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20
NONVIOLENCE
Martin Luther King, whose leadership helped the Civil Rights Movement to achieve many successes through Non-violence. Of course he was himself killed as a result of his efforts. So were Socrates and Jesus, both of whom refused to live by violence. But Socrates and Jesus have been long remembered and they have influenced innumerable lives, while their contemporary conquerors remain unknown.
Finally, we often overlook the fact that by far the greatest majority of people in the world do live nonviolently the greatest part of their lives. Acting violently towards people around us is the exception rather than the rule. The wide-spread publicity given to acts of violence to-day leads us to overlook this. If the relationship between means and ends, violence and non-violence, is not self-evident to the majority, then one need only ask the realists to be realistic. Let them look around and they will see that non-violence is the norm on the personal level and that non-violence has achieved remarkable results when used. It has simply not been used enough.
Love makes for unity, agreement, mutuality. Love brings about existence in unity; hate and violence separate and create disunity, as our experience shows. Man can realize his essential being only through love. Violence is a denial of being and an impossible condition of realization. Violence leads to self distruction, not self fulfilment. Violence is alien to being, both in regard to the nature of being and the way of its realization. Man is dependent and in most instances does not have control over the great forces around
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