In Memory of Gandhi
Today is Tuesday, 30 January 2007.
On this day in 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was murdered.
I think often of Gandhi. I’ve believed in the power of nonviolence as an engine of positive, fundamental social change all my conscious political-ethical life.
Not that nonviolence seems to have worked very well, but … the alternative of violence has worked not very well at all.
Seems to me, or so I hope, that the fault lies not in nonviolence itself, but in us, that too few of us have put enough of our energies and lives into it.
For the sake of humanity, for the sake of the planet, I hope against hope that the situation will change. “All” that it will take is a firm, continuing commitment on the part of all of us, most essentially those of us in the developed world, to humaneness instead of greed.
On this day in 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was murdered.
I think often of Gandhi. I’ve believed in the power of nonviolence as an engine of positive, fundamental social change all my conscious political-ethical life.
Not that nonviolence seems to have worked very well, but … the alternative of violence has worked not very well at all.
Seems to me, or so I hope, that the fault lies not in nonviolence itself, but in us, that too few of us have put enough of our energies and lives into it.
For the sake of humanity, for the sake of the planet, I hope against hope that the situation will change. “All” that it will take is a firm, continuing commitment on the part of all of us, most essentially those of us in the developed world, to humaneness instead of greed.
posted by HH at 2:51 PM
2 Comments:
I would like to suggest that at an even more fundamental level than human greed, xenophobic tribal response to contact with "outsiders" justifies and perpetrates violence even in our formerly glimmer enlightened "flat" earth.
"We don't recognize 'em, nobody here is related to any of 'em, they must be enemies, let's kill 'em" is the dominant response from Chechnya to Palestine to Rwanda to Sudan to ... to Northern Ireland to the USSA. Any rational person wishing to disagree may wish to spend some time reading the blogs over at Free America. Of the progressive blog sites, the only one that doesn't publish a healthy dose of that paleolithic view of global political relationships is Democratic Underground - only because their moderators delete any such incursions. (A rather insular tribal response IMHO).
Now the hood has come off and we are being treated to some good ole boy versimillitude from the stronghold of the young urban professionals in the form of Tom Tancredo's run for the presidency on the (wet)backs of our southern invaders.
Free Republic, rather than Free America
Free Republic
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