What follows below was originally released as three separate parts, but, intended from the start to be read as one whole article, but ended up being too long. Each article works singularly, but the full force of the argument is somewhat disjointed by the need to break it up for easier consumption. Here the original article is restored for those who wish to take it in as one complete work. If you wish to read it in the shorter formats, here are the links to the three separate parts:
Part 1: The Protests here
Part 2: Changing the Government here
Part 3: The Way to Tomorrow here.
The Protests
American society is in convulsions right now. The murder of George Floyd sparked a series of mass protests and riots that have spread across country and even inspired like-minded ones in other countries. The people are joined in a grassroots rebellion against local and national authority, reviling both against the police and the military with equal fervency. The State (i.e. the government), using the only tactic it knows, has launched a massive assault on the people of the United States as a whole and has, by its actions, placed itself in a state of war with the American people. In doing so, the true nature of the State has been revealed, the mask has been torn away and the government stands naked as the brutal machinery for oligarchy, theft, and oppression that it is and always has been. The chaos in the streets is simply the natural result, the final, pure product of the State.
As people stare at the breakdown of society that is the final outcome of the State, many are asking hard questions about the future. They want to know where do we go from here and how do we get there. And it is in this that we see the divide. Everyone wants the same goals- a better, more prosperous, and fruitful society for all. The gulf between the two sides is based less on a difference in goals and more about how they respond to their fears. In both cases, the only solution they know is based on the very source of all the problems. Those calling for police crackdowns are responding to the conditioning of the State that has taught them their entire lives that the police are there to protect you and that if you are in danger you should call the police. Those marching in the streets are wanting to seize the levers of power for themselves and turn the machinery of control to their own devices and enforce their beliefs through the violence of the State. In doing so both side perpetuate a deadly error and make a fatal mistake in that they look to the very thing that has wrought so much destruction to be their Savior. But this will never work.
Not the least reason this will never work is because violence is a game that the State excels at playing. Violence is the State’s game. It exists to sow discontent, hatred, and malice between the various members of society, to set them at odds with one another, and to reap the rewards of wealth and power it can extort from the people by presenting itself as the solution to the ills it either entirely creates or exacerbates beyond measure. As I’ve explained more in depth elsewhere, through the instrumentalities of taxation and the legal system those in power set up an endless War of All Against All, whereby those who would naturally have no conflict are brought into political, social, and often literal, combat by the State, who then uses this violence as evidence that it must needs exist in order to dominate the people for the “common safety and common good.” This fresh round of violence will only be co-opted to prove that the state is needed now more than ever before. If we are going to counter the State’s evils we have to divest ourselves of its methods, we have to stop doing what justifies its very existence. We have to embrace nonviolence.
Image from here.
Nonviolence
Don’t react violently against the one who is evil
(Matthew 5:39)
The entire Myth of the State is based on the methods of violence- that violence justifies violence in return. So if you want to undermine the actions of the State you have to undermine that which gives it the power it has and by doing so you steal from it not only its justification, but its power. When these are taken from it, the States’s disguise is ripped away and instead of Protector its true identity as Oppressor is revealed. Said simply, it is easy for the propagandists of the government to make a man defending himself against the police look like he is the aggressor, therefore justifying the violence and brutality of the police in the first place. Actually being the aggressor is just doing their work for them.
When they cannot paint you as the aggressor, when there is no way for them to portray you as a violent criminal or thug because you refuse to engage in violence, then there is no way for them to justify their brutality. The thing that set so many off about the murder of George Floyd was exactly that he was not resisting. Not only could he not fight back, he wasn’t fighting back, and never had fought back. So, when they murdered him, it ripped away the masks of the police and revealing them for the militarized thugs that they truly are. And people reacted powerfully to that image, millions rose in open rebellion to the State and its enforcers exactly because of that power. This is the power of nonviolence.
