by Charles Eisenstein
The dehumanization of the Other that happens in war, racism, and genocide is no different from any reduction of the sacred to the profane. It is the same mentality that informs the reduction of nature from a sacred, living intelligence into a collection of insensate things: mere resources to be exploited or an enemy to be conquered. The reduction of humans to enemies or to subhuman caricatures like greedy executives and donut-eating police pigs is the same mentality that makes it OK to threaten a river with catastrophic oil spills. Invoking the principle of morphic resonance, by entering into war mentality we strengthen the field of war, including the reduction and domination of nature. That is why victories in war so often lead to just more war. The war is won, but the ideals for which it was fought remain as distant as ever. So it has been for five thousand years.
In other words, if we seek to win a fight using the tactics of dehumanization, we are contributing to the sacrilege that is at the root of the problem. No pipelines would be built if we loved the river like a grandmother.
When the elders ask us to proceed prayerfully, what do they mean? To be prayerful is to be in awareness of the sacred. We too easily forget the sacred, whether in relationship to human beings or to other-than-human beings like trees, soil, and rivers. If prayer is sacred speech, then to act prayerfully is to be reverent in action as well as speech. The dehumanization that leads us onto the warpath is the opposite of reverence.
It is not easy to stay off the warpath. Each new atrocity and outrage renews the invitation into hatred. Lord knows we’ve received many such invitations onto the warpath. The attack dogs, the pepper spraying, the water cannons, the woman whose face was shattered by a rubber bullet, the news that the police will start carrying live ammunition, the state government’s fines for those bringing supplies to Standing Rock, the fact that ETP’s drilling is currently illegal, the historical robbery of native lands and the breaking of every treaty… there are any number of reasons to adopt a good-versus-evil view. As tempting as it is for me, all the more for people at Standing Rock who have been subjected to violence personally or witnessed it first hand. To counsel forgiveness or nonviolence from afar seems almost arrogant, were it not echoing the elders and so many others on site.
Each of these invitations onto the warpath also presents an opportunity to defy the enabling narratives of violence and to take a step toward victory without fighting. It is an opportunity to employ what Gandhi called “soul force.” Meeting violence with nonviolence invites the other into nonviolence as well. Refusing the invitation onto the warpath automatically extends a counter-invitation to the enemy to cease being an enemy. That is why it is so important to remember that the purpose of nonviolent action is not to make the other side look bad. That would be a kind of attack, a kind of violence, and a tactic of war. No, the purpose is to invite the other side and onlookers alike to join you in courage. Of course, they may decline the invitation, but it grows more powerful with each escalation of violence.
Each time you refuse the invitation onto the warpath, you become more powerful. Those who can stay peaceful in the face of any terror or threat become virtual miracle-workers. I am reminded of an Afghan woman I know named Sakena. She does peace and education work in Kabul, including the education of girls. This is a dangerous line of work in a place where religious fundamentalists believe that educating girls should be punishable by death, and indeed Sakena receives her share of death threats – something to be taken seriously in that place.
One day Sakena was in a car with her driver, two staff people, and her unarmed bodyguard. Suddenly the driver stopped. A makeshift roadblock was ahead of them, manned by twenty or so young men dressed in fundamentalist garb and armed with rifles, which were pointed at the car. “Tell Sakena to get out,” they shouted.
Bravely, the driver said, “You’ve got the wrong car. There’s no one by that name here.”
“Oh yes there is,” they replied. “We know she’s in there. We’ve been watching her.”
Sakena got out of the car and strode up to the young men. “I’m Sakena,” she declared. “What do you want?”
For the next half hour, the four people in the car watched as Sakena talked to the young men. Finally she returned to the car and said, “OK, we can go now.” Astonished, her staffers asked what happened. She told them that the young men had decided that they wanted to be educated too, just like the girls, and had arranged to meet her again the next week outside a certain mosque.
Such is the potential power of staying off the warpath. Even with guns pointed at her, Sakena refused to see the young men as anything less than divine human beings. She refused to reduce them in her vision to crazed terrorists or subhuman “fundamentalists.” She saw them as promising young men who of course wanted an education. Her fearlessness and goodwill exerted an invitation so compelling that the men were nearly helpless to refuse it.