Nonviolence Daily | Day 213
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- Опубликовано: 25 июн 2024
- Nature is relentless and will have full revenge for such violation of her laws.
-Gandhi, Young India, March 12, 1925
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I've got a question about the relationship between force, non-violence and violence. OK, so, it's OK to lovingly save people from a lunatic in a pinch with a sword. This is because true violence is hateful. Presumably a psychopath doesn't experience that much hate, but they can experience pleasure from others' pain, that is malice. Maybe malice fits too.
We wouldn't engage in warfare because often innocent people are caught in the cross-fire and we would take injury before dealing it, which is the essence of satyagraha.
Presumably, two people are going to come to blows, you get in the way and without hate, with love as your motive, you are pushing each back - pushing them is force, but is not violence. Presumably, someone you love is going to go murder someone, and the only way you can stop them is you punch them and you knock them out. You love them, you are trying to stop them from throwing their life away and ending a life.
Where does the tension between "I'm using force to protect with love, and I'm not using the force with hate" eventually become necessarily violent? Let's say a President is going to bomb a country to stop violence -with that exact attitude-. Presumably the contradiction comes from willing to actually, intentionally commit civilian casualties among those you supposedly love in the greater place of the war, so even though you're trying not to be violent in spirit, maybe you cannot thoughtlessly kill those you love and actually love them. So maybe love stops you here.
But what if you were engaging in war-like force, but you were being meticulous in the engagement? That is to say - 0 civilian casualties, a self-risking tendency before a "opportunistic warrior" approach. Let's say it's a third-party invader. You're treating their invasion like lunacy, you're unwilling to engage in combat strategies that risk the civilian populace, you are willing to kill the invader, but you are willing to take casualties, to "repel rather than annihilate" and you are foregoing more effective warfare that might spare you lives if only to create a situation where the invader knows they can stop dying and seek peace at any time. Your risk to your own "forces", your restraint and your "draw the line in the sand" methods, your 0-tolerance for civilian casualties (there may be accidents but all your projections aim for 0, and so deny the modes of warfare which create a statistical expectation, so the only civilian casualties as collateral damage are literally unexpected accidents, not expected accidents) and will to immediately turn war into peace with the invader's consent are your "acts of love" so-to-speak. Defenders must recuse themselves from the fight-situation if they are moved to hatred or anger. Everything is done to use defencive emplacements, and the attraction of violence to the self and those emplacements before ever (if ever) attacking become your commitments.
On one hand, even in this situation I have a hard time calling this modus operandi "non-violent." Because you are fighting, but it fits the bill of "not hateful, taking increasing pain on the self, avoiding acts contrary to loving motive, an immediate will to deescalation" where the only reason you're fighting is because you are keeping the invader occupied hurting you instead of the civilians. The problem is at a certain point I cannot reconcile the deadly use of force with violence no-matter the intention or emotion.
It's just you say "sometimes violence and non-violence can look very similar" and this might include destruction of property even, though it's a limited role. Like, presumably you could sabotage and destroy an empty armoured vehicle, but you could not burn down the opponent's house even if they weren't home. You can kill someone lost to reason to protect those you love in a pinch, but you cannot kill to save a person or yourself from someone who can reason, like a threatening Nazi, you must risk yourself to produce the outcome you want. So it's tricky for me to find the line here, is there a drop-off where no amount of intention, no amount of emotional regulation, no amount of order of operation, changes the use of force from violent to non-violent?