Plan to Overcome

"Today there is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence." -Dr. Martin Luther King

"It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men." - Karl Popper

I think Dr. Martin Luther King Day (which I learned is not his birthday! That happened January 15th) is an appropriate opportunity to reflect upon and reinvigorate our commitment to the timeless legacy and vision of justice exemplified by Dr. King instead of giving deference to him as an idol of noble aspirations.

More than that, I think we foremost benefit from recognizing our ability to empower ourselves and each other (all people, of course not just men).

Another quote, this time from the living Bill Moyers, shares this belief that action is up to you: 
“What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called ‘hocma’—the science of the heart. . . the capacity to see. . . to feel. . . and then to act. . . as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does.”

In that regard, all of us are capable of discovering greatness in ourselves and one another.  Among their accomplishments, civil rights proponents like King succeeded in empowering people by promoting awareness and opportunity to engage in justice through democracy with disciplined planning and steadfast implementation. I recently met the Reverend Dr. James Lawson, who worked closely with Dr. King, in the autumn of 2012 after he gave a speech about non-violence. By miraculous coincidence, I met him one day after I tasted the gunpowder from a gunshot meant to kill a person less than 8 feet away.

At first blush, non-violence can seem like a fairly simple, even vague if not hollow, term.  If someone draws a gun with malicious intent, what other choices do we have?  Guns, much like nuclear weapons, can almost guarantee mutual destruction.  Yet if we ask why one would draw a gun to potentially kill extended family, or even carry one in the first place, the answer had to revolve around personal security and insecurity when you boil the situation down it to its essence.

Security is a sophisticated need.  It’s inherently dependent upon complex systems which are beyond the full control of an individual.  Even one’s perception can skew our judgment of an already shifting reality.

I suspect an answer to dealing with potentially absolute violence lies in interventions that meet the following condition: overcome our human tendency to engage in rules that necessitate the reciprocal escalation of powers.  Undermine or reshape the entire premise of our value system for fighting—the “rules of the game”—by changing the perceptions and paradigms which shape how and why we think about combative engagement in the first place.

People are complex; fortunately, science helps us find ways to effectively work with complexity, including social codes and personal beliefs.  Complex systems scientists recognize tangible behaviors as necessary for persuading peoples’ values, paradigms and worldviews  (see the list of 12 leverage points for intervening in a complex system here: http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf ).

When appropriate, non-violence may need to employ the use of non-lethal protective use of force (check out Marshall Rosenberg's well-earned wisdom: http://youtu.be/21g1S7stoQI ), but no matter what, non-violence is exercised without malice in our actions.  The way we communicate ideas, or even notions, in language (can we speak without engaging in abuse or instigating escalation?) usually becomes the first symptom for a potential intervention. To astute observers, it may be expressed visually in our physical posturing and gestures (can you assert your presence without resorting to making it threatening to others?) as well, and of course in how we physically interact with one another (can you embrace and redirect a person's attack rather than impose force onto them? That's what the martial art Aikido focuses on).

Adding Popper’s contention about the notion of “great men”, I gleaned another note for non-violence from Dr. Lawson:  Non-violence operates via empowerment as its primary principle.

“Non-violence is premised on the idea that all people have power to act beyond the influence of their circumstance.”  But in this, there's a challenge: unlike violence, which can quickly and easily interfere with the integrity of an ideal like peace, trust, or love, non-violence requires discipline, careful planning, and patient dedication.

We must act from a hope to overcome, we must plan to overcome.

Which leads us to another nuance of non-violence from Reverend Lawson: 
“Non-violence is the moral equivalent to war.  It requires organization and discipline.” 

Consider the planning and commitment that went into what we now see as watershed events:  Coordinated planning took place for the sit-ins from 1959-1964.  The Montgomery Bus Boycott officially began on December 1st of 1955, some of us heard that in the history books or on television programs, but few of us realize the tenacity of the cause: the boycott was sustained for over a year—381 days.

An ideal is a lot like other life-processes: education, communication and the arts, design, even ethics.
All of these activities involve intentions, actions, and consequences.

Among seasoned practitioners like Reverend Lawson, the term "non-violence" actually isn't representative of what people really strive for. Non-anything implies reaction and work that runs directly against something. If anything, I suspect people really strive to love--create it and do it. It's a noun, but most importantly a verb.

Love exists as a plausible ideal. We may bear compassionate and loving intentions. Caring actions may manifest loving intentions, and perhaps the desired consequence of compassion and love creates a legacy that reaffirms the intention and fosters more love.

Yet as an ideal, it becomes so expansive to act upon that many find--and take--temptation in believing ideals cannot happen in reality.  Furthermore, it's possible, potentially even reasonable [using the word in a very strict sense, link goes to various definitions] though never justifiable, that a person can love the person whom they abuse. Their intentions may be true, but the actions they know or choose to express care through compromise the dignity and autonomy of another being.

This remains the challenge of Dr. King and many other notable living visionaries of our time: to truly validate worthy ideals such as peace, justice, and love all three aspects of the ideal must be good and present. That takes visionary planning to manifest dreams from ideal to real. When society-shaping, you need to do so with people, not just on behalf of them, and certainly not independent of them.

Keep it up, we shall overcome someday, but let’s discover the someday together, every day in our actions with one another.


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Notes about music in the video above:

Minor variations and improvisations on the Civil Rights song "We Shall Overcome" recorded in the University of Michigan-Dearborn Wellness Center on January 21st 2013.

A few weeks ago I played it spur of the moment and it was a profound rendition if I say so myself, but I don't remember what I did and I didn't have anything to record it with at the time.  There's some irony to the notion of playing a social justice song, solo, to no one but yourself on MLK day.  I was somewhat disappointed that I missed a few opportunities including a symposium on social justice that day, so as I practiced other tunes, I decided to give the song another try in observation of the day as well.

I suspect playing a song used for civil rights alone doesn't quite contribute to making the dream manifest, but hopefully sharing it here might be worth your while. I'm drawing memory from a rendition I heard on a cd by Peter Paul and Mary when I was in second grade-fifth grade, and hadn't really prepared my playing as much as I now think I should have. Ongoing process...