Mahatma Ghandi's grandson, Arun Gandhi, wrote a Forward to "Nonviolent Communication" that is so great, my good friend Karen Wagner recommended Marshall B Rosenberg's book to me 5 years ago and I still haven't gotten past the Forward (and I really need to!). I think it says a lot of things about the world at large and our politics now and our personal and social lives, and that has been true every time I've read it.
I'm changing, will you? If we all change, we'll all change faster for the better.
Forward to Nonviolent Communication Marshall B Rosenberg's By Arun Gandhi
As a person of color, growing up in apartheid South Africa in the 1940 was not something anyone relished. Especially if you were brutally reminded of your skin color every moment of every day. To be beaten up at the age of ten by white youths because they consider you to be too black and then by black youths because they consider you too white is a humiliating experience that would drive anyone to vengeful violence.
I was so outraged that my parents decided to take me to India and leave me for some time with Grandfather, the legendary M.K. Gandhi, so that I could learn from him how to deal with the anger, the frustration, the discrimination, and the humiliation that violence color prejudice can invoke in you. In the eighteen months I learned more than anticipated. My only regret now is that I was just thirteen years old and a mediocre student at that. If only I had been older, a but wiser, and a bit more thoughtful, I could have learned so much more. But, one must be happy with what one has received and not be greedy, a fundamental lesson in nonviolent living. How can I forget this?
One of the many things I learned from Grandfather is to understand the depth and breadth of nonviolence and to acknowledge that one is violent and that one needs to bring about a qualitative change in one's attitude. We often don't acknowledge our violence because we are ignorant about it; we assume we are not violent because our vision of violence is one of fighting, killing, beating, and wars - the types of things that average individuals don't do.
To bring this home to me, grandfather made me draw a family tree of violence using the same principles as are used for a genealogical tree. His argument was that I would have a better appreciation of nonviolence if I understood and acknowledged the violence that exists in the world. He assisted me every evening to analyze the day’s happenings—everything that I experienced, read about, saw or did to others—and put them down on the tree either under “physical” (if it was violence where physical force was used) or under “passive” (if it was the type of violence where the hurt was more emotional).
Within a few months I covered one wall in my room with acts of “passive" violence that grandfather described as being more insidious than “physical" violence. He then explained that passive violence ultimately generated anger in the victim who, as an individual or as a member of a collective, responded violently. In other words it is passive violence that fuels the fire of physical violence. It is because we don’t understand or appreciate this concept that all our efforts to work for peace have either not fructified, or the peace that we achieved was only temporary. How can we extinguish a fire if we don’t first cut off the fuel that ignites the inferno?
Unless, as he would say, “we become the change we wish to see in the world,” no change will ever take place. We are all, unfortunately, waiting for the other person to change first.
I'm changing, will you? If we all change, we'll all change faster for the better.
Forward to Nonviolent Communication Marshall B Rosenberg's By Arun Gandhi
As a person of color, growing up in apartheid South Africa in the 1940 was not something anyone relished. Especially if you were brutally reminded of your skin color every moment of every day. To be beaten up at the age of ten by white youths because they consider you to be too black and then by black youths because they consider you too white is a humiliating experience that would drive anyone to vengeful violence.
I was so outraged that my parents decided to take me to India and leave me for some time with Grandfather, the legendary M.K. Gandhi, so that I could learn from him how to deal with the anger, the frustration, the discrimination, and the humiliation that violence color prejudice can invoke in you. In the eighteen months I learned more than anticipated. My only regret now is that I was just thirteen years old and a mediocre student at that. If only I had been older, a but wiser, and a bit more thoughtful, I could have learned so much more. But, one must be happy with what one has received and not be greedy, a fundamental lesson in nonviolent living. How can I forget this?
One of the many things I learned from Grandfather is to understand the depth and breadth of nonviolence and to acknowledge that one is violent and that one needs to bring about a qualitative change in one's attitude. We often don't acknowledge our violence because we are ignorant about it; we assume we are not violent because our vision of violence is one of fighting, killing, beating, and wars - the types of things that average individuals don't do.
To bring this home to me, grandfather made me draw a family tree of violence using the same principles as are used for a genealogical tree. His argument was that I would have a better appreciation of nonviolence if I understood and acknowledged the violence that exists in the world. He assisted me every evening to analyze the day’s happenings—everything that I experienced, read about, saw or did to others—and put them down on the tree either under “physical” (if it was violence where physical force was used) or under “passive” (if it was the type of violence where the hurt was more emotional).
Within a few months I covered one wall in my room with acts of “passive" violence that grandfather described as being more insidious than “physical" violence. He then explained that passive violence ultimately generated anger in the victim who, as an individual or as a member of a collective, responded violently. In other words it is passive violence that fuels the fire of physical violence. It is because we don’t understand or appreciate this concept that all our efforts to work for peace have either not fructified, or the peace that we achieved was only temporary. How can we extinguish a fire if we don’t first cut off the fuel that ignites the inferno?
Unless, as he would say, “we become the change we wish to see in the world,” no change will ever take place. We are all, unfortunately, waiting for the other person to change first.
