Experiments in non-violence

The resolution of conflicts through non-violence is a much more fundamental change than that we usually acknowledge. Therefore we underestimate the difficulties we may have to face, and also the possible results of such a change for the whole humanity.

The works of René Girard and Jim Douglass have singular similarities. Both analyse the Gospels and show why it means revolution in our attitudes and in our way of thinking. Both show the possibility to avoid violence as a means of action, but with two different analyses and objectives. Girard calls for a scientific method to explain violence in society, whereas Douglass supports a spiritual change as and through means of action. But both are theories which shake our old customs and popular perceptions.

Several experiences of direct non-violent actions make me think that they are right when they proclaim the revolutionary aspect of their theories. These experiences are unusual when considering their place, their development, their participants and their organization. What they had in common is that they have gathered people from very different origins and the cohesion of the group acted as a fissile material reaching the critical mass. They happened in different countries and have completely changed the lives of most of the participants.

This process of change is not a material fact, but a "living event", a feeling, which can be different for each participant. This feeling is difficult to describe as it is very different from any daily happening, and even the vocabulary of its development is particular. It has influenced people of all ages, cultures or professions. But the result for all participants is a deep change which questions everything which was taken for granted otherwise.

Some of these actions happened in the Basque Country (Spain) in 1988 with an « International Peace Pilgrimage ». We were welcomed by non-violent groups and we participated in public vigils mourning and protesting against the death of people killed in the political violence from both sides (policemen & militants). These non-violent groups were founded by people who themselves had victims in their families, and many participants were directly concerned as the people killed were known to them. In San Sebastian, in the most moving celebration, each participant lighted a candle, set it down on the ground and together they formed a floodlight circle of hundreds of candles. Hundreds of passers-by watched. In Bilbao, several thousands people gathered in complete silence for half an hour. While the time passed, the feeling of peaceful strength grew until it seemed to be palpable.

Such non-violent actions do not need to be spectacular, but have to be brotherly like a Christmas night spent in front of the Headquarters of the American Forces in Europe, at Stuttgart, Germany, with some friends. One of the soldiers in duty, who was a Jew for whom Christmas had no special meaning, came to see us. Then we sang together. As he stayed longer than expected, his chiefs called him, but he came back and stayed with us. He was finally transferred from his post as he was becoming too friendly with us.

In most of the civil protests, this dimension of the action is lacking. Emphasis is put on political demands, but other aspects are overlooked.

In 1990, at the beginning of the « International Peace Pilgrimage » in front the nuclear power plant Superphenix, participants formed a circle hand in hand and shared a silent "prayer" with gestures. A French ecologist activist told me that was a "religious" act and was not "necessary" in non-violent actions. I think this is fundamentally wrong. This act gave us a strong feeling of a group and created relations between the participants. Beside the TV specially filmed this "prayer" and it was shown in the evening news. Indirectly it broke a barrier between activists and the public. The last protest against Superphenix (in 1994), as most of the actions of the ecologist movement, do not include any actions of this kind, and the results are often short of expectations, in response from the public and media interest.

Jim Douglass relates in his book « Lightning from East to West » an event which change his life. He says how, after spreading blood on secret military documents planning the actions of war in Vietnam by American armies, he became aware of potential power of non-violence to transform people and change structures which maintain injustices and structural violence. He explains how employed people in the military base left their job for reasons of conscience and came to participate in demonstrations. Later he started a movement against the « White Train » which transported nuclear weapons nuclear weapons from the Pantex factory in Texas to the submarine base in Bangor, near Seattle. The American government stopped transportation of nuclear warheads by train following this movement.

For Jim Douglass, there is a spiritual force, inconceivable for us today, which corresponds in history to the physical reality which Einstein discovered and led to the atomic bomb. The spiritual reality would be the non-violence discovered by Jesus in the desert and experimented by Gandhi. He writes : « I believe there is, there must be, a spiritual reality corresponding to E=mc2 because, from the standpoint of creative harmony, the universe is not complete without it, and because, from the standpoint of moral freedom, humankind is sentenced to extinction without it. (...) The imperative is that we discover the spiritual equation corresponding to Einstein's physical equation. » (pp. 4-5, see bibliography in annexe).

