According to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From Hong Kong to Chilé, and from Egypt to Ecuador, protests seem to be erupting across the planet right now. People all around the world are ready for shifts in power and changes in leadership.
We’re concerned about many issues: poverty, war, corruption, human rights, and climate change being some of the top ones. It seems that we live in a time when we are ready to go through some changes as a species, and growth is never comfortable.
Sometimes we see so much anger and violence in the media that it seems like that’s all the world is.
It’s easy to become afraid. It’s easy to let that fear turn into anger. It’s easy to let that anger turn into hate. It’s harder to choose a more difficult road and resist the slippery path to hatred.
I’ve been doing some reading about civil disobedience recently, and I came across Martin Luther King Jr.’s six principles of nonviolence, which he described in his book, Strive Towards Freedom. Reading these helped me remember just how powerful nonviolence can be, and what a wise person Dr. King was.
Martin Luther King had an indefatigable faith in love. So do I, and so should you.
1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people
It takes a great deal of bravery to hold to nonviolent principles, especially when others around you are not. Being nonviolent doesn’t make you weak or wimpy, it makes you strong.
King believed that nonviolence should be active– spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. Active resistance.
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
2. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding
King pointed out that the end goal of nonviolence should be redemption and reconciliation, and the “creation of the Beloved Community.” King had a vision of a global community where things like poverty, hunger, and homelessness would not be tolerated because human decency would not allow for it.
I see what he’s saying. I’ve noticed that there are some out there who claim to be preaching a message of peace but don’t seem to be trying to make friends with those who they claim to want peace with. I would guess that Dr. King saw this kind of hypocrisy, too.
What’s your goal? Do you really want peace, or do you just want to be right?
3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people
Dr. King recognized that people who do evil things are also victims themselves. After all: no one is born evil, and doing hateful things is painful and damaging to the soul. It’s a cycle of suffering, and the more we shame and blame, the more we contribute to it.
It’s hard to admit sometimes, but hurt people do hurt people. One of the reasons that the wheel of violence keeps turning because it’s difficult for us to see those who have harmed us or those we love as human.
As much as certain people might repulse us because of the things they say or do, it’s in everybody’s best interest to do our best to try to love them anyway– or at the very least, not to hurt them more.
4. Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform
Here’s a hard one to swallow: Dr. King thought that nonviolence should accept suffering without retaliation. He also wanted us to recognize that “unearned suffering” has transformative powers.
If you can accept injustices perpetrated against you without retaliating, you’re not only creating a more peaceful world, you’re doing a lot to build your own character.
Even if you’re not ready to love your enemy, turn the other cheek anyway, for your own sake.
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate
Martin Luther King believed that we should resist violence “of the spirit” as well as of the body. He believed nonviolent love was “spontaneous, unmotivated, unselfish, and creative.”
To be truly nonviolent is not just about putting down your gun or your fist. It’s not just about biting your tongue before you say something cruel. It’s about working at a deeper level to genuinely release the violence from your heart.
The goal here is to become strong enough to really choose love. Always.
6. Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice
Dr. King wanted us to have faith in justice, and to believe that we live in a benevolent world.
The cynic in me wants to say that this is foolish– the universe is random and it doesn’t care about us. Still, I can see the value in choosing to believe this, over the alternative, because we will probably never know for sure, anyway.
This is similar to how it’s valuable to believe that I have free will, even though I’ll never know. Even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t really help me to know. I choose to believe that I have agency because it feels more empowering than believing that I don’t.
Similarly, I choose to believe that the universe has my back, because I understand the power of faith. The power of faith can be used for both good and evil, but when it comes to the human heart, there are few things more powerful.
What do you choose to put your faith in? Dr. King wanted to know that, too:
“Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice ― or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?”
I don’t know, but I’m pretty anxious to find out.
Originally published on medium.com on November 27, 2019.
Esoteric Epistemology 