Thanks to Counter Punch, Pace e Bene, and The Sierra County Prospect for publishing this essay on their sites. I was deeply saddened to read last week of the death by suicide of Cmdr. Job Price who was with a Navy SEAL team in Afghanistan. I was even sadder when I realized that the… read more
Posts by Prof. Michael Nagler
Violence is No Help: Daily Metta
“I think Tolstoy called [truth force] also soul force or love force and so it is. . . [T]his force is independent of pecuniary or other material assistance; certainly even in its elementary form of physical force or violence.” ~ Gandhi in Indian Opinion, 1914 Occasionally there is something new under the sun. In just… read more
Simple Ideas: Daily Metta
“Khadi has been conceived as the foundation and the image of ahimsa. A real khadi wearer will not utter an untruth. A real khadi wearer will harbour no violence, no deceit, no impurity.” ~ Gandhi, in Mahatma Vol. 4, pg. 217, courtesy of Mumbai Sarvodaya Mandal Gandhi was a genius at using simple ideas, household… read more
Beyond Techniques: Daily Metta
“Only those who realize that there is something in man which is superior to the brute nature in him, and that the latter always yields to it, can effectively be Passive Resisters.” ~ Gandhi in December 1914, from Gandhi: Essential Writings, by K.K. Ramana Murti This would seem to be a tall order! But without… read more
Love as “Punishment”: Daily Metta
“The only way love punishes is by suffering.” ~ Gandhi, Mahatma, II: 87 Just as William James spoke of the “moral equivalent of war,” in the universe of nonviolence there is a precise “equal but opposite” equivalent to every feature of violence. Gandhi hit on this one early, when some teenagers misbehaved in his first… read more
“Envisioning a Future Without War”
December 20: “Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in world striving to put an end to all war.” –Gandhi (Press Statement, April 17, 1945) One of my favorite fields of serious academic study is called Futurism or Future Studies. I find it intriguing because we certainly study history (or… read more
The New Abnormal: Reflections on Paris
We are hearing expressions of shock and sympathy for Paris on all sides, which is appropriate as far as it goes – but it’s not nearly enough. It is clear now that instead of lurching from crisis to crisis, we need to get off this disastrous path. After expressing our condolences we should be saying, “Let… read more
Who We Are: The Spirit Behind Mothers’ Day
There was a time years ago when I was reading Plato very closely – I was studying at Heidelberg at that time – and had a flash of insight about who Socrates really was. What I saw was not something I could easily share with my fellow students, then or now: that both Socrates and Jesus were at… read more
Free Speech and Responsibility
I cut my teeth as a political activist in the famous Free Speech Movement of 1964-65, and still get emotional when I hear some of the fiery speeches of Mario Savio from that day. Though the issue that sparked the movement was racism (discrimination in housing, to be exact) the rallying cry was free speech… read more
Beyond Ferguson: the Deeper Issue
Michael Nagler’s op-ed as seen here first appeared at HuntingtonNews.net on December 4, 2014. You may also want to read The Shanti Sena Network’s response to Ferguson we posted last week. It can only be a good thing that the attention of the nation is focused on the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson,… read more
