The conventional history of nations, even continents, is a history of warfare. According to this view, all the important ideas and significant changes of humankind occured as part of an effort to win one violent, bloody conflict or another. But there have always been a few who refused to fight. Following the grand sweep of history from Confucius to Tolstoy, Erasmus to Gandhi, bestselling author Mark Kurlansky traces pacifism and its proponents to show how many modern ideas, a united Europe, the United Nations, and the ...
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The conventional history of nations, even continents, is a history of warfare. According to this view, all the important ideas and significant changes of humankind occured as part of an effort to win one violent, bloody conflict or another. But there have always been a few who refused to fight. Following the grand sweep of history from Confucius to Tolstoy, Erasmus to Gandhi, bestselling author Mark Kurlansky traces pacifism and its proponents to show how many modern ideas, a united Europe, the United Nations, and the abolition of slavery - originated in non-violence movements.
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Add this copy of Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea to cart. $2.41, good condition, Sold by Hay-on-Wye Booksellers rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hereford, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2007 by Vintage.
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Why does the author use the subtitle ?The History of a Dangerous Idea?? How can non-violence be dangerous? An important idea is tucked into the subtitle, one that few people really understand in my experience. Most people, if they think about the matter at all, confuse non-violence with pacifism; or worse, with ?passive resistance?.
There is nothing passive about what Kurlansky is describing. It is active, and active in such a way that oppressors are at a loss what to do about it, which is why, for them, it is dangerous. In fact, the author is at pains to make clear that the only way oppressors can deal with the kind of non-violence described in his book, is to make non-violent activists retaliate violently, in which case they are lost, because the oppressor almost always has more weapons, more force, at his disposal and can usually overcome the rebels. Even where the rebels succeed in battling the oppressor into submission, they usually just replace one dictatorship with another.
But non-violence is not only ?dangerous? for the oppressor, it?s dangerous for the activists. As Gandhi said repeatedly, he needed non-violent ?soldiers? who were as disciplined and as brave as conventional soldiers. He certainly didn?t want pacifists around him. Having said that, Kurlansky suggests that far fewer people lose their lives using non-violence than in a shooting war.
I was surprised to read how often non-violence has been used successfully. In my opinion this book is way ahead of its time, and I recommend it to anyone wanting to find alternatives to French Revolution-type regime change.
This book is compulsively readable, well researched without being tediously ?academic?, and will make a reader rethink ideas which are, for most people, unquestioned mental scenery.
