Written for and originally posted at Service Space. I know Cindy and Craig Corrie. They were not seeking revenge when they brought a civil case against the Israeli government for the appalling death of their daughter Rachel, who was crushed under an Israeli military bulldozer when she was trying to protect a Palestinian home… read more
Posts by Prof. Michael Nagler
Art as murder
“The only thing that you can control, and you must therefore control, is the imagery in your own mind.” – Epictetus Until today I didn’t even know there was such a thing as white supremacist music. Wade Michael Page knew; the “domestic terrorist” who killed six people at the Oak Creek Sikh temple in Wisconsin… read more
Spirit and Science in the Vedanta
IN AUGUST OF 1932, MAHATMA GANDHI WAS IN PRISON WHEN NEWS REACHED him that the “Paramount Power,” the British Raj, planned to introduce separate electorates for the untouchables and the caste Hindus. Believing that this would amount to a “vivisection” of India, what was he to do? On September 13th he stunned the nation by… read more
Raising the curtain on “Gandhi Center Stage”
“History … is a record of an interruption of the course of nature. Soul-force, being natural, is not noted in history.” —M.K.Gandhi I have never bothered to respond to Gandhi detractors because, like the Mahatma himself, I tend to think their pathetic writings are best left to die a natural death—the eventual fate of all… read more
Upcoming conference
The annual conference of the Ahimsa Center at Cal Poly will focus on “Ahimsa and human happiness.” Conference speakers and panelists are drawn from wide variety of disciplines to examine the relationship between ahimsa and sustainable happiness. For conference details, please visit http://www.csupomona.edu/~ahimsacenter/conference/conference_12.shtml .… read more
Economics of peace educational materials
We received this email recently that seems to contain very useful teaching material. Let us know if you use it! (The links don’t seem to work from this blog but you can reach them through their website). Dear Educator, I hope that you are having a pleasant summer. As the fall semester approaches, I wanted… read more
Spinning Wheel #3: Facing Fascism
by Michael Nagler Police brutality, suppression of dissent, heartless cruelty toward the disadvantaged, xenophobia and other forms of racism, Freikorps-type vigilante groups, corporate domination subjugating law and government, election fraud and war — America has virtually all the telltale characteristics of fascism, not just some. And it could not be otherwise, because the culture of… read more
The Spinning Wheel #1: Why Vets Commit Suicide
Nicholas Kristoff is someone I admire as a writer and a person. His recent article on the disgrace of the Veterans Administration – how it abandons traumatized vets if their scars happen to be, as they increasingly are, mental or spiritual in nature – is poignant and important. But it overlooks, as most modern media… read more
Do we live in a meaningless universe?
Ours is not an empty, disorderly world, but an exquisitely structured web whose design embraces and affects all living things. –Sally Goerner WESTERN CIVILIZATION could be considered a grand experiment, culminating in the three-plus centuries of the industrial revolution, to see if the universe could be accounted for without resorting to the concept of a… read more
Violence and Evolution: Where Do We Stand?
How do we measure violence? The question has come up because of recent studies by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, featured on TED among other venues, which seem to show that, contrary to common opinion, violence has been steadily decreasing by a number of measures for several millennia. Some of these measures are at first sight… read more
