Response to question of violence in society in relation to Gandhi for Religious Autobiography class

Well,
In regard to this question... I think we are still at about the point MLK described when he said:
"This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Our planet teeters on the brink of atomic annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless calvaries; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism." MLK

That was in 1963. Violence, non-violence. It almost seems impossible to imagine a world without violence, because ever since our species learned to write things down it appears we've been murdering each other. Maybe ever since we got booted from the "garden of eden" we've been acting like a bunch of savages. At least that appears to be the story we have told ourselves. The story of mankind, written by mankind, is a violent bloody affair, interspersed with love and beauty.

We are all going to die. Is death itself violent? If it is, then we are by our very nature violent. If death is something we are taught to fight against, then we are trained for violence to combat the ultimate inevitable violence.

From birth, here in Western patriarchal Christiancentric universe, we are raised from birth with the implicit idea that we are violent by nature, that we are born sinful, and that a man had to die to get our sins forgiven. And yet as a people, we have not stopped sinning. So it seems his death was in vain.

To be transformed non-conformists in the words of Rev. MLK, maybe we need to radically alter even our basis for ideological understanding. If we want to create peace, maybe we need to tell ourselves a different story. Instead of teaching ourselves that we are inherently violent and that we need to resist our true natures and ask some higher being to help us not be violent, maybe we should begin teaching ourselves that we are by nature perfect, loving, divine, glorious creations of God, who at our core are non-violent. It would actually be closer to the truth. because if we actually look at the world, especially considering 70,000+ nuclear weapons sitting around out there, the millions of guns, bombs, fighter jets, racism, sexism, hatred, you have to admit, we are surprisingly non-violent as a species, at least to each other. If that wasn't true, if we really were such savage murderers, how can we explain that the human population doubles on earth at this moment every 50 some years. In 1950 there were 2.55 billion people on earth. Today there are 6.84. So we really aren't that violent. At least to each other, especially considering that the overwhelming ideology in the west is that people are not inherently good. We worship "the perfect man" as if He was really so different from ourselves. I'm just not sure that's what he was telling us. But if we look at Considering that by 2067 we'll have over 13 billion people on earth. Maybe true non-violence, at least to our mother earth and fellow species, will be for us to figure out a way to cut our population down and reduce our numbers, which some might argue is violence.

If I see every other human being on earth as a reflection of myself, as another manifestation of God, it becomes difficult for me to legitimate killing them. Maybe non-violence as articulated by Gandhi can be understood in terms of offering himself as a sacrifice for the greater good, like Jesus, he could not defend his life with violence because he had so much love for his fellow man.
he said: "non-violence implies as complete self-purification as is humanly possible [which suggests that he understands our pure being as non-violent] Man for man the strength of non-violence is in exact proportion to the ability, if not the will, of the non-violent person to inflict violence."

So maybe it comes down to, "love each other, or else..." "be nice, or prepare to be thrown into the volcano."

Sorry I went on so damn long. Interesting exercise. I guess I fall into the non-violent category. But we may have to drink the cool-aid to be ultimately non-violent.