A Teaching Moment: What Is Backfire?

If you've been following Donald Trump's attempts to quell peaceful protests against police killings of African-Americans, and if you are wondering how to make sense of it all, I'd like to offer a bit of assistance in explaining the dynamics of nonviolent civil resistance.  By the way, I am in no way an expert.  I've just read a lot of books over the last three and a half years ;)

So from time to time over the next three months, I'll be pointing out certain elements of what's going on in the United States right now, and I will be using and explaining terms from the literature on civil resistance.  Today's term is backfire.

What is backfire?  It is the phenomenon that occurs when an oppressor tries to crush a nonviolent movement by means of violent State repression only to find that the violence perpetrated by the State makes the citizens of the country even more disgusted with the oppressing government.  When an oppressor's repression backfires, three things happen:

• The oppressor's legitimacy in the eyes of the country's citizens decreases
• The nonviolent movement actually becomes stronger and bigger as people formerly on the margins join the movement as an expression of their disgust with the oppressive regime
• And the oppressor's pillars of support are further weakened.

Backfire works best when the civil resistance movement maintains strict nonviolent discipline, including abstaining from property destruction. Moreover, skillful nonviolent resisters are able to amplify backfire through a wise selection of tactics.

The backfire dynamic is strongly at work in the confrontations between Trump's Federal storm troopers and unarmed citizens in the Black Lives Matter protests.  Before Trump sent Federal agents to Portland, the BLM protests had been declining.  But Trump's move not only highlighted the brutality of the Federal thugs, but it also provoked a "Wall of Moms" who came out to protect their children from attack by forming a human shield.  That "Wall of Moms" has now been joined by a "Wall of Dads" armed with leaf blowers to combat tear gas fired by the Feds.  And there will soon be a "Wall of Vets".  Far from crushing the BLM protests, Trump has only made them grow bigger and more energized.  Moreover, these "Walls of Parents" are spreading rapidly to other cities.  And a Republican former Homeland Security director has openly criticized Trump for sending Federal troops uninvited to American cities that did not ask for these troops.  These developments show that Trump does not understand backfire.  They also show that neither he nor his current DHS secretary are exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Want to learn more about backfire?  Read Making Oppression Backfire by the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies.  You can download it for free.

By the way, please also read my two previous posts.  They contain some necessary criticism of the ICNC.

The History of the Suffragettes - Further Proof Of What the ICNC Has Lost

The International Center On Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) has recently tried to advise those protesting the brutal racism against people of color in the United States, and specifically those protesting the murders of unarmed African-Americans.  As I have written previously, I used to be a supporter of the ICNC and greatly enjoyed reading its offerings, as I thought that the ICNC presented an excellent education in strategic nonviolent resistance as a means of neutralizing an oppressor's power.

But during the last several months I became concerned by the appearance of writers and "teachers" attached to the ICNC who suggested that low-level violence (including property destruction!) could help a nonviolent movement succeed faster with better outcomes than strictly nonviolent resistance.  Because of my previous readings on the efficacy of nonviolent civil resistance and my understanding that autocrats and oppressors frequently try to inject violence into a nonviolent movement in order to undermine it, I could only conclude that the ICNC had been infiltrated by a person or persons working for Trump, Putin, or the regimes they represent.  One example of my concern lies in the article written by Professor Tom Hastings in which he lays out his opinion of "when destruction of something may be helpful to a nonviolent campaign," as well as his own story of how he was arrested three times for destroying military property.  From his article it is obvious that Mr. Hastings believes that there are times when property destruction is both justified and helpful to a movement.

The only thing is, Mr. Hastings is dead wrong.  And the experience of the suffragette movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Britain and the United States proves it.  According to a 2015 analysis by George Lakey, the British suffragette movement achieved much less than the American movement, and it did so even though it started earlier and many more women were involved.  Why?  Because the American women who agitated for the right of women to vote did so using entirely nonviolent acts, whereas in Britain (oh, such a staid and proper society!), women resorted to arson, blowing up post offices, and smashing windows.  That's why, by 1920, while waging a nonviolent campaign that ran all the way through World War 1, the American suffragettes won equal access to the ballot box, while in Britain (where the women were forced to suspend their campaign during the war), by 1918 only women who were over 30 and owned property were granted the right to vote, even though they had begun their campaign five years before the American suffragettes.  It wasn't until 1928 that British women gained fully equal access to the ballot box - eight years after this victory was won in the United States.  Lakey asks what slowed the British women down, and the answer is that they undermined themselves and their movement by engaging in property destruction.

Mr. Hastings should maybe read the article by George Lakey.  Or he might read the essay by Jack DuVall (formerly of the ICNC) which criticized the property destruction instigated by some supposed "anti-fascists" in the early days of the Trump administration.  That violence played directly into the hands of Trump.

Thankfully, the protesters now facing down Federal troops in Portland do not seem to be listening to Tom Hastings.

(God bless the Wall of Moms!  Now that shows innovation in tactics of protest!  Compare what they are doing with what the Mothers of the Disappeared did to the Argentine military regime before it fell.  They also did it to the Pinochet regime in Chile. And note: the Wall of Moms is spreading to other cities.  How can Chump - er, I mean, Trump - call these women thugs?!)

As long as these protesters continue to remain nonviolent in the face of Federal violence perpetrated against them, they will continue to show the world that the real thug and violent actor is the one and only Donald J. Trump.

Decency and Gratitude

I am an American citizen.  I am also African-American.  My patriotism is at a very low point today, and has been for the last several years.  Patriotism to me has come to mean worshiping a narcissistic country that has made itself great by trashing everyone else on earth.  Therefore I was quite willing to write this country off.

However, over the last several hours, I am finding signs of decency even among the members of the dominant culture in this country.  Here are a few:

• When Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg refused to take down inflammatory posts by Donald Trump, several hundred Facebook employees and their managers walked off their jobs.
• When Trump gave a speech in front of an Episcopal church yesterday, religious leaders from many denominations condemned his use of the church without the diocese's permission, calling it a publicity stunt.  And some Republican congressmen are condemning the use of force to clear peaceful protestors from Donald Trump's path as he walked from the White House to the church.
• The Minneapolis Public School Board is deliberating about removing Minneapolis police from their public schools.  (It's about bloody time!)
• Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden gave a wonderful speech in which he promised to be an agent of healing instead of division.  Moreover, Biden frankly admitted the depth of healing required.  As the Guardian reports, "American history isn’t a fairytale,' Biden said, describing 'the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart.'"
• And while members of white Antifa/anarchist/right-wing groups have infiltrated protests in order to loot and vandalize, the fact remains that many, many people from every ethnic background (including many white people) are standing in solidarity with the African-American and other nonwhite communities around the world against the racism which has for too long been directed against us.
• Trump's belief that he can use the military against U.S. citizens may be wishful thinking.  In at least one case, the National Guard has sided with protesters who asked Guard troops to lay down their shields.  That protest, held in front of the Tennesse State Capitol, may force me to eat my words regarding the use of protest in these times in Trump's America.  The protestors got a few things right!  Because of their nonviolent discipline, they managed to weaken the pillars of support of their enemy.
• The State of Virginia refused a Pentagon request to send National Guard troops to Washington DC.

I could go on, but I'll stop here.  I can only say, Thank you!

Being Positively Disruptive

As many readers may have noticed, I haven't spent much time in writing essays for this blog over the last three or four months.  You might also have guessed from this that I've been very, very busy.  While many people I know have been glued to their TV's, computers, and smartphones, addicted to the torrent of toxic drama, crazy-making and bad news being generated by a certain doofus with orange hair who now claims to be the President of the United States, I've been occupied with making some good news of my own.  Let me fill you in on the details.

First, the tutoring initiative in which I am involved, which I mentioned in this post and this one, is now expanding from one location to three. Our roster of teachers has both changed and grown.  I believe there are now thirteen of us, and more may be joining in the next few months.  While two of our groups are continuing to focus on basic mathematics, one group is developing a science curriculum aimed at teaching appropriate technology and self-sufficiency/sustainability in the context of developing alternative institutions.  That group is being led by a woman from an African-American/Asian background and a Native American woman, and they are writing a series of science experiments and activity packets aimed at youth from 10 to 20 years of age.  