The nonviolent activist allows his body, her pain, and their suffering to be the vehicle of the message of peace and revelation. Revelation in that the truth of the brutality is revealed. Peace because once this brutality is revealed people turn against it and seek to create a better way, a way that eliminates the revealed evil, which carries us forward on the path of peace to reconciliation. As Mahatma Gandhi explained:
Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears, which are otherwise shut, to the voice of reason. Nobody has probably drawn up more petitions or espoused more forlorn causes than I, and I have come to this fundamental conclusion that, if you want something really important to be done, you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also. The appeal of reason is more to the head, but the penetration of the heart comes from suffering. It opens up the inner understanding in man. Suffering is the badge of the human race, not the sword.
Humans are powerfully emotional creatures and often no matter how factual your argument is – no matter how you can manipulate the data to make your side seem to be the one best supported by the evidence- it is the emotional argument that wins hearts and therefore wins the day. Gandhi knew this nearly a century ago and nonviolence was how he took advantage of this truth to win supporters to his cause. If we want to win supporters to our cause we must do the same. We must renounce our own violence, therefore robbing the police and the State of its justification propaganda. And we must be willing to suffer. If we accept the violence of the State without being violent in return our suffering under the whip and rod of oppression it will expose the evils of their actions and open people’s hearts to our message and convert them to our cause.
Noncompliance
But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39)
The purpose of violence is terrorism. It really is that simple. There is no fundamental difference between a growling dog and a person brandishing a club or a gun other than the latter walks erectly and has opposable thumbs. The purpose of each action is the same- to terrorize the one being threatened with violence to do what the one threatening violence demands be done. In short- “Do what I say or suffer!” Some will disagree with this arguing that their goal is to protect their home, property, or family. Is that truly any different than the dog’s motivations when it barks and bites? Is it not also “protecting” its territory and its pups? Humans are never more animalistic than when using violence to secure some ultimate goal. As Gandhi said:
I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for the Rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law to the strength of the spirit.
I have therefore ventured to place before India the ancient law of self sacrifice. For Satyagraha and its off-shoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering. The Rishis, who discovered the law of nonviolence in the midst of nonviolence, were greater geniuses than Newton. They were themselves greater warriors than Wellington. Having themselves known the use of arms, they realized their uselessness and taught a weary world that its salvation lay not through violence but through nonviolence.
Nonviolence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil-doer, but it means the putting of one’s whole soul against the will of the tyrant. Working under this law of being, it is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honor, his religion, his soul and lay the foundation for the empire’s fall or its regeneration.
Gandhi starts off by dispelling the idea that nonviolence is utopian in nature. Of course it isn’t. It is in fact eminently practical as the only means by which to bring true and lasting change to a society by transforming the hearts of the people within it. Easy? No. Effective? Absolutely. And, of course, compared to violence, far more successful. Then he goes on to make the distinction I was discussing previously. When we engage in animalistic behavior -violence- we degrade our humanity to the level of brute animals. But we are not animals. As humans we are so much more than animals and capable of so much more than acting as animals in order to “solve” our problems.
Image source here.
We are capable of nonviolence, the only species capable of doing so in fact. Violence is the opposite of civilization and humanity, nonviolence the essence of civilization and humanity. We are fulfilling our possibilities as humans when we embrace and engage in nonviolence. And the power of that nonviolence to defeat even the greatest of enemies without incurring the terrible mutual slaughter of war ironically makes those dedicated to nonviolence greater “warriors” than any of the greatest generals in history who could only accomplish what they did by incurring immeasurable destruction.
Then Gandhi makes a triumphant point about the power of nonviolence. Nonviolence leads to noncompliance. Violence ultimately is about submission and only ends when either one side submits to the other or both are destroyed. Having submitted to the ways of the world, they go the way of all the world. But nonviolence empowers its practitioners. Because they cannot be terrorized by violence into engaging in the brutal game that justifies violence, the practitioner of nonviolence cannot be controlled by those in power. Instead of submitting either to the will of the oppressor or the terror of the oppressor’s violence, by refusing to either obey or be terrified into obedience, noncompliance delivers one from the system of the State’s control and makes him or her more powerful than all the weapons of the State, combined. Though they may beat, cage, or kill you, they can never obtain your submission because you will not comply. Therefore they have no power over you and you are free.
