Before categorizing the 4 common types of non-violence, it could perhaps be used to explain why it does not confuse nonviolence and peace. The terms are commonly used interchangeably, but in my schema, the terms represent different aspects of the same concept. Peace is the end objective and it is what one aspires to. Ensuring that a society or an individual is at peace, peace may be considered as an attribute or an ideal condition. However, there is no way that a community or an individual is nonviolent. Nonviolence is the leading path. It is the means, the plan, or the course of action that takes one to the goal of peace that in its complete expression is synonymous with social justice.
Variegated Variation between Peace and Non-violence
According to Johan Galtung, who is regarded to be the founder of, modern day peace research, the ideal of peace would be achieved in the society when every individual could reach their full potential physically as well as mentally. In other words, they all would have their basic (ontological) needs fulfilled and taken care of. These demands he lists out as freedom, identity, well-being, and survival/security. Although the struggle has been endless in order to satisfy these demands, the struggle has been applied in a sence to nonviolence that leads to the loss of the individual and the society to the if calibration.
Nonviolence is not necessarily diluted into a mere strategy or instrument of political expediency when it is depicted to be the way to peace. One of the choices is embracing a living philosophy and making a life commitment that will seek to realize an ideal of peace, a combination of the concepts of positive and negative peace, by adopting the nonviolent pathway. Positive peace is the outcome of a successful elimination of the risk of violence and negative peace is a state of affairs where there is no violence. The latter entails the diminishing of the use of weapons of mass destruction (e.g., disarmament) as well as creating mechanisms, and principles, whereby individuals are allowed to satisfy their existential needs, without restricting the capacity of other individuals to do the same. The philosophy of nonviolence provides a person with a code of behavior, which one may use to attempt to organize their life, find the purpose in the life, and make a contribution to the development of the society that is moving towards positive peace. The field of politics has a lot of paradoxes. Consider the issue of peace. Everyone is in favor of peace.
Nobody wants to go to war! But the world that we live in is always constantly getting ready for conflict. Any nation misses an attack force. Defense is the point of the military. However, the tools production of which, in defense, is to be used, are made to assault. The time of peace is a time of war preparation. Nobody desires conflict. But most of our heroes are individuals who have conquered fights. The great names of history would have been left down in oblivion, had they not been furnished the chance to fight.
Caesar, Napoleon, Montgomery, Alexander, and so many more whose names can be found in the title pages of our history books, are the names, which owe their fame to their share in arms warfare. Ironically, even though we hate the war, who make it are eternalized. Nonetheless, we admire and respect those people who have preached nonviolence, including Jesus, Thomas More, Gandhi, and others. Martin Luther King. In spite of the fact that they were the objects of violence, we know that they were not violent and instead detested it. They died (violently) as a consequence of standing out to non-violence in their respective civilisations. It is possible to be a vegetarian, teetotaler, celibate, or reclusive without causing an incitement of animosity. One cannot promote nonviolence without preaching hatred. Nonviolence is a not bad choice since it is not inaction. This is more than merely not participating in violence; it entails rising up to stand against oppression and injustice in a violent world.
Charging a person not to commit a crime is arguably one of the largest injustice that has been done on people who promote nonviolence. It is believed that the man who picks up the rifle is a committed person. To his convictions he is ready to fight and even lose his life. The denial of this course of action is considered opting out. He is seen as a coward who is seen as slicking in everyone’s convictions. It is here that the paradox of Yeats comes in, which makes sense, been quoted earlier.
The finest are frequently viewed as unconvinced. They are considered as being weak willed and cowards. They seem to be somewhat present in society insignificant. Contrarily, society often wants their eradication.
Even so-called negative peace, which is defined by the lack of comprehensive death and destruction, is not an easy goal, because war and bloodshed in Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan, and northern countries will remain. Following Mali, Myanmar, and other hotspots in the world, is a reminder. Positive peace, which is defined as a tolerant, pluralistic, respectful, and nonviolence in resolving conflicts is an ideal that is enjoyed by the more than one billion people that live in the conflict afflicted and weak governments. During the last 2 decades, peacebuilding after a conflict, which is provided by the UN system as a definition, can be summarized as: identification and support.