And we have a fourth group composed of writers, who are developing and editing a math curriculum to be used by all of our groups, complete with workbooks and worksheets.  (As soon as I am done with this post, I will be working on addition and subtraction worksheets.  If idleness is the devil's workshop, I won't have to worry about getting into trouble for a long time!)

On another front, a group of us at work are planning to launch a campaign to collect donations for the Puerto Rican victims of Hurricane Irma.  I am thinking we will present the campaign as an opportunity to spend money for a good cause instead of spending money on holiday shopping.  We will also promote news sources that are providing accurate coverage of the situation in Puerto Rico, as opposed to many American news sources and the White House.  My goal is to provide a positive disruption in three ways:

• By providing concrete relief to people whom our current regime would like to starve,
• By shunting money away from the usual recipients in our consumer economy during this holiday season,
• And by providing ongoing evidence that our current regime and its President are illegitimate.

There are a lot of people where I work.  Let's see where this takes us...

Lastly, it looks like I may have a few opportunities over the next couple of months to talk about resistance and related topics in front of a few audiences.  It looks like my part in the resistance being mounted by oppressed people is likely to get quite a bit larger.

Catch-Up - September 2017

Here's a quick update on things.  I still have a few posts I need to write to finish my series on "The Revanchism of the Third Rome," but other things have lately been keeping me too busy to write.  Here's what is occupying my time:

• Tutoring and teaching math and language arts to families from marginalized populations.  Our group of tutors has expanded greatly within the last two months, and we are planning to go to at least two, and possibly three apartment complexes this fall.  We may even get to teach in people's homes, which would give a nice retro, counter-cultural feel to what we are doing - rather like this.
• Nonviolent resistance.  There are now well over fifty people with whom I have been in frequent contact over the last two or three weeks, and we are discussing the start of a boycott of holiday shopping (both for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever else), along with a general push for frugality among those now targeted by the current regime.  We want to serve up a steaming, heaping helping of economic non-cooperation this holiday season.  Stay tuned...

The Duty Of Active Citizenship

Here is another blatantly spiritual post.  But hey, it's Sunday (and I will be in church shortly), so I will indulge myself.

Lately I have been thinking rather much about the wide range of responses among the American public to the Trump presidency.  One response that has been somewhat troubling has come from certain seemingly well-meaning elements of the American church community - both home-grown and immigrant.  That response can be best summarized in the following statement: "We recognize that it is God who removes kings and sets up kings.  Therefore, we must recognize that it is God who has given Trump the presidency.  This means that we must not speak against the president whom God has given us."  Some carry this thinking even further, and say, "Just as God worked through flawed human beings in history to accomplish a greater purpose (as was the case with  Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus), even so God has raised up Trump to accomplish a greater purpose."  (See this also.)  The implication then becomes that the flaws and sins of Trump are no longer a legitimate point of criticism, since he is "the vessel whom God has chosen."  Some among this crowd even go as far as blatant appeals to Calvinist doctrine to teach that, since God is Sovereign, and since nothing happens apart from His sovereignty, we who have been the historical targets of oppression should not complain about the oppression which has been dished out to us, nor protest against the ascendancy of people who in the present day want to dish out extra helpings of the same oppression.

I say that such thinking is both flawed and dangerous, as it presents only a partial picture of the story.  One of the biggest missing pieces of that story is that God has given free will to both men and societies.  Another huge missing piece is the fact that God gives and allows things in response to the freewill choices of His creatures.  So when people fall under the grip of an oppressor, it may be that the appropriate response of the oppressed is not to absolve themselves of responsibility, nor to throw up their hands and say, "God is bringing us through trial as He did with Job, and we must not try to figure out the root causes of our suffering.  Perfecta es Tu voluntad para mi..."  Maybe what we should do instead is to ask ourselves how and where we dropped the ball and allowed this to happen.

So how then should believers look at life under oppressive political regimes? That is a huge question and it requires a huge answer.  And I don't have time to even begin to scratch the surface of that answer today, nor do I believe that I have the wisdom to provide a definitive answer all by myself.  However, I'll present a few of the thoughts that have come to me from thinking about this question over the last three months.

First, I believe that God has created us to fulfill a particular purpose, and that this purpose involves the full development of the humanity of every human being, as I wrote in a previous post.  The fulfillment of that purpose and calling involves the struggle of nonviolent conflict, because of the presence of oppressors and would-be oppressors who seek to make themselves rich by dehumanizing the rest of us.  How should we respond when the oppressors become the rulers of the land?  One clue to the answer to that question can be found in 1 Peter 2:13: "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution..."  The word translated "institution" is the Greek word κτίσις (ktisis), and it literally means, "creation (my emphasis), creature, institution..."  This is important.  For it means that we are called to submit to every created institution, not only to the institutions created by our oppressors, but to the institutions which the oppressed create in order to fulfill their ontogeny in spite of their oppressors.  For our submission to the institutions of our oppressors should extend only as far as we can obey without violating our duty to our higher calling.  Where the institutions - the creations - of our oppressors seek to violate that calling, we are responsible for creating new creations - new arrangements and parallel institutions - by which we may facilitate the fulfillment of our calling.  This is why anarchy is not a right response to oppression, for according to the Scriptures, "God is not a God of confusion but of peace."  When the oppressed create by themselves the creations - the arrangements and institutions - by which they may fulfill their calling in spite of their oppressors, this is an example of "active citizenship" as defined by Asef Bayat in his book, Life as Politics.

So then, why are "bad kings" given?  Why is it that peoples fall under the rule of oppressors?  For I have stated that the Bible teaches that God gives and allows things in response to the freewill choices of His creatures.  And it is true that God removes kings and sets up kings.  (See Daniel 2:21).  So what choices do oppressed people make that cause them to remain in victimhood to oppressors?  I submit that the answer is that the oppressed far too frequently become and stay oppressed through a failure of active citizenship.  I am thinking particularly of a quote from a book I recently got, Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles, edited by Dr. Maciej Bartkowski.  On page 18 of the first chapter, Dr. Bartkowski quotes Syrian activist Abd al Rahman al-Kawakibi: "...people 'themselves are the cause of what has been inflicted upon them, and that they should blame neither foreigners nor fate (my emphasis) but rather ignorance (al-jahl), lack of endeavor (faqd al-humam), and apathy (al-taw kul), all of which prevail over society.'"  He also cites Polish philosopher Josef Szujski in his assertion that "...the guilt of falling into the predatory hands of foreign powers lay in the oppressed society and, thus, the solution and liberation need to come from that society transformed through its work, education, and civility. Victims and the seemingly disempowered are thus their own liberators as long as they pursue self-organization, self-attainment, and development of their communities."

This shows us where many societies, including the present United States, have gone wrong.  First, we fell victim to convenience - that is, in the words of Jack Duvall, we allowed ourselves to be rented by people who promised to relieve us of the duties of active citizenship in exchange for our support of the political aspirations of these people.  Their message was, "Let us do the dirty work of creating a healthy society.  After all, we are the experts and you are not.  (As our covfefe-in-chief once said, "I'm a genius!")  All you have to do is lend us your support by sending money to our political campaign and vote for us."  The flip side of that convenience is that we allowed ourselves to become addicted to convenience - that is, to a lifestyle which required no hard work, no thinking, no sacrifice for a larger good - but only the immediate gratification of our cravings and appetites.  In short, we became a society whose members aspired to be Ferris Bueller or a character from Happy Days when we grew up.  How fitting that Ferris Bueller's Day Off became a box office hit during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  How perceptive also is Dr. Maciej Bartkowski's comment that the Ukraine fell back under the sway of corrupt dictatorship after the Orange Revolution because after that revolution, Ukrainians abandoned active citizenship and went back to watching TV.  