This is the power of turning the other cheek. In suffering you absorb the violence of the State without submitting to its orders, i.e. laws and commands. Instead you refuse to comply and turn to it your other cheek. It too may be smote, but that is all the State can do. You have defied its terror and it can no longer control you, all by you simply refusing to comply with its rituals of violence that justify terror and signal submission. You are defiant, you do not back down. But neither do you play their game. Your spirit conquers the tyrant’s will and in doing so conquers the tyrant. And the law becomes impossible to enforce because you will not obey. Noncompliance by society makes oppressive laws and oppressive government impossible.
Changing the Government
To bring about lasting change though we must move beyond the limited view of winning simply the moment. And unlike the endless, meaningless, purposeless mass ritual of voting, which does nothing but manufacture the consent of the masses and ensure their submission to the ruling political elites who profit from the ignorance of the masses (see the image above), we want to act in ways that will help us to actually win the day and create a better tomorrow. In this conflict, as in all others, the tools of noncompliance, civil disobedience, and nonviolence are far more powerful tools than bullets, bombs, and mass slaughter to win not just the day, but to revolutionize society. These tools will help us build a better society for all on the foundations of peace, liberty, justice, and prosperity by eliminating the most violent, oppressive, and warmongering institution in society, that Mother of All Monsters- the State itself.
Expose The State
If anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
(Matthew 5:40)
Jesus taught His followers that when they were stripped of their possession by corrupt laws that allowed the powerful to rob the poor that they should strip naked in court and throw at their accuser their very last possessions, the cloak that acted as their underwear, and stand naked in front of everyone. By doing so they exposed those around them to the very corruption and evil of their actions, ruining the masquerade of the law with a stark revelation of the truth. The magisterial dignity that those in power use as a foundation for their authority isn’t merely lampooned by this act, it is exposed as nothing but smoke and mirrors altogether. At the same time the disadvantaged and politically powerless were able to seize the moment and communicate with clarity and sharpness about the true nature of the “law” as an instrument of oppression. We can do this today, making ourselves open object lessons of the corruption and evil of the system, in a number of ways.
By refusing to be violent we expose the State for the machinery of brutality that it is at heart. It always justifies its violence, its extortion, its theft, its rape and sexual assault, as being for the “common good” and because it accords with “the law” it is supposedly different than the looter robbing a Target or a rioter burning down a 7-11. When you become the victim of brutality even though you have never offered any physical threat or harm you rip this mask off the State and show the government for what it really is -not a Bride waiting upon the Bridegroom but a Whore riding upon a Beast. Once this is known the hearts of the people will turn against it and the whole house of cards begins to crumble.
Outside of nonviolent action there are a lot of different forms of direct action that can take place. For example, if at a protest you should make yourself as harmless as possible. No protective gear. No masks. No shields. No clubs. If it is warm, no jackets. Expose yourself completely so that when the cops show up in their full riot gear, armed to the teeth, ready to kill instead of looking tough and powerful they look ridiculously over prepared and stupid. The fact that they are nothing but a violent domestic military becomes obvious. And, if they hurt you, they are revealed as being evil for all the world to see. It may seem paradoxical to some, but the truth is that when you are at your most physically harmless you are at your most powerful and therefore most dangerous to the State itself, which means you are not harmless at all.
You do always have the option of going naked as well. Strip before the State and its enforcers to reveal how naked we all are before their cruelty. This may sound humorous and it isn’t without its dangers. But America is a contradictory society when it comes to sex -at once being drawn to anything remotely seeming overtly sexual while reviling against those who actually are overtly sexual- and as an act of “guerrilla theater” it doesn’t just capture the attention of those around you, it provokes media attention to pay attention to you. That creates the moment where your message about the evils of the State can be laid bare for the shameful truths they are. You will have weaponized your nakedness to strip the State down to its naked truths. And if anyone hassles you over it, remind them you’re just following the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Overwhelm The State
If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.
