Prasad: The Way to Disarmament

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Augustus

The fifteenth chapter of The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace contains Rajendra Prasad‘s 1963 essay The Way to Disarmament. Like the recently discussed writings by Merton, Fromm, and Muste, finding the path to peace through disarmament is the focus of Prasad’s essay. Dr. Prasad spent his life working for Indian independence and was the first President of the Republic of India. He wrote the essay a year before he died.

Prasad decries the technological advance of warfare. He found that this “misuse” of science and techonolgy vastly increased the scale of human life that was destroyed, and seperated the destructive act from the realization that human life was being taken. His discussion is immediately relevant to the use of drones to murder today. Prasad looks to his contemporaries for guidance on how to move foraward”

This is what Mahatma Gandhi meant when he said that ultimate nonviolence was only safe defense not only for the individual but for nations. Continue reading →

A Peaceful Mother’s Day: Thoughts, Gift Ideas, and The Proclamation

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Augustus

In the US, Mother’s Day started out as a holiday about peace. Initially mothers of soldiers who died in both sides of the Civil War would meet to try to reconcile. The most famous example of the peaceful intent of Mother’s Day is the Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe. She is best remembered as the abolitionist, pacifist, and suffragist poet who penned the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The proclamation is at the bottom of this post. In between are some peaceful gift suggestions for your mother,

Let’s start with a peaceful way to wrap your present:

Flowering gift wrapping paper that can be planted after it wraps a gift! Continue reading →

Fromm: Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Augustus

The thirteenth chapter of The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace contains Erich Fromm‘s 1960 essay The Case for Unilateral Disarmament. Fromm was a psychoanalyst and a member of the Frankfurt School. He co-founded the anti-nuclear organization SANE, which as named after his 1955 book, The Sane Society. SANE is now part of Peace Action.

Like Muste and Wallace, Fromm argues that the safest path to security is unilateral disarmament. Not surprisingly, Fromm approaches the discussion from a psychological perspective. To start with he pushes aside the question of whether disarmament is unilateral or mutual. Instead, he reaches for the question of what the reaction of the opposing side will be to disarmament. He rather dryly states that

it is unfortunately true that political leaders can rarely be trusted

Fromm’s purpose is not to demonize political leaders; he argues that the human nature causes them to bifurcate their personal moral beliefs from their morality as institutional leaders. He finds Hitler to be personally immoral, but the Russian [sic] leaders to be moral in their personal beliefs. Continue reading →

Dance, Recite, and Converse for Earth Day!

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Augustus

For this Earth Day, we wanted to share with you some of the movies, music, and books that have inspired us to joyfully engage in our environmental activism.

Mindwalk. This movie is a favorite of Ian’s. It is based on the book Turning Point by physicist Fritjof Capra. Capra is best know for his book, The Tao of Physics which removes the artificial barriers between religious understanding and scientific understanding. The book, The Turning Point, presented the movie maker’s problem of how to turn a book about the complexity of our ecological problems into a narrative. The solution was to set it in a beautiful place, Mont. St. Michael, France. And set in motion a discussion between a physicist (Liv Ullmann) and poet (John Heard), and a former presidential candidate (Sam Waterston) as they walk through Mont. St. Michael. The narrative form also provided a solution to a lesser problem. There was already a very famous ballet movie called Turning Point, so the Capra’s movie was named Mindwalk to avoid confusion and reflect the new form.

Continue reading →

Nonviolence: Muste’s Getting Rid of War

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Augustus

The twelfth chapter of The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace contains A.J. Muste‘s 1959 essay Getting Rid of War. The essay leads off the third section of the book: The Cold War and Vietnam. Muste’s life was a journey toward pacifism and through politics and religion. He was a labor organizer, anti-war leader and civil rights mentor.

Muste seeks a path to “abolish war and the benumbing threat of nuclear destruction.” He defines the problem as having two “characteristics”: 1) the cancerous growth of weapons of mass destruction, and 2) the political intransigence between the Western and Eastern blocs. The first problem has not been resolved. The second has only changed players, but the fight over resources has not. Continue reading →

Wallace’s Are We Only Paying Lip Service to Peace?

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Augustus

The twelfth chapter of The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace contains former Vice President Henry Wallace’s 1946 essay Are We Only Paying Lip Service to Peace?. Wallace ran for President on the Progressive Party line in 1948 campaigning in support of integration, equal voting rights, single-payer universal healthcare, and peaceful relations with the Soviet Union.

Like Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners of the same year, Wallace is concerned that World War II allies — the US and USSR — were heading straight into a third world war. Possibly the first — and last — nuclear war. His views are fueled by US dollars being aimed at buying weapons rather than backing its words of peace. Continue reading →