This also shows us where many "nonviolent resisters" in the United States are still going wrong.  They believe that the power of rulers over a society is a fixed, durable monolith, and they direct their efforts to arguing with the current owners of the monolith for control of the monolith, as Gene Sharp explained in his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Power and Struggle.  This is why their repertoire of strategy and tactics includes very little more than protest and persuasion (which might be termed a series of variations on the common tactic of loud complaining).  But movements which focus solely on complaining show a lack of confidence in their ability to take their affairs into their own hands.  These would-be resisters would do much better to stop arguing over control of an oppressive and unjust system and to devote themselves the much more effective work of active citizenship (starting with self-rule, self-control, and freeing oneself of degrading addictions), of building the parallel arrangements and institutions of a just society within the shadow of the wreckage of their present corrupt society.  Effective nonviolent resistance, whether in the United States or Russia or anywhere else, must be modeled on the spread of active citizenship and must not therefore rely on the presence of a charismatic leader who rents the support of the society by promising them that he will meet all their needs if only they will give him their support.

But I am sure that there are those who, after reading this, still think that Trump is a mysterious gift from an inscrutable Calvinist god, and not the fault and consequence of a nation guilty of wrong thinking.  Maybe among these people are those who will freeze to death this winter because even though they had money in the bank, they neglected to pay their heating bill.  Maybe their last dying sentence will be, "Perfecta es Tu voluntad para mi..."  But when they stand before the Judgment seat, they may hear, "You doofus!  Why didn't you pay your bills?" 

The Non Co-Op News - June 2017

As I hinted in my last post, when it comes to opposing oppressive regimes, I have a certain preferred style of fighting.  A couple of prominent features of that style consist of non-cooperation - both economic and political - and building of parallel institutions.  So I tend to get really happy when I see other people adopting a similar style.

I think that's what I (and several perceptive others) have begun to see over the last six months.  Consider the following items:

• Retail sales have been declining steadily over the last six months throughout the United States.  (See this also.)
• New car sales have been steadily declining since late last year.
• Applications for new credit have begun to fall within the last three months.  (See this and this also regarding the drop in May applications.)
• Ever since the first outbreaks of the most recent wave of police violence against unarmed people of color (from 2014 onward), the number of recruits and applicants for police work have been declining.  There is now a severe shortage of applicants for jobs as police officers in the U.S.
• The U.S. military is now beginning to experience personnel shortages in key areas of expertise.  (See this also.)

The mainstream media all have various explanations for these phenomena.  But what if, among the various explanations, someone were to hypothesize that not a few Americans are deciding to stop feeding a predatory system?  I am thinking of a conversation I had with a co-worker who told me about a Keurig coffee maker she had been eyeing as a possible new addition to her home, and how she decided not to buy it in order to deny support to the Trump regime.  I have been in similar conversations with others lately who are coming to the same conclusion.  According to Gene Sharp's book The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Power and Struggle, economic non-cooperation was one of the key elements that brought down the Tsarist regime in Russia during the nonviolent struggle that lasted from Bloody Sunday in 1905 to 1917 (before the Bolsheviks, by the way).  What can be done to help accelerate the trends that I have listed in this post?

A Matter of Alliances

After Donald Trump captured the U.S. presidency in a highly questionable election, a number of resistance movements sprang up in the United States.  One of those movements is called Indivisible, and it is representative of those movements whose strategy is to try to oppose the Trump agenda through established institutional political channels.   That's not my particular style of fighting just now, so, while I wished them well, I never really felt compelled to join them.  However, over the last few weeks, I ran into someone who is involved in a local chapter of Indivisible, and this person told me some of the things that this local chapter is trying to do.  The person also commented to me that "it seemed to be hard to get people of color involved in Indivisible...they just didn't seem to be interested..."  At the end of our conversation, we exchanged email addresses, and later, this person sent me a couple of links to Indivisible "weekly action checklists."

One of those checklists contained the following language: "After the election…
Like many Americans, I grew concerned for my rights—like the right to free speech, the right to be married to my wife, to dissent, and to privacy.  Even more, I grew worried for my Latino friends, my Muslim friends, my Black friends, and my gay sisters and brothers—especially as acts of violence and harassment increase..."

These words were written by a blond-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian woman who had married another woman.  And her statement of concern for "equity" and "equal rights" were led first and foremost by her concern for the freedom to pursue her own lifestyle.

Reading those words and looking at her picture on the Indivisible website spurred me to think about how the Civil Rights movement has morphed and mutated from its origins in abolitionist movement in the early-to-mid 19th century to the present, and especially how the movement's focus and agenda (along with the focus and agenda of the American Democratic Party) was changed from the 1960's to now.  I was also compelled to revisit the way I view nonviolent resistance on its most basic level.  I am aware that in their excellent book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, Chenoweth and Stephan emphasize the importance of building a large coalition of diverse actors in order to insure the success of a nonviolent movement.  However, I believe that alliances must be chosen very carefully and not indiscriminately.

And as I consider the practice of radical nonviolent resistance, I see a some very important characteristics, the first of which is that this kind of resistance consists of speaking truth to power in the full knowledge that the power to whom you speak truth may respond by trying to kill you.  Second, radical nonviolent resistance requires that you cannot respond to your oppressor with violence even when he is trying to kill you, even as St. Peter wrote: "Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are crooked..."  Note also that even though Peter wrote of the need for submission, yet he and all of the apostles wound up as jailbirds at various times in their lives because they spoke truth to power by living radically in the truth.  (Indeed, Peter eventually was crucified upside-down.)

To me then, to be a nonviolent resister is synonymous with being a Christian.  And being a Christian means that I have confessed the Lordship of the Boss I work for.  Since He has called me to a dangerous work in which I might lose my life, I believe the success of that work hinges very closely on my willingness to do exactly what my Boss says.  And my Boss (as revealed especially by the New Testament) has specifically condemned homosexuality as a lifestyle.  Therefore, I cannot join with those who seek to legitimize homosexuality as a lifestyle.  Otherwise, I run the risk of failing in the task which my Boss has given me.

Yet there is another element of obedience to my Boss which I ought to mention.  According to His orders, I am forbidden to try to use secular, earthly political power to punish other people for their private sins.  Paul's letter to the Galatians clearly lays out the futility of trying to get people to act like Christians by trying to force "Christian" laws on a fallen nation.  The entire Old Testament history of Israel illustrates this futility.  And the history of Prohibition in the United States is another clear example.  Also, in the story of the Lord's encounter with the adulterous woman in John 8, when the Pharisees were pressing Jesus to agree with stoning the woman to death, Jesus responded by saying, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."  Those who read the story to the end will notice that at the end, the woman was still alive.

There is one other thing to notice from the story in John 8, and that is the motive behind the Pharisees' efforts to force the Lord to condone stoning this woman to death.  He said, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone..." and this stopped them from throwing stones - so...I guess that means that they themselves had sinned, doesn't it?  And I think it is quite likely that some (perhaps many) of them had sinned in exactly the same way that this woman had.  Their motives in trying to put this woman to death had nothing to do with zeal for Biblical morality, but were rather a ploy to eliminate a threat to their secular, earthly political power and social status.  And Jesus knew it.  And they knew (from seeing and hearing about some of His miracles) that if they tried to continue their rush to judgment after hearing His warning to them, He would most likely have publicly declared some of their secret sins in the ears of the crowd standing around Him.

Which brings up a point, namely, the use which political actors in the United States have made of private sexual sin in order to advance their own political and economic power.  I am thinking particularly of homosexuality and how the response to homosexuality has been used both by the ostensible "Left" and by the Right as a proof of their "righteousness."  The Right, for instance, has largely succeeded in reducing Biblical morality to the question of how we should respond to a very small handful of issues related to sex.  This has been convenient for them because they have been able to say in threatening tones that God's "blessing" on this nation by which this "great nation" (meaning rich white folks) has been made "great" is under threat because "we have abandoned Biblical morality."  Therefore, the great issue of our time is the need to fight against departure from Biblical sexual morality.  We need a renewed "Focus on the Family!"  There are no other issues more important than this.