(Matthew 5:41)
As a tactic this one is fairly straightforward. Sometimes the best thing to do to shutdown the system is to glut it. You fill its cop cars, its prisons, and its jails. You have so many being constantly arrested that every cop is so busy arresting people that they cannot do anything else- including trying to attack those not being arrested. The system can only hold so much. So you overwhelm it. And in overwhelming it, you shut it down. You, in essence, use the system against itself until it is paralyzed with its inability to do anything. And then, when it is full to the rafters, it will either have to break its own laws about treatment and occupancy or it will have to let you go. It doesn’t have the bedding, food, water, or space to do otherwise.
If it does the former then it opens itself up to crippling suit after suit that takes from it precious treasure and time. If the latter then you merely go from the jail cell back to the front of the protest. In these ways you apply enormous pressure to the system itself, to the point that it cannot function. And when it cannot function it cannot go about the legal rituals that act as its justifications and mental loopholes that justify the system in the eyes of the masses. As that system breaks down so will the trust of the people in the organization which uses that system as justification for its existence.
The outcome of this will be to make the laws unenforceable and the actual job of the police -to violently compel obedience to the State- likewise impossible. Mass noncompliance will overwhelm them with more law breakers than they will have place for them. Those lawbreakers willingly going to jail will then overwhelm the system itself and cripple its ability to do the job it claims to do. There are more of us then there are of them. We can keep constantly overwhelming their system by filling their jails to the brim and occupying the attention of every single cop while still carrying on active and powerful nonviolent protests and getting well rested and refreshed people cycled in every day. They cannot. The mere act of doing their job will exhaust them beyond weariness and not only will their ability to do their jobs be broken, so will be their will. This will cripple even the ability of brutal totalitarian regimes to enforce their will on the public. Without our mass compliance they have no power. Through peaceful means we will make their domination impossible and live as if it didn’t exist at all. In doing so it will become reality.
Dissolve The State
Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. (Matthew 5:42)
The State perseveres because it has convinced people that it is needed, that without someone to beat, cage, rob, and murder them people would just go insane. Well, the riots have revealed the exact opposite- that the product of the State is violence and insanity. All of its outcomes are twisted, mediocre, and ultimately only about extending or protecting its power. But most people do not know this because they have been mentally conditioned to think of the State as the Secular Messiah who can deliver them from all their woes.
Getting around this mental conditioning – perhaps brainwashing considering the idolatrous effusions of love and subjection we are taught to pledge to the State and its glories from childhood- can be the most difficult task of all, but it is the most necessary. Everything else we do will only be half-measures if we do not wean people off their illusions of safety and reliance upon the State because, as the history of the United States demonstrates, the bend of Statism is always towards greater and greater totalitarianism. Minarchy is merely the ante-chamber of the total state. If we do not pull the people away from their faith in the State then the result, at best, will only be a momentary pull back of the policing powers of the State; momentary because they will increase again and again, sometimes slow and sometimes quickly, until they arrive at where they are now once more, and perhaps go beyond. If we hope to make things truly better, to cripple racism, nationalism, sexism, and all other forms of hatred and take from them their soul-crushing power, we must get rid of the State itself.
So, how do we do that? Said simply, you replace it.
There are many terms for this, the main two being Constructive Programs and Parallel Institutions. Without going in depth into this concept, something that could be its own long article, the brief explanation of this idea is that in order to replace the system of oppression you have to construct a system that offers the people what they believe the oppressive system does, minus the oppression. So if people believe that the government feeds the hungry then we must build systems of charity that feed the hungry. If people believe the oppressive system grants them protection then we must build systems that help them feel safe and which can use the power of peace to counter violence and bring unity and friendship to nominal enemies. If people believe the oppressive system offers education, then we have to build a system that puts education within the possibility of the poor. If people believe the State should manage justice, then we must build parallel institutions that help people achieve justice. And so on, ad infinitum.
