Yesterday, Waging Nonviolence launched our first post published in collaboration with Possible Futures, an exciting new website and book series organized by the Social Science Research Council: “Women in Occupy Denver” by Chad Kautzer. In addition to choosing really great collaborators, however, Possible Futures has also gotten a start on launching an important discussion in various academic disciplines about what the Occupy movement represents. Most of all, taking advantage of the SSRC’s international orientation, the project is approaching the movement in global terms—as few are, and as all of us should be.

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If you’re in New York this coming Wednesday, we hope you’ll consider joining WNV editor Nathan Schneider and contributor Jeremy Kessler for a panel discussion about the First Amendment issues raised by the Occupy movement. Get in on Facebook here.

As the new Martin Luther King memorial is unveiled this month, there is going to be a lot of nonsense batted around about how much our post-racist society reflects the fruit of his dream. But Princeton philosopher and “bluesman in the life of the mind” Cornel West preempts this in a powerful op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times:

The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable.

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What does it do to people, and to a society, to suddenly become revolutionary?

I recently had the chance to speak with Talal Asad, one of the leading anthropologists alive today, about the experience of being in Cairo earlier this year as the revolution unfolded around him. Our conversation appears this week at The Immanent Frame. What stuck out for him, and which he was still trying to find the words for, was a subtle but utterly pervasive kind of suspicion, one that often ran in direct contradiction to the facts on the ground.

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According to a press release today from the secularist Center for Inquiry:

The United States Air Force has been citing Christian teachings in its missile officer training sessions by referencing passages from the New Testament, according to recently released documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Reports show the mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare session, which takes place during a missile officer’s first week in training, is led by Air Force chaplains and includes a discussion on St. Augustine’s Christian “Just War Theory.” Also included in the PowerPoint presentation is a slide containing a passage from the Book of Revelation that attempts to explain how Jesus Christ, as the “mighty warrior,” believed war to be “just.”

The presentation goes on to say that there are “many examples of believers [who] engaged in wars in [the] Old Testament” in a “righteous way” and notes there is “no pacifistic sentiment in mainstream Jewish history.”

The CFI’s concern, of course, is that religious materials are being used in an obligatory military training course. Of course this is hardly the first time such a thing has happened; the US military makes quite a habit of infusing its literature and culture with religious tropes—to the point, in some cases, of creating a hostile environment for people of faiths other than the one being promoted.

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The protests that swept through Spain last week, highlighted by the ongoing sit-in at Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, have not surprisingly led some commentators to say that the Arab Spring has arrived in Europe. While the timing should not be ignored, neither should Spain’s unique set of political circumstances, history and culture—which differ greatly from the autocratic regimes of the Middle East.

There’s a reason peaceful protests involving tens of thousands of people erupted in over a hundred Spanish towns and cities for nearly a week to the point where the word “revolution” was being tossed around—however yet premature it may be. Record-high unemployment among young people, much like in Tunisia, may have been the reason most cited, but without the oppression of a dictatorial regime to generate a greater sense of urgency, it clearly took something more to get people talking about revolution. That something may have been a creative vision for a more egalitarian and participatory society forwarded by many of the young artist-types at the head of the organizing.

To better understand this phenomenon, Waging Nonviolence spoke with Angel Borrego Cubero, an architect who works on creating alternatives to public space and housing. He also teaches at The Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, which has been a breeding ground for many of the young activists. Cubero has assisted and observed the Puerta del Sol protests and in this interview lends his deep understanding of Spanish culture to a discussion on the embrace of nonviolent methods by protesters, the evolution beyond France 1968-style dissent, and the inspirational role of architecture.

Waging Nonviolence: What’s the appropriate name for this movement? We’ve seen 15-M, Real Democracy Now, and most boldly: the Spanish Revolution.

Angel Borrego Cubero: One of the more interesting features of the protests has been the amount of care put into avoiding a single name, a tag, a label that would serve to give it a simple image, but also to excessively frame it. It also has to do with the lack of ideology behind them, the drive to inclusiveness. Most of the names being thrown around sound good enough, but there’s no single correct one for it. Among the ones you put forth, Real Democracy Now is in fact the name of just one of the organizing groups behind the protests. Perhaps the more appropriate or generic names for it are 15M, Spanish Revolution, Take the Street, Take the Square. A caveat has to be made here: Although a part of it is particularly Spanish, many of the fighting points are shared with many other countries, particularly the “Western democracy” model, as blurrily defined by the European Union, United Nations, and any other labeling body.