Such language conveniently ignores two things.  The first is that, according to the Scriptures, my Boss (whom they claim to be their Boss also, even though they don't know Him at all) is concerned about many issues beside sexual sin - and His concern for them is just as great as His concern about sexual sin.  One such issue (which they don't address because it would cost them money) is the issue of predatory behavior by one group of people against another.  Indeed, in Ezekiel 22, God promises to tear Israel apart, to destroy it economically and politically, and to send its residents into captivity.  When one reads Ezekiel 22 and counts the reasons why God promised to do this, homosexuality is not mentioned once.  However, economic oppression (and accompanying violence against the powerless) is mentioned fourteen times.  While sexual sin is mentioned four times, in two of those cases, God condemns men for forcing themselves on women.  (The word "humbled" can also be rendered "raped"!)

The Religious Right has condoned every sin listed in Ezekiel 22.  Indeed, their darling, Donald Trump, has been guilty of every sin listed in Ezekiel 22.  If we limit our focus solely to sexual sin, the list of Republicans and supremacists who have fallen is quite long, including Newt Gingrich, who was fooling around behind his wife's back during the Republican-led impeachment of Bill Clinton.  It also includes Bob Livingstone, who led the impeachment proceedings after Gingrich was outed, as well as Dennis Hastert who replaced Livingstone after he was outed for cheating on his wife.  It also includes Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated Bill Clinton.  Starr later became the president of Baylor University, where he helped to cover up a massive sexual assault scandal involving the Baylor football team.  And as far as homosexuality, Dennis Hastert was later found guilty of paying public money to hush up his sexual assaults of high school wrestlers while he was a wrestling coach.  And the current Republican regime in Washington is trying hard to remove every legal protection from women who are victims of sexual assault, harassment, or domestic violence.

("Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!...You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the damnation of Gehenna?")

So we can see how the Right has pushed zeal against sexual sin as a convenient gauge of zeal for righteousness, because such a gauge does not threaten existing economic or political disparities in power, nor does it threaten existing patterns of oppression which enrich the few at the expense of the many.  But what about the "Left"?  For it seems to me lately that the Left has largely succeeded in reducing concerns about equity and diversity and equal rights solely to the push to legitimize certain sexual lifestyles.  Indeed, I remember reading a few years back (although I am sorry that I can't find the source now) that during one of the "general assemblies" of the Occupy protests, a group of gay rights activists stood up and proclaimed that the struggle for civil rights for people of color had largely succeeded, and that now the main focus of struggle should be on promoting the acceptance of "sexual minorities."  I also remember reading that the people who said this were shouted down by several people of color who knew differently.  Indeed, there are people of color within the LGBTQ movement who themselves have pointed out the racism and overall whiteness of the movement, and how it has largely ignored the voices of the people of color in its ranks.  (See this, this, and this, for instance.)  Note also what one source has said about the alignment of some elements of the gay community with the global far right.

To an increasing number of us from communities of color, the gay rights movement seems to have hijacked the efforts in this country to fight for social justice.  The last year, for instance, has seen many well-funded "rights" organizations fighting for things like public "transgender restrooms" even as corrupt white police officers get away with murdering unarmed African-Americans.  What is also telling is that there is so little outrage within the broader American society over the murders.  To us, the LGBTQ agenda has no relevance to us; rather, the insistence on making this agenda so prominent is one of the factors which makes us increasingly distrustful of the so-called "Left", and unwilling to engage with them in their agenda.  This is one reason why we are not rallying behind the Democratic Party - a party which is home to a Governor who derailed the indictment of Darren Wilson, the police officer who murdered Michael Brown.  This is the same party who has as a member a man named Rahm Emanuel, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff.  Rahm Emanuel went on later to become the mayor of Chicago, where he helped the Chicago police department cover up police murders of unarmed African-American teens.  So as the Left extends its hand to us once again, we don't trust it.  To me, it seems that we must chart our own course.  And some of us are gaining the skills and tools to do just that.  For the Left as it is currently constituted is also no threat to existing economic or political disparities in power, nor does it threaten existing patterns of oppression which enrich the few at the expense of the many.

La Batalla Por La Ontogénesis

[And now, at last, the promised Spanish version of one of my recent posts.  Muchas gracias, N.R., for the translation!  One note: I transcribed his translation from a paper copy he gave me, so if there are any spelling or grammar errors, I take full blame for them...  Also, I will try to clean up the formatting in the next week or two.  Buen provecho.]
Ontogénesis: “El desarrollo de un organismo individuar,” Wictionary. “El origen y el desarrollo de un organismo,” Wikipedia. “El proceso por el cual cada uno de nosotros personifica la historia de nuestra propia formación.” (Gingrich, Fox, et al, 2002)

Ontogénesis. ¿Un tema interesante, o no? Estoy especialmente sorprendido por la ultima definición citada, ósea ontogénesis como “proceso por el cual cada uno personifica la historia de nuestra propia formación.” Tomando estas definiciones indican que esta historia es una función de nuestro desarrollo como individuos. En otras palabras, el propósito de nuestro desarrollo es originar una cierta clase de historia. ¿Habrá claves de la clase de historia que debemos personificar, y de la meta deseada de nuestro desarrollo?

Antes de darte mi respuesta a esta pregunta, déjame advertirte con tiempo que esto será otro anuncio espiritual manifiesto. Y ahora, miremos a una escritura en particular:

Porque la gracia de Dios que tra salvación a todos los hombres se manifesto,
ensenándonos que, renunciando a la impiedad y a los deseos mundanos,

viviamos en este siglo demplada, y justa, y piamente, esperando aquella esperansa bienaventurada,

y la manifestación gloriosa del gran Dios y Salvador nuestro Jesucristo,

que se dio a s mismo por nosotros para redimirnos de toda iniquidad, y limpiar para si un pueblo propio, celosa de buenas obras.

– Tito 2:12-14

Considerando las partes de esta escritura, podemos hacer unas observaciones rápidas. Primera, la intención de nuestro creador es que seamos rescatados para no vivir vidas fútiles, caracterizadas por pasiones y adicciones degradantes, y descrontroladas. Segundo, nuestra vidas devén de ser disciplinadas y con propósito; con nuestro ingenio y facultades envueltas completamenta en servir a ese propósito. Tercero, nuestras vidas devén de ser virtualmente hermosas siendo caracterizadas por buenas obras. La palabra “buenas” en Griego es la palabra “Kalos.” De acuerdo a la concordancia de Strong, esta pabra significa “hermosa (Mi énfasis), como una muestra exterior de un buen interior, noble, carácter honorable, dignidad, honrosa, y noble que se hace manifesto.” Entonces nuestras vidas devén de estar llenas de obras hermosas, obras cuya hermosura es una reflexión directa de la bondad en ellas. Y la carta a Tito esta llena de apelaciones a aquellos que se llaman cristianos para que se envuelvan en estas buenas obras, cuyo propósito, entre otras cosas es suplir las necesidades apremiantes (o urgentes) de nuestros semejantes seres hermanos (Tito 3:14)

La escritura indica que esta vida llena de propósito solpo pueda ser experimentada atreves de una transformación que es resultado de una fe genuina en Cristo. Y aun cada ser humano ha experimentado alguna vez un deseo por esta clase de vida, un deseo de cumplir esta clase de ontogénesis. La prueba de esto se puede obetner al preguntar a cualquier niño de 5 o 6 anos que quiere el o ella ser cuando crezca. Al menos que el niño halla sido traumatizado severa y persistentemente, nunca oirás al niño contestar que el o ella quieran ser basura o nada. Los niños de forma natural tiended a querer ser algo hermoso, algo noble, algo bueno cuando crezcan.

Sin embargo, la perversión humana que es el resultado del pecado original a traido como resultado a personas que comúnmente están confundidas acerca de como pueden cumplir su ontogénesis. Tales personas frecuentemente hacen el error de creer que ellos no se pueden levantar al menos que empujen otros hacia abajo, que no preden brillar al menos que apaguen a otros, que no pueden cumplir su deseo de ser hermosas al menos que arruinen y deshumanizar a sus semejantes seres humanos, que no pueden cumplir su ontogénesis al menos que priven a otros de su derecho y habilidad de realizar su ontogénesis.

