A non-violent response to terrorism

What would a non-violent response to terrorism look like?

First of all you must understand that an act of terrorism does not arise in isolation. It is an act of desperation on the part of someone who feels their voice and their interests are not being heard. Despise the act though you might, the first requirement of response is to look into the standpoint of the instigator of the violence. This is, of course, difficult. The act itself and the damage it wreaks splashes everyone who is touched by it with the same rage that was its own motivation. So before any dialogue of meaning can be entered into, there is a process of grief that must be gone through and a recognition that the desire for revenge and the desire for punishment is a mirror image of what has ignited the terrorism in the first place. It is imperative, therefore, not to act out these intense emotions.

When the storm of grief has passed - and this may take many months - it is necessary to examine the conditions under which the terrorism has flourished. What are the ineqities and denials around them that have allowed people to feel that only desperate actions will call attention to their cause? We pay, in America, a great deal of lip-service to justice and yet we do not concern ourselves with the broader implications of that word. We are happy to take the position of righteous victim and demand revenge when we feel violated but we refuse to look at the many injustices that we perpetrate both nationally and internationally in the name of our market economy, which intends to colonize the world. We demand absolute conformity in the name of freedom and refuse to respect cultures that do not want to participate in our materialistic ways. If it is to our benefit, we openly support governments of oppression and in the name of "aid" tie countries up in debts they can never hope to pay while we use up their natural resources.

In these times, it is considered unpatriotic to know these truths.

There is a tremendous call to revenge in the country at this time. Anger feels enormously empowering to the ego, and there is an effort in the media to maintain a level of outrage so that people will not move beyond their blood lust. Our leaders believe that war is good for the economy. The natural movement of the heart, though, is into grief and through it into acceptance. Once acceptance has been achieved the desire for dialogue naturally arises. There is no situation in which dialogue cannot help.

Your first response to this terrorism must be to deal with the hatred and violence that arises in you as part of your grief for this act of violence. You must resist the temptation to embrace simplistic, black and white interpretations of the situation. Though you may revile the methods of the terrorists, you can know that to make them "wrong" and yourself "right" is to enter into the set of delusions that lead to war. You must invoke your willingness to understand their position and why they see you as their enemy. You must be willing to recognize all of the base emotional aspects of this situation as your own - fear, greed, frustration, hatred, self-interest at the cost of another's good, desperation. And you must bring to them your compassion and your commitment to ride the wave of them into a higher understanding

We are all terrorists. We have all been guilty of the sin of annihilating that which threatens or displeases us. Though most of us don't cause literal death, we none the less engage in mental and verbal war. There is nothing, then, that we cannot bring our compassion to. Only when we recognize in these acts our own, human rage and violence can we hope to bring into a dialogue the willingness to meet that could lead to a non-violent solution.

All that has been said here applies also to nations. Though the act of terrorism cannot be condoned, the cause and the source of it must be deeply examined at the level of the biggest picture before a true and just response can be arrived at.

Let your grief open your heart that the pain of all beings might be healed.