a non-violent world

Is a no-weapon world, where we trust our neighbour, just pie in the sky? A planet of humans, can it exist without resorting to violent confrontation? A non-violent world is something we can’t imagine. Even if we could, we don’t really know how individual effort can get us there. We only know fear, so it’s security we want. Individually we want to feel safe first, and only then begin to build a better world.
It could be suggested that we need less security than we think. The sooner we seek less protection the sooner we’ll realise there’s nothing to be protected from. If we trust life to be safe there’s no need to ensure (or insure) anything. It’s all rather down to trust. In this case trusting non-violence. Unless we tread the virgin ground of dynamic non-violence, we’ll never see how different a way of looking at things it is.
Non-violence is never ambiguous, it is a simple clear principle by which to behave, and in a practical day-to-day way it serves as a perfect shopping guide. This is where each of us has the power of the spending dollar. As we take time to look for ethical goods (buying cruelty-free and environmentally-friendly products) we send a powerful message of encouragement to the people who sell them and that changes the market and affects the way goods are produced. It’s the first step towards a peaceful world, a no-weapon world.
As we draw non-violence into our daily life, we have to be prepared to be scrutinised by others who would love nothing better than to put us down. If we don’t want to give them a chance we have to be squeaky clean in terms of non-violence. And that standard, once set, must be kept up, because as we improve our game so our inconsistencies show up more vividly. Even worse, if we begin to evangelise about doing the right thing, soon enough we will hoist ourself with our own self righteous petard, letting our adversaries have a field day with us. Somehow we must find a non-boasting way to say all this and yet remain in touch with people.
A good comedian always knows how to keep the audience sweet and on side, by balancing everything with a heap of self deprecation. Similarly, when we do the talking, when we start to go on about animals, what we say about animal rights has got to be gauged carefully. Subjects like veganism or non-violent action are sensitive enough to require great imagination to keep them as "light" as possible. At all costs, whatever we say must be kept strictly non-personal. We must never be accused of aggression or of using our subject as an excuse to make a speech. A good comedian educates by way of entertainment. Preachers on the other hand, miss the point of entertainment.