Catégorie : In English

Non violence : non cooperation with injustice

This week, a woman from Kiev had a vision in a dream: in a war-torn city, she is looking for her family. Jesus comes closer to her and she asks him to give her a hand. Jesus, from the cross, replies: “You cannot do both things together; you cannot crucify me and at the same time ask for my help. You have to choose one or the other.”
When this person woke up from the vision, she told everyone around her that she had decided to choose what is essential. The Apostolic Nuncio in Kiev shared this witness on March 11, 2022.

Choose what is essential: “You won’t kill,” even if others do.

Non-violence chooses what is essential: if all the inhabitants of a country decide to hold hands in order not to cooperate with the invader, the latter will not be able to subdue them and profit from their violent assaults, all the more so if billions of humans on the planet also hold hands with them, from where they are. Weapons do not make the greatness and heroism of a person, of a nation, but here is what does: 1) their courageous determination not to cooperate with the injustices of which it is aware (and war is one of them), 2) their ability to understand and recognize the profound truth of each party, 3) the art of creating an agreement that takes it into account: a framework of law, authentic communication and effective negotiation, for a just peace. Stay on course.

When everyone is holding hands,
what can the Evil One do?

AND autority AND comprehension without any autoritarism or permissiveness

June 2th 2020 : Donald Trump threatens to send the army to « dominate the streets ».

Reaction of the demonstrators: « He wants to dominate us but he will never be able to dominate us ».

The project consisting in dominating someone (take power on / pressure over) brings about costs, falls into traps, leads to deadlock. The C-R-I-T-E-R-E method teaches the right attitude that articulates the plans to 1) understand the people on the street (the power to be with them) and 2) guarantee justice (the power to respect the common good).

Leaving the false dilemma between hawks and doves. Eliminating all gestures, all words like « power on / under the other » and deploy the powers « for / to » and « with ».

Cf. CHOMÉ Étienne, The C-R-I-T-E-R-E method for improved conflict management, PUL, p. 50 sq. & Le nouveau paradigme de non-violence, p. 149 sq.

The C-R-I-T-E-R-E method,  : AND autority AND comprehension without any autoritarism or passivity.

Listening to the warnings, before conflict’s deterioration

The Chinese word CRISIS combines the words « wei » (DANGER) and « ji » (OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE), to signify a tipping point, a decisive moment: the role of the crisis is to make even more obvious the necessity to make the right changes, which require courage since it means giving up things that we have got used to. The alarm bells of the conflict stop ringing once we have invested in peace opportunities to the point that the danger has passed, without making us fall into the violence of war. It is then (and only then) that we can be proud of having managed the crisis well, of having escaped a conflict that degenerates into war.

Cf. Étienne Chomé, The C-R-I-T-E-R-E method for improved conflict management, Presses Universitaires of Louvain, 2009, p. 39.