In 1989, a handful of friends found themselves mulling on how they could promote a culture of nonviolence \u2013 a culture where people everywhere could let go of a deep-seated belief in violence and, instead, could live the power of nonviolent options. Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service was the result. Taking its name from a greeting St. Francis of Assisi used in his own time meaning \u201cpeace and all good,\u201d Pace e Bene set out to contribute to a growing movement for nonviolent alternatives. I joined a year later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the wake of the horrific mass shootings this past weekend in Texas and Ohio, I\u2019ve been reflecting on what Pace e Bene has learned over these three decades, and how these lessons are needed now more than ever. Thirty years of experience, action, reflection, writing, publishing, and programming \u2013 including leading a thousand trainings \u2013 have increasingly convinced us of the liberating power of creative nonviolence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was a slow process, coming to see more and more clearly how nonviolence is a powerful force, an active method for change, and a thoroughgoing way of life. We came to see that nonviolence is not a \u201cnon-word\u201d but a path with heart confronting violence without using violence and, at the same time, fostering transformation, justice, and the well-being of all. Step by step we came to realize that, what started out for most of us as a tactic of protest, gradually came to be seen for what it truly is: a universal ethic. The paradigm of violence is harsh and pervasive, but there is<\/em> a qualitatively different operating system available to us, one on which our survival depends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The killings this past weekend (compounding the tsunami of violence \u2013 direct, cultural and structural \u2013 that washes over the world daily) are the consequence of the uncritical allegiance to the violence paradigm, a system of domination and threat that projects itself as reality. \u201cThis is how the world is,\u201d it teaches us in countless ways from the moment we are born. But it is not reality. It is a highly sophisticated script that weaves together our worst tendencies \u2014our fear, our anger, our greed, our small self\u2014and creates a culture of violence and oppression in which we are enlisted and for which we are expected to live and die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fortunately, there is an alternative. We know this from a long lineage of sages who have tipped us off to the nonviolent option, but also from commonsense. If violence were the default, the human species would have destroyed itself long ago, with the retaliatory and escalatory logic of violence spinning out of control and into extinction. It is the secret history of nonviolence that has \u2013 hour by hour, day by day, year by year, century by century \u2013 kept this from happening. As Gandhi said, \u201cNonviolence is as old as the hills,\u201d but he also stressed that this history has largely been ignored and undocumented. Over the last century \u2013 largely sparked by Gandhi\u2019s modern adaptation and application of the ancient Hindu term ahimsa<\/em> [\u201cnonviolence\u201d] in leading movements for freedom in South Africa and India \u2013 people throughout the world have explicitly excavated and applied this \u201cthird way\u201d beyond violence and passivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonviolence is an intrinsic tendency that all human beings have \u2013 and this latent power of love in action can be tapped to deal with conflict and violence more effectively than the other options at our disposal: retreat, accommodation, or counter-violence. But if this power is trivialized or suppressed, we won\u2019t access it. We will go on tapping the power of violence \u2013 and reinforcing the self-fulfilling prophecy of violence. We will continue to be caught in the violence trap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, though, there are moments where the search for the alternative beyond violence and passivity becomes so urgent that nonviolence\u2014as a paradigm of the fullness of life, as a universal ethic\u2014can suddenly be glimpsed as an option. The stereotypes that have long dogged nonviolence (that it is ineffective, passive, weak, utopian, na\u00efve, unpatriotic, marginal, simplistic, and impractical) can peel away long enough to see that a nonviolent culture in its most robust and comprehensive sense is the only practical solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This may be a moment for just such a new direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton (number 27 and 28 in the US this year, according to one account) demonstrate the bankruptcy of the violence paradigm. But, ironically, they also illuminate that the nonviolent operating system is also present, as seen in the reaction to these horrendous events. The public has recoiled against the \u201cnormalization\u201d of such slaughter. Between the lines of this outcry is the bedrock assumption that violence is anti-human and that a culture free of violence should be the default. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s largely missing, though, is the way to get there. That\u2019s where active, creative and relentless nonviolence comes in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonviolence is not an end goal \u2013 it is a process. It is a process of envisioning an alternative, re-framing our thinking to foster this alternative, and living our way into this alternative. It is a way of being \u2013 but also a way of building a culture where, in effect, it is easier to be nonviolent. It is both what we can call \u201csoul work\u201d and \u201csociety work.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n What would our \u201csoul work\u201d entail in light of massive gun violence, for example? <\/p>\n\n\n\n