For René Girard, a French researcher in Stanford University, California, it is not a spiritual opinion, but a scientific theory. His conclusions on violence induce a fundamental consequence for non-violence as a means to change the society. The Gospels and the texts which reveal the role and consequences of collective violence, modify human behaviours in relations and thoughts. The violence is not any more a unavoidable means of action. Human beings discover, consciously or unconsciously, other ways of thinking and acting. The thought of René Girard reconciles spirituality and human sciences : action can be based both on scientific experiments and religious faith without contradictions. He writes : « The only way which is still open is that which excludes no one and is not produced by violence. » (« Des choses cachées... », p. 467). Or again, « the children see those truths which overlook to the wise the clever ones, to notice this point of no come back : the mimetic competition gave to humanity a potential of violence such, that the only way of survival for the specie is unanimous renouncement to violence. We cannot think of destroying the Other One without destroying ourselves... » (« René Girard et le problème du Mal », p. 52).

When we use violence, we destroy or participate in the destruction of whatever good human beings have created since they existed. Because not only the violence destroys the aim to which it is applied, but also its origin. However, the destruction of its origin is not as apparent as that of that of the aim, therefore this leads to the belief of the "benefit" of violence. This is the major defect in the marxist theory of change. Violence has a psychological and negative effect on people who use it, although unconsciously. And a society who uses violence against another one or itself, becomes less democratic and encourages its citizens to use violence. Whatever the situation, violence yields very serious consequences in human relations. It creates fear, which itself creates violence. Thus violence is self generated. « Throw your sword and fear will leave you, » said Gandhi. Using violence to solve a conflict creates a never ending cycle of vengeance and contre-vengeance. It can only lead to symbolic or real death. Symbolic death is jail, exclusion, humiliation and subjection. Real violence is death on the scaffolds or war.

Non-violence breaks this never ending cycle as neutrons break atomic nuclei in a nuclear explosion. Non-violence generates a contagious energy which reaches those who use it as well as those who oppose it. In « The Scapegoat », René Girard shows that violence is the origin of myths and rituals, and thus the origin of most cultural phenomenons. « There is no other cause of violence but the universal belief that the cause is elsewhere. (...) Everybody is always equally responsible, but nobody wants to accept responsibility. (...) Religions and cultures cover up violence as they are based on it and they perpetuate themselves from it. Discovering their secrets brings a solution which must be scientific to the biggest enigma to all human sciences, that of the nature and the origin of the religion. » (p. 141, emphasis in original). Girard decries the scientists and the moderns who « make controversies for nothing » and « discard the strongest evidences » (p. 144). He explains that Jesus was the first one who understood the origin of violence and transmitted this knowledge to his disciples. Paradoxically, most of us are not conscious of it.

Here René Girard joins Jim Douglass. The Gospels is THE document which reveals the phenomenon of scapegoat and production of collective violence. When I talk about this theory to others, I meet the same scepticism that Girard mentions. I am surprised that I would be the only one to understand this evidence. Is it because I am not Christian myself, and that, for me, the Bible is not a "sacred" book ? Or because I do not have a University degree in human sciences ? For other reasons ?

According to Jim Douglass, Gandhi is the unique example of consistent application of non-violence as a powerful force. He insists on the word of Gandhi, which should not be understood as a metaphor : « A man alone can defeat an empire. » The potential power which can come out of non-violence would be equivalent to that of a nuclear explosion, but in the opposite direction. Where atomic power destroys, non-violence builds. And purity of the actor(s) and their sacrifice should potentially be infinite, as fissile material should be purified and concentrated to reach a critical mass. Jim Douglass develops his theory in his last book, « The non-violent coming of God », describing several examples of non-violent actions and the unexpected consequences they produced.

In Germany, some direct non-violent actions against American military bases were organized with Girard's theory as model of work, looking for originally to break the mimetism which leads to violence. Those actions have received a tremendous positive response from the public and the media. Certainly huge possibilities lie ahead of us, but on the other side of an invisible wall which hides from us our capacities to neutralize the violence. To improve the efficiency of our non-violent actions, we need to deepen our understanding of mechanisms which lead to structural and brute violence.

Bibliography

James W. Douglass - Lightning East to West. Jesus, Gandhi and the nuclear age. - New York, Crossroad, 1983.

James W. Douglass - The non-violent coming of God. - New York, Orbis Books, 1991.

James W. Douglass & others - Tracking the White Train. - Sojourners, vol.13, no.2, February 1984. Washington DC.

René Girard - La Violence et le sacré. - Paris, Grasset & Fasquelle, 1972.

René Girard - Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde. - Paris, Grasset & Fasquelle, 1978.

René Girard - Le Bouc émissaire. - Paris, Grasset & Fasquelle, 1982.

René Girard et le problème du Mal. - Paris.

© Yann FORGET