“Institutions that will be inclined to consolidate and entrench peace to prevent a relapse into conflict have been the primary concern of the international community. In more recent times, the international community is determined to do so establishing inclusive, just and peaceful societies.”
“Sustainable Development Goal 16. Although there have been some successes with both large-scale and small-scale programs in countries such as Liberia, Timor Leste, Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Guatemala, this still remains a more than fifty percent percentage probability that these countries will lose their way back to war or following a civil war, authoritarian and repressive government.”
The recent coup in Guinea, Myanmar, and Mali, as well as the one in the former Soviet Union, are examples; in appearance of authoritarianism in such nations as Burundi, underline the fact that it has been so hard to be manipulated by the outside forces of social norms and political structures via the promotion of democracy and human right, security institution reform, economic reform, or transitional justice. The most dramatic new instance, of the liberal effort to introduce a perfecting turn into social structures in Afghanistan.
Complications in furthereance
The conflict is not a part of the so-called realistic possibilities, whether they are international, interstate, intrastate, sociological (patriarchy, misogyny, racism, workers grievances, etc.), or interpersonal.
Why is this the case? The first cause is most likely to be ignorance. Nonviolence is perceived as inaction, passive resistance, avoiding conflict, and submissiveness turning the other cheek, which are common perceptions of nonviolence. Although this may be the case with a small percentage of peaceful voter who practice non-resistance, the sector as an entire entity is displaying the very opposite of this argument. Second, people believe that nonviolence is a symptom of weakness. This kind of frame of reference is common in a discourse in which the established paradigm is conflictual and in which the only available choice that a person or society has to stay alive and prosper is exercising power over the opponent, which, in the long run, is the application of physical force against one. Thirdly, and the next point elaborating on the previous one is that, peaceful action is generally only thought to be beneficial in circumstances where there is no serious stake to lose and an adversary that is reasonably benign or reasonable. But the ultima ratio is based upon the violence as a way of preventing an inevitable defeat after a problem reaches a critical level and an opponent is seen to be strong and unconquerable.
The sensation that violent aggression is a genetic quality, however, provides the foundation of our assumptions, notwithstanding the accumulating evidence that human violence is an acquired behaviour. We haplessly accept the ancient platitude of Roman General Vegetius; “Should you desire peace, get ready to war.” The argument by the US Air Force that Peace is our Business or the slogan peace through military might seldom come under dispute. These proverbs are so everywhere that they even end up being a feature of our daily lives. They exist beyond the view of any inquiry since they represent how things merely are. As Alan Richards states, the violent state of mind has some specifics that, in case they are eliminated, might potentially make humans decide to take a non-violent path. These are our inclination to define conflict in the essentialist terms of good and evil, to ignore the relevance of history, to wrestle with contradiction, and to think that there is an answer to all questions, what Richards calls the engineering mind. Nonviolence will not be accepted when the other is objectified and considered as a dehumanized evil being instead of a complex human being with flaws as well as redeeming qualities just like oneself. When, then, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said, the line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, the question the first potential supporter of counterviolence must ask is, What could I have done to contribute to the development of the conflict? The question thus opens the door to further proceeding to the manifestation of regretting the act without condemning the offender and cutting off any chance of having a peaceful end. Nonviolence requires an humanized thinking of the situation in a dispute. Unless one performs research on the background of the viewpoint of the opponent, violence is inevitable. William Faulkner, the novelist, has just rightly said that the past is not dead. It hasn’t even passed yet. It is a part of this moment and therefore ignoring the past will not result in a long-term conflict resolution.
The unwillingness to believe in the paradox i.e. the possibility of two antagonistic descriptions of the same phenomenon being simultaneously true is also another obstacle to accepting nonviolence. A world, in which there are no easy answers, to which everyone is doomed, is characterized by an unpredictable reality that is rife with nuances and contradictions. It is true that nonviolence may do a lot better job than violence. As a matter of fact, I feel that, to ensure human existence into the twenty-first century, humanity must be willing to consider and endorse some of the non-combative methods that are being outlined in the succeeding sections.
By: Hanishree Vichare
Write and Win: Participate in Creative writing Contest & International Essay Contest and win fabulous prizes.
About the Author
