This has been a wild and deadline-filled week, leaving me insufficient time to commit reasonable thoughts to the page. While I’m already hard at work on next week’s post, I didn’t want to skip a chance to write.
One of my weekly routines involves a walk — usually for coffee — to escape the quietude of solo work under lockdown. On these sojourns, I often take the Talking Politics: History of Ideas podcast along as company. Hosted by the Professor of Politics David Runciman, the podcast has made the study of political ideas much friendlier for the uninitiated.
Today I decided to return to Runciman’s discussion of the political ideas (and contributions) of Mahatma Gandhi from the first season of the podcast.
A stranger to few, Gandhi was committed to non-violence — a belief in the possibility of political change through the exercise of conscience and commitment — which is one of the more potent political ideas of the 20th century. Gandhian non-violence becomes potent when self-respecting individuals, often disadvantaged by the status quo, bear witness, demonstrate opposition, and subject themselves to the consequences of the offending state. This idea did not die with Gandhi but remained visible throughout the American civil rights movement, in Nelson Mandela’s resolve to suffer punishment for his “crimes” in apartheid South Africa, and even recent Extinction Rebellion protests.
Gandhi believed that, by making themselves vulnerable and visible, the protesting few would force the corrupted state to respond. And when it did, that state was likely to use coercion and violence, revealing its dark heart and bloodied hands. In short, the state will err, and in erring, reveal its ill-suitedness as a legitimate authority. For Gandhi, this was the inevitable endgame for British rule in India.
While there are many lessons to explore here, it was one of Runciman’s insights towards the end of the episode that struck me. He notes that non-violent resistance is really a story in three acts: the state’s offense, the conscientious objector and their non-violent response, and the wider public pressure from observers who identify and empathize with the aggrieved. I think Runciman is correct here (and we know that non-violent protest works), but I wonder about the future.
In our hyper-connected, image-suffuse, content-overloaded modern world, where even the noble and humanitarian causes have become practices in marketing mercy: what happens to our sense of empathy? In other words, when our access to information in all corners of the world reveals countless crises and atrocities, how do we build collective attention, support, and international pressure around any one issue? How do we prioritize what matters most if everything matters?
Thank you again to all the readers/sharers of these weekly posts. I am continually grateful.
Until next week.
A