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Random musing and thoughts. On non-violence. by LudoCrow
Taken from: http://arinndembo.com/on-forgiveness/
"But making the commitment to your own non-violence doesn’t mean that you invite further violence from others. Nor does it mean that you invalidate or refuse to communicate your pain.
It just means that you’ve accepted that it is your responsibility to invalidate violence as a strategy.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And responding in kind, when someone tries to hurt or shame you, is a form of validation. You’re imitating the attacker. All you’re really achieving is a critique of the bully’s choice of target.
Lashing out at others, even in self-defense, is problematic. If someone attacks you, and you crush them in retaliation, you’re still essentially telling that person “Being a violent and/or shaming douchebag is the correct way to behave in general…you’ve just chosen the wrong victim. Allow me to demonstrate the depth of your error in judgement."
I can go this route at times, both in self-defense and in defense of those weaker than myself. You mess with the wolf, you get the teeth. I’m not a Christian; I’m not a Buddhist either. I’m just a good person who wants to be LEFT in peace.
I cannot be trusted to be completely non-violent if you hurt me or threaten me, or try to hurt or threaten someone that I love or care about. And please be aware that I care about a lot of people.
That being said, my commitment to emotional and physical non-violence in my personal life is pretty solid. If I hurt someone that I care about, I try to respond immediately and appropriately to being told, “That hurts.” I stop the bad thing I’m doing or saying. And I seek meaningful forgiveness for what I’ve done.”"
Just something that had my kind of lost in thoughts lately, due to a lot of stuff that happened on my end lately over the last months.
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Ditto actually.
But even when it involves someone I've felt hurt by but at the same time... I can't know what goes in their head and how -they- see things such as if they might see themselves as the hurt party in the first place :X
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This echoes some thoughts I've also had when trying to understand our relationship with violence.
Somewhere around the internets is the concept of a person being a ghost piloting a sack of meat, and while the phrasing is a bit crude (but humorous), I think it speaks to the duality of the human existence. In part, we are animals - we do all the things an animal does, and many of our behaviors are driven by interactions of chemicals. In another part, we develop a sense of presence that seems to go beyond the drives and behaviors that our animal part is driven to.
In that sense, I think that as animals, we will all experience violence or violent behaviors. As beings, though, I think we have the great ability to prevent, subdue, distract or otherwise negate those behaviors, and cultivate the practice of steering our raging sack of meat towards non-violent resolutions. That isn't an easy thing to do by any means, and is a battle one fights till the meatsack expires, but I think by recognizing that conflict, and doing what one can, we take a step forward towards peace.
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It just means that you’ve accepted that it is your responsibility to invalidate violence as a strategy.
I dunno that I can agree with that kind of thinking. The extremely violent and dangerous people in the world, the people who would do terrible things as a matter of course, the abusers and pushers of the world are not going to commit to non-violence. While it may be not be self-purifying to do so, responding to violence (especially towards people other than yourself) with incapacitating violence (towards the one using it) can be the only way to stop someone from doing it.
The guy who torments everyone in the office is not going to stop because it's nice to stop and people tell him he's hurting people. He's going to stop because someone with the power to cut off his income says "We do not allow this." If he doesn't stop, he's sent away where he can't do what he does.
Rather than suggest non-violence, I suggest that those with the ethical mind to realize that it's bad accumulate power and the willingness to use it to stop the unethical.
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Note she mention, especially in the full blog post, that there are times where if it indeed involves people or friend she cares about being hurt or threatened that she isn't afraid to "bite back" technically speaking.
Also, she mentioned that her commitment is specifically also related to those same people she care about if she realizes or is told she hurt them.-
I can understand that, but I'm responding to the quote as stated by you, not the orig. post.
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Fenchurch
I'm always horrified at the thought that I've managed to hurt someone without meaning to.