Esta perversión se puede mirar en el papel ejecutado por el gobierno Británico del siglo diecinueve al proteger y expandir el movimiento del opio en China para enriquecer a la Bretaña y dañar a la sociedad China. (Es interesante notar que los Chinos trtaron de erradicar el mercado del opio cuando vieron el dano des bastante de los efectos de la adicción al opio. También es interesante notar que antes de la invasión en Afganistán por los E.U. en el ano 2002, los gobernante, de ese país habían eliminado el mercado de opio y sin embargo este mercado resurgió después de la invasión.) Otro ejemplo son las leyes puestas en varios estados en los siglos 18th y 19th en los E.U., las cuales hicieron que el ensenar a leer y a escribir a los esclavos Africanos una ofensa criminal. De hecho, mucha gente no sabe esto, pero los estados y los dueños de esclavos trataron de evitar que los esclavos aprendieran de la Biblia, o que fueran evangelizados, o que se convirtieran en Cristianos, temiendo que este conociemiento podria ayudar a los esclavos a afirmar su humanidad en cara de los “dueños” blancos. Estos y otros ejemplos ilustra la perversidad de gentes que tratan de cumplir su ontogénesis oprimiendo a otros, que buscan alcanzar su mas alto propósito convirtiendo a los semejantes humanos en victimas.

Para los oprimidos, entonces, la búsqueda para alcanzar su propia ontogénesis se convierte en el aspecto central de la resistencia sin violencia contra su opresores. Y como los opresores están en el negocio de tratar de prevenir este logro, los oprimidos no pueden esper ayuda alguna de parte de la sociedad opresiva en que viven. Después de todo, el interés de los opresores se cumple mejor al mantener a los oprimidos en una condición de quebrantamiento constante. Entonces, si los oprimidos han de lograr su ontogénesis, tiene que desarrollar la clase de instituciones paralelas, fuera del control de los opresores, por los cuales equipar a los oprimidos para su completo desarrollo como seres humanos. Ya que una ontogénesis cumplida resulta en gente quienes son caracterizados por buenas obras, un componente clave de instituciones paralelas es que tienen que ser edificadas en la edificación de arreglos paralelos para la educación de los oprimidos. Esta educación debe equipar a los oprimidos con las habilidades y herramientas necesarias para buena obras. (Tito 3:14 – “Y aprendan asimismo los nuestros a gobernarse en buenas obras...”)

Ejemplos de instituciones paralelas para la educación incluye la escuela de esclavos ilegales (illegal slave schools) de los Americanos antes de la guerra en el Sur. También incluye las universidades volantes Polacas (Polish “Flying Universities”) que aparecieron durante cuando menos tres periodos en la historia polaca, correspondiente a la partición de Polonia por Prusia, Austra-Hungary y Imperial Rusia del siglo 19th; la ocupación de Polonia por Alemania Nazi on la seguerra Mundial, y la lucha contra el dominio soviético en el medio y fin del siglo 20th.

En los dos primeros casos, los ocupantes invasores de Polonia buscaron deshumanizar a la populación Polaca negándoles (especialmente a las mujeres) acceso a la educación alta. En ambos casos, estas universidades volantes clandestinas fueron instrumentales en edificar y preservar un cuadro de dirigetes intelectuales. Polacos quienes reconstruirían a la sociedad Polaco cuando el tiempo fuera apropiado. (Muchos quizás no saben esta pero Marie Curie, la descubridora de radium fue una gradúate de una universidad volante Polaca.) Ejemplos en la actualidad incluyen el fenómeno creciente del homeschooling entre padres afroamericanos.

Y yo tengo un ejemplo personal, es a saber, el colectivo de tutores al cual pertenezco, el cual visita apartamentos de bajos ingreos tres veces al mes para ensenar matemáticas básicas y ciencia a los niños que viven ahí. Puedo ver que deseperantemente necesitan nuestro servicio cuando le pregunto a un niño de nueve y dies anos cuanto es 8 por 7 y miro a muchos de ellos que empiezan a dibujar ocho círculos para poner siete puntos en los círculos para poder contar los puntos, lo único ue puedo pensar es que las escuelas publicas que estos niños atienden, son culpables del terrible desperdicio del tiempo de estos niños.

La educación de la cual hablo es por tanto no meramente vociacional, sino dar a los estudiantes un conjunto de herramientas para navegar esta temprana etapa de la vida, y proveer en una forma honorable para suplir sus necesidades propias y las necesesidades de otros mediante hermosas buenas obras en cualquier situación que puedan encontrar. Corresponde a los que son oprimidos el tomar responsabilidad de proveerse por si mismos de esta educación.

Cuando una gente oprimida hace un esfuerzo coordinado para realizar su ontogénesis en la manera descrita, devén anticipar una reacción adversa de parte de sus opresores, como fue el caso de los seguidores de Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (También conocido como Bacha Khan). Durante la primera parte del siglo 20, Bacha Khan organizo un grupo grande de Pashtungs para poder educarlos y para mejorar la sociedad. Los Británicos tenían el control imperial de esa región, y ellos resintieron profundamente su trabajo. Por eso, ellos lo arrestaron a el y a su anciano padre en 1919, lo cual fue el principio de una serie de arrestos y enarelamientos. A pesar de la acción de la policía Británica, el pudo organizar un gran ejercito pacífico de Pashtungs dedicados a mejorar la sociedad Afgana.

Por su trabajo el ejercito Británico y la policía cometieron una masacre de cientos de Pashtungs durante una protesta pacifica en 1930. Los Británicos dispararon sus rifles contra los desaramados protestantes pacíficos por mas de tres horas. (Informacion tomada de Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggles, Democratization and Governance in the Middle East, Chapter 8, Maria Stephan, et al.)

Ese incidente, aunque horripilante y tragico, ilustra un punto poderoso. Y es, que mediante la búsqueda de esta clase de ontogénesis – y mediante la búsqueda de esta clase de auto-educación necesaria para vivir la vida de hermosas buenas obras, una gente oprimida puede lanzar una poderosa reprensión sin violencia a sus opresores. Porque las vidas provechosas hermosas y llenas de habilidad y de propósito que son el resultado de esta educación, tienen un poderoso efecto en los opresores, a saber la no deseada diminución de la distancia social entre el opresor y el oprimido, porque el opresor es forzado contra su voluntad por las hermosas obras que ve, a reconocer la humanidad de aquellos que desea oprimir.

Touching The Oppressor's Wound

A person who believes in a world created and ruled by an all-powerful, utterly moral Being must, sooner or later, also recognize that the world which this Being has created is moral on a very deep level.  This means that the actions - the choices - of us creatures have consequences.  The consequences are not just moral consequences, but social, relational and even physical, as declared in such succinct Scriptures as, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap," and, "The wages of sin is death."

But when a person makes such an assertion in open company, he is likely to be accused of easy, careless, useless moralizing, especially by people who argue that moral concerns are irrelevant, and that only might makes right.  "Look," they say, "we see people getting away with robbery and murder all the time, and nothing bad happens to them!  The only thing that matters in life is who has the most strength, who can wield the most force, who is cleverest."

Which side is correct?  The answer depends on the evidence a person uses to answer the question.  Over very short time scales, it often appears that those who say that might makes right are correct, for over very short time scales it appears that rich and powerful people really are able to get away with robbery and murder without suffering any penalty.  However, the picture changes in interesting ways as the time scale of study gets longer.  So we find, in books like Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, that there is a large body of evidence that confirms that people who struggle against oppression by nonviolent, non-destructive means have a much greater chance of neutralizing their oppressor than people who adopt the destructive means of their oppressors to wage conflict.  On a certain level, this is a vindication of all of the New Testament teaching of nonviolence as the means of confronting a violent society.  Let the data speak.

But what about the morality of the oppressor - and specifically, what about the morality of the oppressive actions of the oppressor?  Is it true that oppression is an evil act?  Is it also true that oppressors are evil?  That depends, I guess, on who you ask.  However, based on the Source I consult, oppression and oppressors are both evil.  (See, for instance, Isaiah 58, Ezekiel 22, Luke 16, and James 5:1-6.  You might also check out this excellent poem by Dave Barnhart.  Look at the Scripture references at the bottom.)

