What Would Gandhi Do?

WWGD

Disclaimer: This is NOT about gun control

There have been countless shootings this week, namely the tragic Sandy Hook one. As an avid social media user I went on Facebook shortly after and came across a disturbing post: “If one of those teachers had a gun all those lives could have been saved.” That translates to the only way to stop the bad guys with guns is to make sure there are good guys with guns. My first thought that popped in my head was Gandhi, Tolstoy, Sharpe, Mandela, King…. What would these courageous men say to this statement?

Yesterday, my friend unknowingly became part of my personal experiment. I told her we should watch the movie Savages because of all the rave reviews I have seen about that movie. That part was true, many people were raving about this movie on Facebook and Twitter but I knew from the trailers this had a heavy content of violence. I wanted to not only challenge myself and see how I could react, I wanted to see how one of the closest people to me would react to such a movie.

This movie was sick as in totally disgusting, revolting, couldn’t finish my cream cheese frosted carrot cake sick. The part that interested me most , having just taken a class on nonviolence, was where the only good guy in the entire movie became one of the main killers. At first he was uncomfortable with the thought of taking a human life but then his friend convinced him that the only way to save the girl he loved was to do so. After his first kill he threw up but soon after that he was eager “to save O and get the job done.”

Not only could I not watch this movie but also my best friend turned away many times. The conclusion I reached is that I surround myself with people who do not believe in violence.

We live in a culture that glamorizes the shooters and patronizes the victims.  A culture that has people critiquing villains as “not believable because he was not scary enough.” I said that after seeing the last Batman movie.  How could I say such a thing? Well, after taking my nonviolence class I can say that I said it because that’s the message society perpetuates. Video games do not create murderers; however, they center around the concept of otherizing. In video games the goal is to defeat the opponent, the other. Well when we take part in otherizing, we are essentially saying there is something about us that makes us superior to the other.  I have seen this message in religion, advertising, racism and politics.

The shooter himself has been otherized. Am I defending the shooter? NO way, but I cannot make a solid judgment on him only his actions. All you have to do is google obedience to authority experiments and look at how good people can do bad things for various reasons.  The way to avoid this is a concept Martin Luther King JR coined as self-purification.  Self-purification is the process of purifying, as the ability of a body of water to rid itself of pollutants.  I achieve little bits of this daily through Yoga. But what self-purification does is makes one look to their core and see that it is strong enough to stick to their morals and beliefs no matter the circumstances.  

This brings me to the question I posed earlier:

What would Gandhi do? Would Gandhi have shot the shooter and saved lives? After examining his life, I can say he would NOT have done that, as he was a firm believer in nonviolence and the possibility of dying for ones cause.  He would have tried every other creative tactic to save everyone including the shooter, but he would never have pulled that trigger.

In life, we have to do what feels right to us.  If a man had come up to Gandhi and said he was going to shoot the shooter, Gandhi would have told him, that if he truly saw that as the only way to save lives, to do it. Gandhi believed nonviolence took great courage and if a man did not fully believe in the concept, he should not act nonviolently. Gandhi believed that nonviolence was a principle NOT an action.

To end this long post, I want to leave you with one of Gandhi’s famous quotes:

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

Times like these make it easy for us to lose faith in the human race, but think about this question:

If hate was at the core of everyone, how is it possible that we are here today? I believe with all of my heart mankind are good. We cannot lose faith in humanity, there is too much at stake for us to have the luxury of doing that.

JS