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A year since my first interview with her appeared in Guernica, The Immanent Frame asked me to have another exchange with the feminist philosopher Judith Butler. Once again, we talked about violence, nonviolent resistance, power, and the problem of Israel-Palestine. This time, though, the backdrop was different: the Arab Spring, or the Middle East uprisings, or whatever we’re to call it (or them). On the one hand, there was the successful, largely-nonviolent movement in Egypt that ousted Hosni Mubarak from power after weeks of patient protests. On the other, there’s Libya, where the US and its coalition have joined a so-far intransigent firefight against Muammar el-Qaddafi.

In this interview, Butler stressed a theme that is actually the starting point for the discussion of nonviolence in her recent book Frames of War: the co-implication of violence and nonviolence, where neither can quite escape the other. I pushed back a bit, and so did she.

NS: Do these popular uprisings affect how we should think about power and sovereignty, as armed dictators are being coerced by nonviolent movements?

JB: I understand the desire to come up with theoretical generalizations. I spend a good deal of my time doing precisely that. But even though nonviolent practices have been important in some of these uprisings, we are also seeing new ways of interpreting nonviolence, and new ways of justifying violence when protestors are under attack from the military. The events in Libya are clearly violent, and so I think we are probably left with new quandaries about whether the line between violent and nonviolent resistance ever can be absolutely clear.

NS: Where in particular do you see that line blurring?

JB: We have to be careful to distinguish between nonviolence as a moral position that applies to all individuals and groups, and nonviolence as a political option that articulates a certain refusal to be intimidated or coerced. These are very different discourses, since most of the moral positions tend to eliminate all reference to power, and the political ones tend to affirm nonviolence as a mode of resistance but leave open the possibility that it might have to be exchanged for a more overtly aggressive one. I am not sure we can ever evacuate the political frame. Moreover, it is important to think about how one understands violence. If one puts one’s body on the line, in the way of a truck or a tank, is one not entering into a violent encounter? This is different from waging a unilateral attack or even starting a violent series, but I am not sure that it is outside the orbit of violence altogether.

NS: President Obama sometimes seems to be policing that distinction in his rhetoric about these uprisings: demanding that protesters and regimes both remain nonviolent, and then bringing U.S. military force to bear in Libya when the state turns to military force. But I would think the difference between how the movements in Egypt and Libya have progressed actually reaffirms that the line between violence and nonviolence is a useful one.

JB: Well, it is interesting that the U.S. affirms that the anti-government forces in Libya are resistance fighters and seeks to provide aerial bombing support to their forces on the ground. So it seems that even liberal public discourse makes room for justified armed resistance. What is most interesting is to figure out when certain forms of violence are considered part of an admirable struggle for freedom, and when, on the contrary, violence is understood as the terrorist activities of non-state actors. Do you have an answer to that?

NS: I certainly can’t think of a consistent rule that would apply to all cases, and probably for good reason. The case of Israel-Palestine comes to mind.

JB: Indeed, it does.

Read the rest at The Immanent Frame.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality,” Buckminster Fuller said. “To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” In 2007, the Buckminster Fuller Institute began offering an annual $100,000 prize to the individual or team who could present the most practical, efficient, viable way to make a poorly functioning aspect of the existing reality obsolete. Bucky called this kind of solution a “trimtab,” named for the tiny rudder on an enormous ship that is ultimately responsible for steering. I wasn’t ready to enter the competition that year, but from then on, my mind began working around the clock on the riddle of the trimtab. What universally accessible and implementable strategy could bring as many people on board as possible, inspiring contributors to take immediate action using whatever materials may be at hand?

I began to study and implement appropriate technologies and permaculture. I started a Facebook group called USE HALF NOW to explore the notion that more mindful consumption may be an efficient place for many to begin (at least for those of us living in “overdeveloped” countries). I studied the wildly successful conservation and Victory Garden campaigns introduced in the U.S. and Britain during World War II. Leaders called on citizens to “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” and people ably complied. I wondered, what if a similar campaign could be put forth today? What if people were simply invited to have a stake in creating a healthier, more peaceful world? What if the sense of helplessness, disempowerment, and defeat that seems to pervade our culture could be overcome, simply by suggesting that each of us contribute to the solution in whatever ways make the most sense to us? Perhaps the fastest-acting, most accessible trimtab would not appear as some new magic-bullet “green” technology—instead it might come in the form of a radical  mental shift.