So if the Good Book is correct in condemning both oppressors and their oppression, I guess that means that the Scripture which says "The wages of sin is death" is being fulfilled in their case, isn't it?  I mean, we should be able to see evidence that they are reaping damaging consequences, shouldn't we?  There is indeed compelling evidence to confirm these assertions.  But you have to know where to look.  A good initial proposition or hypothesis helps in the search, and such a hypothesis can be found in Paolo Freire's book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he describes the dehumanization that occurs in the oppressor as a result of his actions of dehumanizing those he seeks to oppress.  (You can read the first chapter of his book here.)  In other words, a person who chooses to be an oppressor damages both his victim and himself by his oppression.

What evidence do we have that this assertion is true?  The evidence can be found anecdotally concerning slave-owners in the antebellum South, of whom historian Albert Murray is reported to have said that their per capita suicide rate was much higher than that of the slaves they owned.  It can also be found in the suicide rate of soldiers and others in Nazi Germany during World War Two.

However, there is abundant modern statistical evidence to document the self-destructiveness which characterizes many classes of wielders of power in the present-day industrial world.  This is seen in the recent high suicide rates among the military personnel of certain countries.  (For instance, see this and this.)  But it is also seen in the high suicide rates among other wielders of power, such as middle managers in business.  By far, the most noticeable example of suicide among those who wield power is the suicide rate among police and corrections officers.  (One study found that most corrections officers do not live to see their 59th birthday.)  The case of corrections officers is especially interesting, given the large number of prisoner abuse cases which have been in the news over the last several years.  (See this for instance.)

But the risk of suicide is not the only damage done to those who wield power - especially physically violent, destructive power - as agents of oppression.  There is also the slow damage wrought by substance abuse and the difficulties in family relationships caused by a job which requires a person to act violently or inhumanely toward some of his fellow human beings for 40 hours a week.  People who work such jobs all too frequently find that they cannot just switch off their aggression when they come home from work.  When that aggression is released outside of its intended environment, it has consequences, as I described in an earlier post.

We see then that wielding dehumanizing power or violence against powerless people really does damage the oppressor.  How then does the oppressor become damaged by the oppression he commits against the oppressed?  What is the exact mechanism of this damage?  For, as Paolo Freire says, "As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized."  How does this process work itself out?  For if we can create a model of the process of dehumanization, we can track the process of dehumanization as it works itself out in individual members of an oppressor occupational class.  Armed with this knowledge, we who are among the oppressed can begin to describe the process of dehumanization to our oppressors, providing the oppressors with the warning signs that show that process working itself out in our oppressors.  We now know something of the processes which disciplined nonviolent resisters activate in the agents of oppression who oppose them.  We should also work on developing a strong theoretical model of the self-destructive processes activated by the act of oppression in those who choose to oppress others.

This theoretical framework would form the basis for warning the oppressor that his oppression is killing him as well as hurting those whom he seeks to oppress.  It would be rather like the empirical observations of deaths in heavy smokers which led to the theoretical development and research which formed the foundation for the 1964 U.S. Surgeon General's report on smoking as a cause of death.  Such theory, backed up by research, would also be the foundation of a powerful appeal to the oppressor to give up his oppression - just as the Surgeon General's report was the basis of powerful appeals to Americans to give up smoking.  And such theory and research would serve as a foundation for making a personal connection with the secondary victims of the oppressor - such as the spouses and children who suffer domestic violence and the secondary effects of substance abuse resulting from the jobs held by the oppressors to whom they are married.

Tactics of Polarization

This last week, I listened to a video lecture presentation from the 2016 Fletcher Summer Institute of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.  The title of the lecture was "Nonviolent Discipline and Violent Flanks," and was presented by Dr. Erica Chenoweth and by Philippe Duhamel.  I learned a few rather disturbing things, the first of which is that, although the record of successes in nonviolent mass civil resistance campaigns had been growing steadily from 1900 to 2006, the percentage of nonviolent campaigns that succeed has been dropping steeply from 2010 onward.  (However, there is good news: the number of nonviolent campaigns that succeed is still quite high, and nonviolent mass campaigns, which were over two times as likely to succeed as violent campaigns during the 20th century, are now more than three times as likely to succeed.)

Fortunately, Dr. Chenoweth (who presented these statistics) also presented a number of possible explanations for this decline in effectiveness, such as the fact that oppressive adversaries have learned how to adapt and react to nonviolent campaigns, or that nonviolent movements are not learning the right lessons from each other.  But she also stated a hunch she has that the reason for the decline in nonviolent campaign effectiveness is that "...a growing proportion of nonviolent mass campaigns seem to be willing to tolerate or even endorse violent flanks that are existing alongside them..."  She defined a "violent flank" as "...a group of people attached to the movement and who engage on a routine basis in some form of violence," where violence is defined both as destruction of other people's property and as harming or threatening to do bodily harm to an opponent.  To bolster her hunch, she showed a graph which displayed the percentage of nonviolent campaigns per year that had no violent flank compared with those campaigns in which a violent flank coexisted with the nonviolent movement.

Sure enough, the graph line showing the number of movements which had both a nonviolent campaign and a violent flank began to increase around 2010.

Dr. Chenoweth then presented evidence of the detrimental effect of the presence of violent flanks on the nonviolent campaigns with which they coexist, presenting her own research and the data set which she built in the process of writing her book on nonviolent resistance.  However, she also presented evidence from studies I had not heard of before, studies which backed up her assertion that violent flanks in a mass civil movement drastically hurt the chances of success for the movement.  (Her slide, "Negative Violent Flank Effects," is quite relevant - especially the references she cites.)  Interestingly, in the NAVCO data set which was constructed by Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, most of the violent flanks in movements which occurred between 1900 and 2006 did not arise in the movements to which they attached themselves - rather, like unwelcome house guests or body lice, these violent flanks sprang up independently and then claimed to be part of these movements.

As Dr. Chenoweth described how violent flanks decrease mass societal participation in a civil resistance campaign she said something very striking: "Violence is by definition a tactic of polarization."  That statement is so important that I will repeat it again:

Violence is by definition a tactic of polarization.

In her words, "Polarization means dividing a society into very discrete camps that support or oppose a certain idea..."  Therefore, tactics of polarization effectively discourage diverse groups within a society from coming together to work for the common good, or from uniting against a common predatory threat.  Thus the emergence or presence of a violent flank in a nonviolent resistance movement does not help the movement - but it does help the oppressor against whom the movement has organized.

This perspective helps to interpret the events described by Philippe Duhamel in the second part of the video.  Duhamel is an activist who was instrumental in several anti-"free trade" protests in Canada and the U.S. from 1999 onward, and he described how, in the majority of the protests, the organizers held extensive training sessions for participants before each protest action.  Yet they began to find that as time passed, their protests were being increasingly infiltrated by members of the "Black Bloc," groups of young adults, usually men (and usually white), who attended protests in order to commit vandalism, assault other protesters, and attack police.  (See this, this, this and this also.)  The increasing presence of these Black Bloc vandals at mass protests has begun to reduce the effectiveness of sustained mass protest in presenting the genuine grievances of marginalized and threatened populations.

An interesting question, then, is, where the violent flanks have come from in the nonviolent campaigns that have been waged especially in North America and Europe from 2010 onward.  For the oppressors who are the targets of civil resistance have now known for a long time that the presence of these violent flanks actually helps the oppressive regimes against which these violent flanks fight.  In fact, there are concrete historical examples which demonstrate that if a mass nonviolent movement remains nonviolent, the oppressive regime it opposes will try to manufacture violent incidents in order to polarize the nation's population and bolster support for the regime, as happened in the Philippines when President Ferdinand Marcos ordered his forces to set off a number of bomb explosions around Manila.  The bombs were set to give Marcos a credible reason to declare that the country was under threat and that he was therefore justified in imposing martial law.  (See Why Civil Resistance Works, Chenoweth and Stephan, pages 148-150.)  It might be prudent to ask who is funding, supporting and growing the Black Bloc.  Who guides its recruitment efforts?  What similarities exist between the Black Bloc and the global far right?