One of the great things about these institutions is that they’re multitudinous. Instead of one top down model being forced onto hundreds of millions of people that is insanely expensive and fails to accomplish almost all of its most foundational goals, by building parallel institutions we build a plethora of systems that can be adapted to the wants and needs of the parent and student. This diversity is one of the greatest strengths of these constructive programs. They allow people to find or develop systems that serve not just their needs but which can be adopted and adapted by others to meet their needs and improve their lives. Secular or religious, black or white, natural born or immigrant, men or women, there are many needs we all have that overlap with others and are also totally unique to us. Parallel Institutions create ways that we can help each other in a large variety of ways whereas the State forces you to serve its ways and forms.
These institutions are essential. We can achieve victories, even great victories using the power of nonviolence, noncompliance, exposing the State for what it is, and overwhelming its systems, but we will never triumph over the State until we can show that it is never needed. And if we don’t triumph over it then it will lay like Nidhogg gnawing at the roots of Yggsdrasil, eating away at every advance made, increasing its power at every opportunity, inciting hatred and divisions along whatever fault lines it can, seeking to destroy anything that gets in its way, and ravaging the world in the process. Our work will only ever be half finished and always in peril. So we must have these institutions to ensure people never revert back to the State out of desperation once it is gone. As we build them we will draw people to them while exposing the State for what it is and people will voluntarily turn away from it. After all, why would you allow yourself to be robbed, beaten, caged, and killed by this malformed thing that neither you nor anyone else needs, when everything you need can and is being provided privately and peacefully? There will not need to be a war or bloodshed on our part, no need to rule by blood and horror, in order to “win” our freedom. We will simply be free and the State, deprived of its extorted wealth and having no power over a fearless people, will dissolve like so much sea foam in the ocean breeze.
And when it does, these institutions will continue on serving the needs of the people who will neither want nor need a return to the old ways of oppressive violence and robbery in order to get even the semblance of justice. After all, why would you settle for a shadow of the thing when you have the thing itself, why settle for a picture of bread when you have a fresh loaf in your hands? This is one of the great blessings of nonviolence. Dr. Erica Chenoweth, found that nonviolent movements are far more likely to usher in less oppressive political institutions and are much less likely to devolve into conflict than violent revolutions, which typically end in equally oppressive political system as the one before and that in turn inspires further civil war to overthrow the new regime. But even her studies were done within the confines of the Statist mentality. Understanding the poison of the State we can take the power of the system farther. We can move beyond the State altogether and achieve the Beloved Community. The first step along that path is reconciliation
Reconciliation
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:44-45)
Once you eliminate the State you eliminate the centralizing force and instead allow people to naturally gravitate towards the systems and methods that best benefit them. Because there is no longer a State to set everyone fighting over who gets to control the single system everyone must follow much of the social discord and violence that exists in society dissipates. Instead of the disparate groups of people fighting over who controls the various organs of the State to ensure and enforce their ideas upon everyone else, people create the differing systems that they believe will best serve their needs and promote them to the world by their success (or warn the world away by their failures.) Once the system of control disappears, the anger and hatred generated by the attempt to manipulate and control people against their will disappears. Without the State, exploitation is impossible.
The result is greater social harmony for all of society and that allows for the next great possibility- reconciliation. We begin to see others not as evil and our enemies but as people who themselves have been victimized by the poison of evil ideas. In the words of Dr. King:
The nonviolent resister must often express protest through noncooperation and boycotts, but the resister realizes that these are not ends in themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.
…It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. If she is opposing racial injustice, the nonviolent resister has the vision to see that the basic tension is not between races. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: ‘tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And, if there is a victory, it will be a victory not merely for fifty thousand Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light. We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be injust.’
The ultimate outcome of violence is bitterness and hatred that continues to divide people for decades and centuries to come. The outcome of building a nonviolent society is reconciliation and love. We begin to see how others are not themselves evil. Rather they are victims of evil which has corrupted their minds, blinded their eyes, and twisted their actions. Our goal becomes not to destroy them, but to love them and save them, and in saving them to heal the scars and wounds of society, to bind up broken hearts, and to build a better society.
Artist Unknown.
As the Prophet Joseph Smith taught:
Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin, as to take them by the hand, and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind.