The German artist Joseph Beuys practiced social sculpture, a kind of art-activism that called upon audiences to participate. He believed that everyone, by infusing even the most mundane action with a sense of purpose and creativity, could contribute to ones’ own health and the health of society and the environment at large. By so doing, he proposed that “everyone is an artist” of their chosen vocation. Beuys taught that in order for social transformation to be truly constructive and enduring, methods used to achieve it must be as holistic and inclusive as possible.

21st-century advances in internet technology and network accessibility offer extraordinary new tools for the contemporary social sculptor. Interactive initiatives based on the dissemination and sharing of information have far greater potential than during any other age in history. Inspired by the developing power of virtual networks, the spirit of the 1940’s conservation campaigns, and the Buckminster Fuller Challenge itself, after four years of deep consideration, it finally seemed that an opportune moment to present a formal application to the Challenge had arrived.

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The New York Times recently asked Gallup to come up with a statistical composite for the happiest person in America based on its efforts over the past three years to measure the components of “the good life.”

Gallup’s answer: he’s a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year.

This of course raises several questions. First off, is there actually anyone who fits this description? Surprisingly, there is. His name is Alvin Wong and according to the Times, he’s a 5-foot-10, 69-year-old, Chinese-American, Kosher-observing Jew, who’s married with children and lives in Honolulu, where he runs his own health care management business and earns more than $120,000 a year.

Next couple questions: What does this mean for the rest of us non-Asian-American Jews, living in the continental United States and making less than $120,000 a year? Do we have a chance at happiness?

While I’m certain the answer is yes, I’m less certain that the Gallup research is of any help. Happiness is not exclusive to a particular race, gender, body type or income. As Darrin M. McMahon, the author of Happiness, A History, explained in an excellent Yes! Magazine piece last year, it has more to do with how we live our lives.

Happiness has increasingly been thought to be more about getting little infusions of pleasure, about feeling good rather than being good, less about living the well-lived life than about experiencing the well-felt moment…

Indeed, if you think about it, this idea of happiness as a natural state creates a curious problem. What if I’m not happy? Does that mean that I’m unnatural? Am I ill, or bad, or deficient? Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with the society in which I live? These are all symptoms of a condition that I call the unhappiness of not being happy, and it is a peculiarly modern condition.

To cure this condition, we might focus less on our own personal happiness and instead on the happiness of those around us, for relentless focus on one’s own happiness has the potential to be self-defeating.

There is much to be said about the kind of happiness that is generated by focusing more on the needs of others than ourselves—particularly, that it creates something more sustainable.

As a country, the United States ranks pretty low on happiness, according to models like Gross National Happiness—which seek to replace traditional measurements of progress, like GDP. It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to people reading this blog that national wealth has little to do with fostering happiness. It’s the strong human connections in our day-to-day lives, as well as basic economic security and health.

Being that nonviolence thrives on interconnectedness, it’s no wonder that people engaged in nonviolent action seem to have better outlooks on life and the results of their work tend be more positive and long-lasting.

Though the great Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder died in 1997, new writings of his continue to appear in print. Just released (hat tip to Danny Postel) is a new collection of his work on the connections between pacifism and epistemology—the study of knowledge, of how we know, believe, and understand.

The two subjects might appear to have only a tendentious tie. What does nonviolence have to do with knowledge? For the beginning of an answer, one need go no farther than Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha, truth-force. Truth, he taught, is the method and medium of nonviolent force. But then further questions arise. What do we mean by truth, and where does it come from? How do we recognize it?

For the rest of an answer, this book seems like an excellent place to start:

In A Pacifist Way of Knowing: John Howard Yoder’s Nonviolent Epistemology, editors Christian Early and Ted Grimsrud gather the scattered writings of Yoder on the theme of the relationship between gospel, peace, and human ways of knowing. In them, they find the beginnings of a pacifist theology of knowledge that rejects strategies of empire while at the same time avoids a self-defeating relativism.

Learn more and order the book at Wipf and Stock Publishers. Also check out another Yoder publication from Baylor University Press this year, Nonviolence: A Brief History.