Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Say NNNNNNOOOOOO to violence

These days I suspect that we are in the midst of third world war. Day by day, we find conflicts that spread across many nations, cultures and civilizations. World is becoming an increasingly dangerous place to be. The situation is being stoked by ever increasing hunger to control resources. Later being scarce, these conflicts are here to stay.
As a peace lover, I keep asking myself - what it my responsibility in such a world?
I can't understand human civilization or lack thereof. Violence has not solved and will not solve any problem. Yet, our governments try to seek military solutions when faced with attacks. Having applied a wrong tool to begin with, they obviously see no results from their actions. Frustration and desperation coupled with lack of imagination causes them to apply the same tool again with more power and vigor than ever. Result is destruction every where.
Why do we put up with this? Why don't we say NNNNNOOOOOO to violence?

6 comments:

Dilip said...

Congratulations on your new blog; I am happy to see the discussion that hopefully will blossom about peace. You may find a flyer about environmental justice of relevance here, as well as details of a post-Sept. 11th event that I organized. I think that there are lots of great things going on in the world and peace loving people that will carry us on!

Eleni Binge said...

Hi Sangeeta! Thanks for the translation blog here. This is something I've always struggled with too. My dad (inventor of the alternative fuel contraption) says that violence is necessary in order for life to survive. One needs the other - or rather, what we call "bad" is just the other balance to "good." However, that being said, we still have a responsibility to do what we can, strategically, to minimize suffering. There will always be suffering no matter what we do, but certainly peacefully attacking the system that creates said suffering is good to reduce it.
Since 10 billion animals are killed for food alone in the US (as you know of course!), I choose to focus there. Otherwise it is overwhelming. But that doesn't mean one cause eliminates another.
Of course, in our daily actions we must create peace too...that can be the hardest thing. Specially with my Vlachos temper. What did John Lennon say? Something about the most violent people are peace activists. Maybe not violent, maybe high strung. Sensitive.
--eleni

A woman from India said...

This is not exactly my translation blog. I continue to blog in Marathi, on totally different subjects.

Sangeeta

Anonymous said...

Violence is Natural.
Non Violence is illusion.
Darwin is right.
Survives : The might.
Might has fears.
It responds accordingly.
If time comes,
R U Ready?
To behead attackers ..
who might extinct you ?
Get Up and Build Courage
Procure n Sharpen your swords.
Train your self to slain..
If time comes ..
Better to be pridator than to be pray..
Protect yourself is the First Duty the Almighty has assigned you..
Naturally..
Violance is Natural !!

A woman from India said...

Dear Anonymous,
First of all, thank you very much for reading my post and caring to leave a comment, even if you didn't agree with my opinion.
Now about your comments:
While struggle for existence is natural, violence isn’t. There are some species that must kill to survive - ours isn't one of those. Even carnivore species like tigers and lions follow high morals and do not kill out of petty emotions like for fun, revenge etc. Now if “Violence is natural” was true and “Might is right” was the only rule of nature, those mighty beasts would have killed us homo-sapiens a while back. But that didn’t happen – why? Because violence is not natural and “Might is right” is not the only rule of nature. It is too simplistic to think that the world is governed only by Darwin’s rules.
We need to put this rules in the right frame of reference, which is:
Law of limited resources, law of survival of the fittest and the law of inter-dependence of species. Life on this planet is governed and sustained within this framework. There are limited resources on this planet and therefore, while on one hand, one must compete for those resources, on the other hand, one depends on competitors for his/her own survival.
Now, let us come to fear and courage factors. As rightly pointed by you, violence takes its roots from fear, ignorance and weakness. While non-violence is derived from high morals, body of knowledge and understanding.
Leaders driven by fear factor take societies into a cycle of unending violence until either they or their opponents are wiped out. On the other hand leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther Kind and Nelson Mandela have demonstrated a path that enlightens the society. The beauty of non-violent path is that there is no looser, every one is a winner. There are no enemies every one is a friend.
Your references to extinction: We are on our way towards extinction, not because some one else is attacking us, but we are attacking each other as well as every thing else that’s on this planet.
In order to survive, we must humble ourselves, respect humans, non-humans as well as non-living things.
Peace.

Anonymous said...

Good for people to know.

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