Non-violence starts at home

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Non-violence starts at home

Non-violence is no new kid on the block. It’s as old as the hills and the very bedrock of wise philosophy. But it always steps back and allows violence to pass by, remembering that we exist in a world where violence still rules.

            Non-violence says “calm down” in the middle of a heated argument. As worthy as any ‘good idea’ might be, it doesn’t outweigh the need for good manners, so as the discussion of opposite views proceeds it doesn’t hit a brick wall. When we are disagreeing over something important, the reason we need to apply the brakes before the discussion gets emotional and personal is that we need to avoid an explosion, and then a long up-hill struggle to restore things back to balance. The non-violent ethic keeps high emotions under control. It operates on a ‘count-to-ten’ principle to defuse anger and insult. So, we don’t want a pussy-footed interaction, and we surely want to be dynamic, so I wonder how dynamic non-violence should be. Is it simply feeling fearless when engaging in robust interaction? Perhaps being brave isn’t so straightforward, because to the other side it’s how it comes across - it usually looks like a sort of  violence. And violence is surely based on fear, and in this case fear of losing the argument. Fear makes us use violent methods to get what we want. Throughout life we force things to our will. We bend the rules and promise ourselves that we’ll fix any damage later, but than we forget to do that. So violence comes to characterise us, as persons who are willing to forget to heal damage.

            Take the violent world of Nature. Forceful events like storms, epidemics and earthquakes destroy on a massive scale, but this sort of violence isn’t the same as human-instigated violence. Ours is so damaging because it lets things get worse and worse without any intervention intention to repair. Nature destroys and then repairs, it brings things back into sustainable balance.

            Human violence accumulates and corrupts everyone it draws into its thrall. It is driven by insecurity and an ambition to win, and on a collective scale it becomes war and pillage.

            By implementing the principles of non-violence we might be able to stop wanting to win. We can plug-up our violence-leaks simply by bringing in a different sort of energy, by using a different sort of fuel for a start. Namely, by changing the type of food we eat.

            A change on this sort of scale implies a long to-do list. Violence-free food isn’t necessarily always obvious or easily available. But the idea suggests changing our daily habits and that’s something many people would like to be able to do, if only to move away from the usual hard-hitting approach.

            So, I change, you change, then hopefully everyone changes on the basis that the habit of non-violence, and the promise of better things to come out of it, is infectious. The opposite (traditional violence-based foods and violent behaviour) is obviously unattractive, because it promises that nothing will change for the better.

            Violence. We see it in children, our partners, in Society itself. It occurs to me that our main job is to keep non-violent principles in touch with reality. By checking ourselves for violence and seeing how it affects our closest relationships, we can alter the way we do things. As we experiment with it we can watch this ‘new way’ grow. Vegans live a laboratory life, in their own homes, in a relatively safe environment where we can test and trial ideas alongside those we know best. If we can be a cool operator at home we’ll stand a better chance of bringing ‘that way’ more successfully into the outside world. At home we’ll possibly be praised, mocked and criticised, but at home we can feel relatively safe. The impact of any criticism on our ego is softened by the intimacy of people who know us. With those closest to us, we can work through our differences more thoroughly. Hopefully at home we can watch out for each other without losing interest in them. We can move on without leaving anyone behind. That building of mutual care is good for building up confidence, and developing enough chutzpah to go into the outside world of strangers and say “this is what I reckon”. And then to communicate the details.