is share it with you. For that is what brothers do.
Gandhi often noted "violence before cowardice." In Merton's wonderful book on Gandhi and non-violence, there is a powerful section addressing just this concept. For true non-violence always holds within it the ability to retaliate, and the conscious decision to not fight back.
A mouse, Gandhi noted, never submits nonviolently to the cat. Indeed, the mouse hates the cat. But it is powerless to really fight back. Hence, in cowards, there is always that hatred for not only the violent person(s), but all forms of violence. The truly non-violent person may oppose violence, refuse to watch things for entertainment that are violent, and feel the greatest sympathy for the victims -- willing and unwilling -- of violence .....but not have a drop of that hatred that comes from cowardice.
Non-violence at its highest potential always accepts people and events at exactly the level they are at. For to be truly non-violent, one must understand and accept that everything -- thus, everyone -- is exactly as it is, because this is the reality of human nature. The question becomes one of how do we bring about a cultural shift that produces more individuals who rise to the true non-violent potential, as opposed to our current culture, which is saturated in both violence and cowardice?
Does this make sense?