“All we are saying…”

Walking to the student center the other day, I noticed an old couple on the library plaza selling beautiful handmade jackets, hats, and blankets.  It was chilly and windy, but they were themselves decked out in their wares and looked comfortable.  This brilliant blanket caught my eye:

From my photo album, Notes

In 1991, Rodney King, lamenting the riots that followed the police officers’ aquittal for the savage beatings they gave him, said; “Can’t we all just get along?”  It was, and remains, the most profound question that I have ever heard.  We will not agree on our religions, our economics, or our cultures or customs.  But the urge to violence is a common thread of failure that runs through the human tapestry.  It is the antithesis of the message woven into the blanket in the picture.

The peace sign was the symbol of a counterculture known as “the hippies”, though it found wider usage.  Then, as now, if an idea is held by an out-group, it is easy to dismiss simply by attaching the name of the group.  “That sounds like a French strategy” or “That’s a hippie approach” functions in place of any actual argument on the merits of an idea.

But is the idea invalid?  Strip away the brilliant colors, the drug experience that was part of hippie culture, and other easy-to-dismiss accouterments and what you have is this basic idea that will never go away: that violence often invalidates purpose, costs more than it pays, and says to history; “we could not bring our better selves to the times”. 

Many people hold pacifism to be impractical.  But for a moment, entertain the idea that in the long run, it is violence that is impractical.  Violence is the box in which we do almost all our strategic thinking.  The person who forswears violence must think far ahead to relationships and consequences, which is not something that countries with super-powerful militaries are inclined to do.  Even if we cannot become pacifists, we can recognize that violence is a failure to think ahead, to engage constructively, to pay what it costs for a better world.  Violence is something to resort to, not something to lead with.  And let’s not pretend that we have done otherwise.

Even our current President, who is no pacifist, recognizes that war and killing should be viewed as suspect.  When deciding what to do in Afghanistan, he took time to get expert opinion and actually considered that opinion.  For this caution he was derided as “dithering”, as if shooting from the hip were some kind of virtue.

I disagreed with our President’s decision to scale up in Afghanistan, though I must acknowledge that he might be right.  But kudos to him for at least thinking it over first.  There’s a gun on the table; think twice, and then again, before picking it up.  Imagine that it shoots both ways at once, because it does.

Posted by George on 12/05/09 at 01:20 PM
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