Wendy McElroy:
NONVIOLENCE: A REVIEW OF MARK KURLANSKY’S 2006 BOOK BY THAT NAME
By Jim Russell
I seldom come across a book by an Earthling (voluntaryists and Austrian economists are from Mars or Venus, depending on their gender) that sends me to my feet pumping my fist like Tiger Woods when with talent and force of will he sends a forty-foot put curling into the cup. But that’s what I caught myself doing as I read Mark Kurlansky’s 2006 book, Nonviolence, subtitled Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea. This is a must-read for anyone desiring world or local peace but perplexed by how to achieve it.
The clarion-clear message of this narrowly focused history of the use of violence versus nonviolence is that when it comes to throwing off forcible oppression, nonviolent resistance beats violence hands down. Yet so little is understood regarding its effectiveness and accomplishments that there is no word in any language for the opposite of violence beyond the negative, nonviolence. Kurlansky shows that failure to understand that nonviolence is an efficacious means and a potent force in the hands of peacemakers or the oppressed is a serious mistake benefiting only warriors and tyrants. The author points out, "it has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous" by the rulers of states. His concise history traces the concept of nonviolence among ancient people of various religions up to the recent past. He deduces from his examination that "Though most religions shun warfare and hold nonviolence as the only moral route towards political change, religion and its language have been co-opted by the violent people who have been governing societies."
Kurlansky distinguishes between pacifism and nonviolence: "Pacifism is passive; but nonviolence is active. Pacifism is harmless and therefore easier to accept than nonviolence, which is dangerous... . Nonviolence, exactly like violence, is a means of persuasion, a technique of political activism, a recipe for prevailing." And, I might add, nonviolence has a potent spiritual component that the initiators of violence cannot comprehend and have no means to counter.
Continued . . .