….The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more are we disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls – we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs. My talk is intended for all this society; if you would have God have mercy on you, have mercy on one another.
As we love our enemies, pray for them, serve them, help them, hope for them, and forgive them we will discover something that will seem magical- we will no longer have enemies. And without enemies war is impossible. That should ever be our goal. It is not enough to triumph in any single struggle, but to open society and fill it with such service and love that conflict itself becomes a thing of the past. It means letting go of our obsession for ” pure justice” and embrace the pure essence of Christianity- love, mercy, and forgiveness, which in turn creates reconciliation and unity not just between God and man, but between each one of us. Marshall McConkie explains it excellently:
As a prosecutor, I would know what justice and sentencing demanded and then I would read the background of the defendant, and I would get sick. I couldn’t bear the thought of doing justice, when justice would bring further harm. Justice in and of itself is straightforward—make right what you made wrong. Receive the punishment that you deserve. You know, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Let’s balance the scales and move forward. But Tevye wasn’t kidding that the end result of that type of justice is a bunch of blind and toothless people.
I hate justice.
I hate justice because balanced scales don’t always result in fixed situations—very often justice makes two sides broken instead of one. The scales are balanced, but they aren’t balanced in peace, they are balanced in pain. Blood cries out for blood, and justice without mercy, without forgiveness results in a world soaked in blood and drowning in “justice”.
I’ve seen justice without love—it balances scales and it equalizes pain. I’ve seen justice with mercy, and it ennobles, lifts, and balances justice’s scales with a healing balm in the flow of its gentleness. To paraphrase Shakespeare, mercy blesses both the extender and the receiver of it. Mercy is godly, and it allows us to function more like Him. In a world where true justice is impossible—can you be truly just without omniscience?—mercy allows for others that which we would beg for ourselves. Mercy allows for mistakes, for growth, and for progress. It does not demand suffering, but it does make room for healing.
That doesn’t mean disagreement becomes a thing of the past. Rather it means that society will be so open that if you disagree with another you will have no reason to fight him or her over it, after all there will be no State regulation that forces you to follow only the path it has decided you should walk. You will be able to go and follow your vision to either fruition or failure. In either case you will not be embittered at others because you had your opportunity, and that is all that can be asked for in a world where success is never guaranteed. Instead of trying to take everything we can and hurting each other as much as we have been hurt, we turn towards healing suffering, binding up the hearts of the wounded, helping the blind to see, mending the broken, and creating peace.
One of my favorite examples of reconciliation in action and its power to transform hearts and minds and heal society is Daryl Davis. The man is a hero.
Daryl Davis is a black man who has convinced 200 Klansmen to give up their robes, abandon their ideology of hate, and to leave the KKK. And he hasn’t done this without preaching at them, holding protests, or even trying to change their minds. He has done it by becoming their friend. His odyssey began when he was young. As a child living abroad he didn’t quite understand what it meant to be black in America. When his family move back to the States, Daryl joined the Boy Scouts. His earliest memory of racism is when he was walking in a parade with the Scots and people started throwing things at him. At first he thought people were throwing things at the Scouts, but as the adults rushed to surround him and protect him, he realized that he was the only one being attacked by this spontaneous act of hatred. It dawned on him that the problem wasn’t that these people hated the Scouts, it was that they hated him, the only black kid in an otherwise all white Scout troop. From this point in his life he developed a desire to answer one question that he simply couldn’t answer on his own, “How can you hate me without even knowing me?”