(A larger question, one which hopefully will be studied by the academics at the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, is the study of false flag operations by oppressive regimes who are under threat from popular uprisings.  How, particularly, does an observer detect whether a violent incident is a false flag attack?  I think especially of the shooting of a police officer in France last week, supposedly by a "member of ISIS".  How, er, convenient - just a few days before the French presidential election, in which an anti-immigrant candidate is one of the front-runners.)

In closing, I am reminded of Vaclav Havel's essay, The Power of the Powerless, in which he says that "...a future secured by violence might actually be worse than what exists now; in other words, the future would be fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure it."  He also implied that oppressive regimes appeal to their oppressed populations by making them believe that the only alternative to the regime is chaos, as made clear by his statement that "Every aberration from the prescribed course of life is treated as error, license, and anarchy."  One way a nonviolent resistance movement can disarm such an appeal is by being orderly and maintaining strict nonviolent discipline.  Another way is by building orderly "parallel institutions" by which people can get their needs met in an orderly way that is superior to what the existing system currently offers.

The Ontogenic Battle

Ontogeny: "The development of an individual organism," Wiktionary.  "The origination and development of an organism," Wikipedia.  "The development of an individual," Online Etymology Dictionary.  "...The process through which each of us embodies the history of our own making," (Gingrich, Fox, et al, 2002)

Ontogeny.  An interesting subject, no?  I am especially struck by the last definition quoted, ontogeny as "the process through which each of us embodies the history of our own making."  Taken together, these definitions indicate that this history is a function of our development as individuals.  In other words, our development is meant to beget a certain kind of story.  Are there clues to the kind of story we are to embody, the intended goal of our development?

Before I give you my answer to this question, let me warn you in advance that this will be another blatantly spiritual post.  And now, let's look at a particular Scripture:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,

instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires

and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,

looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus,

who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed,

and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

(Titus 2:11-14, NASB)

Breaking this down, we can make a few immediate observations.  First, the intention of our Creator is that we should be rescued from living useless lives, lives characterized by uncontrolled and degrading passions and addictions.  Second, our lives are to be disciplined and purposeful, with our wits and faculties fully engaged in serving that purpose.  Third, our lives are to be beautiful by virtue of being characterized by good works.  The word "good" in Greek is the word καλός ("kalos").  According to Strong's Concordance, this word καλός means, "beautiful [emphasis added], as an outward sign of the inward good, noble, honorable character; good, worthy, honorable, noble, and seen to be so."  So our lives are to be full of beautiful deeds, works whose beauty is a direct reflection of the goodness of these works.  And the letter to Titus is full of appeals to those who call themselves Christians to engage in these beautifully good works, whose purpose is, among other things, to meet the pressing (or urgent) needs of their fellow human beings  (Titus 3:14).  

The Scripture indicates that this purposeful life can only be fully experienced through the transformation that results from genuine faith in Christ.  And yet every human being has at times experienced a desire for this sort of life, a longing to fulfill this sort of ontogeny.  Proof of this can be obtained by asking any five or six year old kid what he or she wants to be when he or she grows up.  Unless a kid has been severely and/or persistently traumatized, you will never hear the kid answer that he or she wants to be trash or wants to be nothing.  Kids naturally tend to want to be something beautiful, something noble, something good when they grow up.

However, the human twisted-ness which is the result of original sin has resulted in people who are often confused as to how they may fulfill their ontogeny.  Such people frequently make the mistake of believing that they cannot rise unless they push other people down, that they cannot shine unless they make others dim, that they cannot fulfill their drive to be beautiful unless they trash and dehumanize their fellow human beings, that they cannot fulfill their ontogeny unless they deprive others of the right and ability to fulfill their ontogeny.  

This twisted-ness is seen in the role played by the nineteenth-century British government in protecting and expanding the flow of opium through China, to the enrichment of Britain and the detriment of Chinese society.  (It is interesting to note that the Chinese attempted to eradicate the opium trade when they saw the devastating effects of opium addiction on Chinese society, and these attempts provoked a military response from the British empire.  It is also interesting to note that before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, the rulers of that country had eliminated the Afghan opium trade - yet that trade re-appeared after the invasion.)  Another example is the passing of laws in various states of the 18th and 19th century U.S. which made teaching African slaves to read or write a criminal offense.  In fact, many people may not know this, but slave states and slave owners tried to prevent their slaves from learning the Bible, from being evangelized, or becoming Christians, fearing that such enlightenment might help the slaves assert their humanity in the face of their white "owners."  These and other examples illustrate the perversity of people who try to fulfill their own ontogeny by breaking other people, who seek to achieve their highest purpose by turning their fellow humans into prey.

For the oppressed, then, the seeking of the fulfillment of their own ontogeny becomes a central aspect of their nonviolent resistance against their oppressors.  And because the oppressors are in the business of trying to prevent this fulfillment, the oppressed cannot expect any help from the oppressive society in which they live.  After all, the oppressors' self-interests are best served by keeping the oppressed in a condition of constant brokenness.  If, then, the oppressed are to fulfill their ontogeny, they must develop the sort of parallel institutions which, outside of the control of the oppressors, equip the oppressed in their full development as human beings.  Since a fulfilled ontogeny results in people who are characterized by beautifully good deeds, a key component of parallel-institution building must be centered on the building of parallel arrangements for the education of the oppressed.  This education must equip the oppressed with the skills and tools needed for beautiful deeds.  (Titus 3:14 - "And let our people also learn to engage in good deeds...")

Examples of parallel institutions for education include the illegal slave schools of the American antebellum South.  They also include the Polish "flying universities," which appeared during at least three periods of Polish history, corresponding to the 19th-century partition of Poland by Prussia, Austro-Hungary, and Imperial Russia; the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War Two; and the struggle against Soviet domination in the mid-to late 20th century.  In the first two cases, the occupiers of Poland sought to dehumanize the Polish population by denying Poles (especially women) access to higher education.  In both cases, these underground flying universities were instrumental in building and preserving a cadre of Polish intellectuals who could rebuild Polish society when the time was right.  (Many may not know this, but Marie Curie, the discoverer of radium, was a graduate of a Polish flying university.)  Present-day examples include the burgeoning homeschooling phenomenon among African-American parents.  

And I have a personal example, namely, the tutoring collective to which I belong, which visits a low-income apartment complex three times a month to teach math and basic science to the kids who live there.  I can see how badly our services are needed when I ask nine and ten year old kids what 8 times 7 is and I see many of them start drawing eight circles so that they can put seven dots in each circle and count the dots, and I can only think that the public schools to which these kids go are guilty of a fearful waste of these kids' time.

The education of which I speak is therefore not mere vocational training, but giving students a complete suite of tools to navigate this earthly life, and to provide in an honorable way to meet their own needs and the needs of others by means of beautifully good works in any situation they are likely to encounter.  It is the oppressed themselves who must take charge of providing themselves with this education.

When oppressed peoples make a coordinated effort to fulfill their ontogeny in the way I have described, they can expect a backlash from their oppressors, as was the case with the followers of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (also known as Bacha Khan).  During the early 20th century, Bacha Khan organized a large number of Pashtuns in the Northwest Province of Afghanistan.  He built a number of schools for his fellow Pashtuns in order to educate them in the improvement of their society.  The British held imperial control over that region, and they deeply resented his work.  Thus, they arrested him and his elderly father in 1919, which was the first of a series of arrests and imprisonments.  In spite of British police action, he was able to organize a large Pashtun "nonviolent army" devoted to the improvement of Afghan society.  For his troubles, the British army and police committed a massacre of hundreds of Pashtuns during a nonviolent Pashtun protest in 1930.  The British fired their guns at the unarmed resisters for over three hours.  (Information taken from Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization and Governance In the Middle East, Chapter 8, by Maria Stephan, et al.)

