Non-Violence

Facebook comment quoted:

The non-violence paradigm isn't to do with other people, that is the violence paradigm - for example if other people behave well then so will I, if they pick up swords so will I... non-violence means that we never pick up a sword or even think like that. If we get killed this is bad, but better die peacefully than pick up a sword ourself and make things worse - that is how wars start and the whole cycle kicks off again leading to Chin and Nation states. In any case the only reason most (all) people pick up a sword is because they are taking revenge for some hurt they feel... hurt is hardly cured by picking up a sword ourself! The non-violence paradigm has to be personal choice. If we live in a society dominated by the violence paradigm (which we do) then it makes life hard to be peaceful but to those who see that fighting really is harder it is just a sad fact that must be endured. Hopefully people will see the peaceful way and make their own choices - but not while every politician, film, newspaper and knife carrying kid worships violence.

Was thinking again about Gandhi … think i commented before on him not really being an advocate of non-violence. I think I still agree with that. It is true that he didn’t pick up a sword but he still fought and it is what he fought for which lets him down. Basically he swapped white rulers for brown rulers. Now how absurd is that! This is the let down. How can you build non-violence on something that is basically hatred based on skin colour!! If not skin colour then he was gripped by the concept of “nation” which I’ll explain is based upon violence.

The Facebook discussion began with the film “Hero”. In a nutshell Emperor Chin unified the warring states in what became an empire named China after him. As far as I can see the argument is the same as Hobbes in Leviathon that in terrible war people eventually realise that endless attrition is worthless and they settle for being ruled. The cycle seems to be here that at first people pick up swords to be free, or to avenge death (as with the assassins) but when retribution comes from other people with swords it turns messy and everyone loses. Eventually everyone sees that endless retribution is self generating and the swords become internalised and the ruler can rule without violence (the film’s conclusion).

I saw something else though. I don’t accept “China” (or any Nation) as an axiom (after discussion held in this blog). “Nation” has to be explained which is what the film tries to do (and many political philosophers have). The argument here for China is based upon the assumption that people will fight without a mutual contract to keep the peace. Exactly the same as Hobbes’ state of nature “nasty, brutish and short”. It is as though people are cellular automata and follow the same solutions as game theory predicts. I know from watching that MIT course that people working in emergent properties are using game theory (solutions to prisoners dilemma, Nash equilibria etc) to understand and predict mass behaviour (a study started by the Nazis) and to evolve a new type of warfare (the Joint Vision 2010/20 US military stimuluses). Certainly these forces exist but the idea that humans behave as mass entities simply isn’t true. However this presupposes that humans have an element of socio-pathology – I met a borderline sociopath during the week and it got me thinking. If people who are averted to social interactions are considered to have a pathology, by symmetry isn’t there another pathology which is people who cannot separate themselves from social interactions? This is hard to understand given that “self” is constructed within society “us” – but a sociopath has a self that is Socially constructed! There are two levels of society – the true level that constructs even the mind of a sociopath and the superficial level of game theory based on individuals. My argument is that violence is a process that calculated on the superficial level between “egos”. But those egos that either do co-operate and are peaceful, or do not-co-operate and fight, are constructed within Society which is Peaceful because you can’t get outside!! So why the contract? Why the game play? So what if people just chose Peace in the first place before they started fighting?

Things to clear about with True Peace however is that it cannot be “enforced” and it can’t be punished – these are within the violence paradigm. Forces enforce peace through violence, nations work by violence because as pointed out in Hero the sword is still there it is just “not in hand or heart” anymore. We just need to look at Tibet to see the violence inherent in the concept of China. Indeed anyone who speaks in the language of “nation” speaks the language of war and violence. National authorities like the police are also the language of violence. It is totally obvious when you see the activity of police and armies they are the epitome of violence – this is one of those realisations that was always there under my nose but never saw it.

So what happens when you ignore the systems of violence? Well you don’t dismantle the systems of violence that is just remaining in the paradigm of violence. You simply ignore them. If everyone ignored them the systems of control and violence would naturally collapse. Mankind would experience much greater freedom and something like Heaven on Earth. Now according to game theory chances are that many individuals would fail to understand this and would be tempted toward greed, anger, jealousy etc. In a non-violent culture they would seem rather odd and presumably the culture would have its ways of dealing with these pathologies like talking them out and seeking personal balance again. If too many people at once started on the path of violence again it would simply lead back through the warring states period and back to Chin.

What is important to understand however is that individuals don’t have to get involved. The sociopaths who make up society (small ‘s’) the ones who get involved in politics, social climbing and war, these are the ones who make and break systems of control and these are the ones who seek peace. Those who seek True Peace don’t actually “do” anything because there is no such thing as Non-Peace. How can a power attack itself through entities built from that power! This is the SRH… In contrast to the version “How can beings attack the conditions for their own power” which is possible. The only way to identify them is that they don’t see any reason to use state apparatus and see any reason ever to inflict harm. True that people who think in the violence paradigm will exploit and hurt people in the non-violence paradigm, and non-violence individuals will seem to lose out in situations that violent individuals see as conflict situations – but this is only an illusion. In conflict someone has to die and non-violent individuals accept that it will be them – the argue that it should be someone else (the reason we pick up weapons and become skilled in swordsmanship like in “Hero”) is the essence of violence and all the compromises and loss of freedom that it entails.

Violent individuals really are absurd creatures. We fight to preserve ourselves. This leads to endless war so be accept a nation state in order to survive… and then we end up having to die for the nation state when it goes to war. If violent people were prepared to die for their country why didn’t they just do this at the outset and resist the temptation to arm themselves and start the “state of nature” which lead to the creation of contracts and nations in the first place!? And if we die fighting and the nation wins we have only maintained the status quo that arose out of wanting to survive the “state of nature” – in other words we were only fighting to enforce the solution to warfare in the first place – how absurd and twisted is that!

Other absurdities of the violent paradigm are present in the film “Hero”. The most powerful man in the ancient world Chin who controlled the largest empire spent his whole life living in fear of assassins. In other words he never enjoyed the ”peace” that he was supposed to have created. As Lao Tze was to point out later opposites stick together. The more powerful you are the weaker you are. Another irony was that for all his power he could not defeat Death and even went mad taking mercury remedies speeding up his death. His violent path in life certainly is not a model for anyone! If he wanted to live unhappily and die young why didn’t he sacrifice himself for True Peace rather in the creation of a Nation which has confused the minds of people for thousands of years. In the West we have Jesus as an even more powerful individual who did exactly that and left no Nation behind. The attempt to create Christendom is the most embarrassing interpretation of non-violence yet, a sign that the Western mindset is just as stupid as the Chinese. In both cases we have excellent examples of non-violence: Christ, Buddha and Lao-Tze (true he was a civil servant) and yet no-one understands them.