As an adult he became a musician and began touring the USA. As he did so he began to meet actual white supremacists and realized that now, as an adult, he had the opportunity to answer his unanswerable question. So he began talking to them. Not yelling. Not screaming. Not canceling. Not even arguing. Talking. He discovered that when you talk with people you find things about them that you have in common with them. The more you talk, the more you find in common. As you find things in common with one another you build a relationship with one another. That relationship turns into friendship. As these racists became his friend they found themselves questioning what they believed and many of them, ultimately, realize that what they believed was wrong and changed. As the man himself explains, this is at the core of what he does and why it works:
I never set out to convert anybody and I still don’t say that I’m out converting people. The media says that. What I am is the impetus for their own conversion. They come to the conclusion that there’s a different way to think and believe based upon information that they have received or the friendship that has developed with me and they turn themselves around. So yes, I’ve been the impetus for many to get out of that ideology. Initially, it was curiosity on my part. Now the impetus has expanded. I never thought anyone was going to change. I just simply wanted to know ‘why?’ How can you hate me when you don’t know me? That was my initial quest. When people began changing based on conversations I would have with them, over time they would renounce that ideology and we would become friends. The reasons why I continue doing it is because I see the need for it. Our country is so divided and granted, everybody is not going to change but if one person changes, it can change a generation.
Former KKK Grand Dragon Scott Shepherd explained how his relationship with Daryl and his encounter with people of multiple races sparked change within him:
I was forced to take a cold, hard look at myself and find out what the true problem was. The true problem wasn’t with black people or other races, the problem was me.
There is too much to Daryl’s story to include here. To learn more about this man, you can watch the documentary about his life called Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America as well as watch this in depth interview with him. But Daryl, and the many other stories like his, illustrate the principles of nonviolence and the power of love to transform the lives of men and women and bring about reconciliation- healing and unity.
Reconciliation operates under many names. Dr. King called it the Beloved Community. Latter-day Saints speak of Zion. But the reality is that it is all within reach if we follow the path of peace and refuse to engage in or revert to the ways of the animal kingdom. And a society based on reconciliation is one where racism, nationalism, sexism, hatred and bigotry of any kind no longer have any power or purpose, because the power of those in power to force their views on everyone else will have been eliminated along with the thing that makes such a thing possible- the State.
The Better Tomorrow
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
(Matthew 5:48)
In response to his critics who asserted the supposed impossibility of his positions, Gandhi said this:
I justify entire non-violence, and consider it possible in relations between man and man and nations and nations; but it is not “a resignation from all real fighting against wickedness”. On the contrary, the non-violence of my conception is a more active and more real fighting against wickedness than retaliation whose very nature is to increase wickedness. I contemplate a mental, and therefore a moral opposition to immoralities. I seek entirely to blunt the edge of the tyrant’s sword, not by putting up against it a sharper-edged weapon, but by disappointing his expectation that I would be offering physical resistance. The resistance of the soul that I should offer instead would elude him. It would at first dazzle him, and at last compel recognition from him, which recognition would not humiliate him but would uplift him. It may be urged that this is an ideal state. And so it is.
We often speak of idealism as if it is something impossible, utopian in nature, and therefore not worth even trying for. But the truth of the matter is that the exact opposite is true. Believing that the State -a society based on the concept that brutality, theft, and violence will create anything other than oppression, discord, division, and hatred- is utopian nonsense. The pragmatist and idealist both realize the power of nonviolence not only to win individual battles -such as those currently taking place between the police state and its oppressed peoples in the streets of America today- but also the power of nonviolence to make oppression and rioting both things of the past.
The ideal will not be achieved overnight, obviously. But it can begin right this moment. If we do so we will take the first steps not merely towards overcoming racism and the systemic violence, brutality, and abuse of the State, but towards creating a better society altogether. If we really want to achieve our goals there is simply no other way to achieve them. And if we really want to achieve them then we must begin to actually pursue them instead of returning to the State like dogs to their vomit. We must recognize that the State is not merely an outside invention imposed upon us, it emerges from the violent and hateful parts of our souls. To counter that we must embrace the light within and follow the ideals that create the world we wished we lived in and not the ones which have created the one we currently inhabit.
A better world doesn’t have to wait until a tomorrow that never arrives. We can begin building it today by following the path of transformation laid out in the Principles of Peace- nonviolence, noncompliance, exposing the State, overwhelming the State, dissolving the State, and reconciliation. And these aren’t just society wide actions. They must take place within us as well. We must expose, overwhelm, and dissolve the State within us so that our examples will serve as ones to follow instead of ones to abhor. As we do so, everything else will naturally follow without compulsory means, forever and ever.