That incident, while gruesome and tragic, illustrates a powerful point.  That is, that by this kind of pursuit of ontogeny - by the pursuit of the kind of self-education needed for living a life of beautifully good works - an oppressed people can mount a powerful nonviolent rebuke to their oppressors.  For the beautiful, skillful, purposeful, useful lives which result from this education have a powerful effect on the oppressors, namely the unwanted lessening of social distance between oppressor and oppressed, as the oppressor is forced against his will by the beautiful deeds he sees to recognize the humanity of those he wishes to oppress.

A Resistance Way Of Life

I'd like to make a post out of a few very good comments to my discussion of frugality as a means of nonviolent resistance.  Thanks to Aimee and CZBZ for your input.

Aimee's recommended ways to be subversive in modern America:

1) Maximize your food independence. For some of us, that means growing a lot of food or raising animals. For others, it means learning how to cook from scratch. If you are buying raw materials from your local farmers at the farmer's market, you maximize support of your individual neighbors and minimize your support of the giant agribusiness companies. You also save money and eat better.

2) Buy secondhand. Everything you possibly can. In this way you avoid encouraging the extraction of raw materials and extend the useful life of products. The embedded energy cost in, say, a new car or a new set of dining room furniture - even a new winter coat! - can be stretched over a greater time period and made to serve a greater number of people. For me, buying secondhand clothing is an ethical decision to avoid supporting the sweatshop industry. A subclause to this recommendation is: repair things that can be repaired. Get your fridge fixed a few times before you get a new one. Learn to mend clothes. When was the last time you saw a kid wearing jeans with knee-patches on them, unless they were sold that way to begin with? Take good care of your car. Do all the scheduled maintenance. Learn to do it yourself! Or ask your neighbor.

3) Maximize your energy independence. There are so many ways to do this - we brew biodiesel for our cars. But you might do it with solar panels or windmills, depending on where you live. Or do it by not owning a car and biking instead. Or by living in a smaller house and super-insulating. The sky's the limit.

4) Know your neighbors. Make friends. Develop mutually beneficial networks. Support each other. Lend your tools. Pool your resources. Why should every small-farming family along the same stretch of road own its own haying equipment, for example? That's absurd. Or its own tractor, even? Why shouldn't three or four families get together to buy one tractor instead of four? Does every household really need a chainsaw? No, not if you are on good terms with Bob down the way. And not if you are willing to lend his wife your sewing machine.

5) Most important of all: take charge of your education! Be informed! Get your information from diverse sources. Use your brain. Teach your kids. Go to museums and libraries while they still exist! Buy books (secondhand, of course!). Do not default on your obligation to educate your children, or yourself. It's too important. You can't leave it to the public school system alone. Talk about important issues with your spouse, your neighbor, your kids, your in-laws, your city councilman, your state senator!

6) For the love of God, VOTE!

CZBZ's Contributions:

1) Join families under one roof. This challenges communal skills and nourishes spiritual growth. Save landfills by purchasing one washing machine for four adults. My sister and her son moved in with me and now my adult daughter lives with me. That would be four washing machines (dishwashers, refrigerators, etc.) if we lived apart.

2) Find a church and fill your inner void with something meaningful rather than zombie shopping, what my daughter calls "retail therapy". Each of us has shopped-til-we-dropped and that's why we know how 'empty' it is---like an addiction.

3) Buy second-hand furniture or better yet, learn to build it yourself. Self-esteem grows as carpentry skills increase and there's nothing as wonderful as knowing your nephew almost cut his finger off making a bookcase for your second-hand books.

4) I love cooking from scratch (make my own yogurt and have saved thousands of plastic containers from the landfill). However, I don't judge people who lack the time to cook from scratch...it is very time-consuming but gives me a sense of purpose now that I'm old. (grin) And nothing brings community together quite like having a good cook in the family.

5) Save all the bones and table scraps for day-long boiled broth but don't tell your guests that you were gnawing on the chicken a few days ago. 

6) Learn to be thankful.

And here's an additional contribution of my own: a link to an article in Sojourners Magazine on the virtue of buying used (when you have to buy at all).  Also, if anyone wants to add to these lists, feel free to leave me a comment.

Have a good week!

When Counting to 100 is Not Enough

The Kremlin is finding itself in a bit of a sticky situation this week.  You know how some people advise that if something makes you mad, or you smash your thumb while doing work, you should count to 100 before you say anything?  Waiting before talking is supposed to increase the chances that whatever does eventually come out of your mouth won't reflect badly on you.  But such advice doesn't always work.

After the "illegal" anti-corruption protests in Russia this weekend conducted by predominantly youthful demonstrators, Putin waited...and waited...and then said some things that added a great deal to the evidence that he is, in fact, a dictator and not a democrat.  According to one source, he accused "political forces" of using the issue of Russian government corruption for their own benefit.  He also compared the weekend protests to the Arab Spring protests that began in 2010, and hinted that if such protests were allowed to continue in Moscow, the result would be "chaos."

After these remarks, there were attempts both in Russian media and in sympathetic Western media (such as this) to deflect some heat away from Putin by suggesting that the real target of protesters' anger was Dmitry Medvedev.  One polling agency suggested that most Russians are not actually angry with Putin - believing instead that Putin is trying to fight corruption, but that he may not be successful.  And Putin also professed his dedication to fighting corruption, saying that "Personally, I am in favor of having questions about the fight against corruption always at the center of public attention."

So - if it's so that Mr. Putin is in favor of placing the fight against corruption at the center of public attention - why the crackdown on last weekend's protests?  Why have Russian prosecutors moved to block Internet calls for more protests?  Why were many protesters beaten while being arrested?  Why were even bystanders arrested?  Why did Putin show solidarity with Medvedev afterward?  Why is participation in "unsanctioned gatherings" punishable by up to five years in prison under Russian law?  (For that matter, if a man won a U.S. presidential election fair and square, and was himself the living embodiment of American democratic ideals, why would he be afraid of a vote recount?  But I digress.)

Honest people have a very powerful way of showing their honesty: namely, by allowing free and open examination of their deeds, including constructive criticism by others as necessary.  If Mr. Putin is really a champion of honesty and the elimination of corruption, how could he possibly be hurt by a free and open discussion of corruption in Russia - a discussion that included free, unconstrained, nonviolent protest?  Instead, what Russia is doing is seeking to "cure" the wave of protest by state-sponsored education about the Russian government's anticorruption efforts.  At least one Russian teacher is taking this "education" to a whole new level.  You can watch a video of this teacher here.

Problems that are constantly swept under a rug eventually become a tripping hazard.  One of the ways that tripping hazard may grow in Russia could be that the civil resistance that manifested itself last weekend begins to move beyond the methods of protest and persuasion to the methods of non-cooperation (especially economic non-cooperation), and to the methods of nonviolent intervention - including beginning to construct parallel institutions.

The Resistance Heats Up In Russia

I had been thinking a lot about Russia last week, as shown in my last post. But today I just found out that there were massive anti-Kremlin protests in Russia over the weekend. (See this also.) The vast majority of protesters were youths from middle school age to early adulthood. Как сказать, “Things are getting rather interesting in Russia!” по-русский?

The recent history of Russia is punctuated by several periods of civil resistance, such as the three-year wave of protests that erupted in response to Putin "winning" the 2011 Russian elections under circumstances that smell about the same as the circumstances under which President Chump won the recent U.S. elections. The trouble now is this: it is not very easy for Putin and company to claim that last weekend's protests were the work of some "Deep State" bogeyman, as they have seemingly captured the one nation that could have been blamed for harboring such a "Deep State" - namely, the U.S.A. Yet they have been making the claim that the demonstrators against the Kremlin were paid by outside agents, as some Kremlin mouthpieces also made claims over the last month or so that this "Deep State" is trying to sabotage Chump. But a person who has bad body odor and no manners shouldn't blame a conspiracy for the fact that people don't want to be around him. Will Russian leaders be willing to engage in frank and open dialogue about the grievances of their citizenry? Or will they resort to scapegoating as they have so often?