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Fighting with non-violence

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    In half a century of trying to help prevent wars,
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    there's one question that never leaves me:
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    How do we deal with extreme violence
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    without using force in return?
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    When you're faced with brutality,
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    whether it's a child facing a bully on a playground
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    or domestic violence --
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    or, on the streets of Syria today,
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    facing tanks and shrapnel,
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    what's the most effective thing to do?
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    Fight back? Give in?
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    Use more force?
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    This question: "How do I deal with a bully
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    without becoming a thug in return?"
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    has been with me ever since I was a child.
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    I remember I was about 13,
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    glued to a grainy black and white television in my parents' living room
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    as Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest,
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    and kids not much older than me
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    were throwing themselves at the tanks
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    and getting mown down.
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    And I rushed upstairs and started packing my suitcase.
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    And my mother came up and said, "What on Earth are you doing?"
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    And I said, "I'm going to Budapest."
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    And she said, "What on Earth for?"
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    And I said, "Kids are getting killed there.
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    There's something terrible happening."
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    And she said, "Don't be so silly."
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    And I started to cry.
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    And she got it, she said,
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    "Okay, I see it's serious.
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    You're much too young to help.
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    You need training. I'll help you.
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    But just unpack your suitcase."
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    And so I got some training
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    and went and worked in Africa during most of my 20s.
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    But I realized that what I really needed to know
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    I couldn't get from training courses.
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    I wanted to understand
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    how violence, how oppression, works.
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    And what I've discovered since is this:
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    Bullies use violence in three ways.
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    They use political violence to intimidate,
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    physical violence to terrorize
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    and mental or emotional violence to undermine.
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    And only very rarely in very few cases
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    does it work to use more violence.
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    Nelson Mandela went to jail believing in violence,
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    and 27 years later
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    he and his colleagues
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    had slowly and carefully
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    honed the skills, the incredible skills, that they needed
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    to turn one of the most vicious governments the world has known
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    into a democracy.
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    And they did it in a total devotion to non-violence.
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    They realized that using force against force
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    doesn't work.
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    So what does work?
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    Over time I've collected about a half-dozen methods
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    that do work -- of course there are many more --
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    that do work and that are effective.
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    And the first is
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    that the change that has to take place
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    has to take place here, inside me.
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    It's my response, my attitude, to oppression
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    that I've got control over,
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    and that I can do something about.
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    And what I need to develop is self-knowledge to do that.
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    That means I need to know how I tick,
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    when I collapse,
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    where my formidable points are,
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    where my weaker points are.
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    When do I give in?
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    What will I stand up for?
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    And meditation or self-inspection
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    is one of the ways -- again it's not the only one --
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    it's one of the ways
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    of gaining this kind of inner power.
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    And my heroine here -- like Satish's --
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    is Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.
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    She was leading a group of students
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    on a protest in the streets of Rangoon.
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    They came around a corner faced with a row of machine guns.
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    And she realized straight away
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    that the soldiers with their fingers shaking on the triggers
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    were more scared than the student protesters behind her.
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    But she told the students to sit down.
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    And she walked forward with such calm and such clarity
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    and such total lack of fear
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    that she could walk right up to the first gun,
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    put her hand on it and lower it.
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    And no one got killed.
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    So that's what the mastery of fear can do --
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    not only faced with machine guns,
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    but if you meet a knife fight in the street.
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    But we have to practice.
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    So what about our fear?
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    I have a little mantra.
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    My fear grows fat
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    on the energy I feed it.
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    And if it grows very big
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    it probably happens.
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    So we all know the three o'clock in the morning syndrome,
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    when something you've been worrying about wakes you up --
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    I see a lot of people --
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    and for an hour you toss and turn,
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    it gets worse and worse,
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    and by four o'clock you're pinned to the pillow
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    by a monster this big.
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    The only thing to do
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    is to get up, make a cup of tea
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    and sit down with the fear like a child beside you.
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    You're the adult.
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    The fear is the child.
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    And you talk to the fear
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    and you ask it what it wants, what it needs.
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    How can this be made better?
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    How can the child feel stronger?
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    And you make a plan.
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    And you say, "Okay, now we're going back to sleep.
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    Half-past seven, we're getting up and that's what we're going to do."
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    I had one of these 3 a.m. episodes on Sunday --
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    paralyzed with fear at coming to talk to you.
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    (Laughter)
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    So I did the thing.
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    I got up, made the cup of tea, sat down with it, did it all
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    and I'm here -- still partly paralyzed, but I'm here.
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    (Applause)
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    So that's fear. What about anger?
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    Wherever there is injustice there's anger.
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    But anger is like gasoline,
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    and if you spray it around and somebody lights a match,
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    you've got an inferno.
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    But anger as an engine -- in an engine -- is powerful.
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    If we can put our anger inside an engine,
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    it can drive us forward,
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    it can get us through the dreadful moments
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    and it can give us real inner power.
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    And I learned this in my work
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    with nuclear weapon policy-makers.
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    Because at the beginning I was so outraged
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    at the dangers they were exposing us to
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    that I just wanted to argue and blame and make them wrong.
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    Totally ineffective.
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    In order to develop a dialogue for change
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    we have to deal with our anger.
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    It's okay to be angry with the thing --
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    the nuclear weapons in this case --
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    but it is hopeless to be angry with the people.
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    They are human beings just like us.
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    And they're doing what they think is best.
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    And that's the basis on which we have to talk with them.
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    So that's the third one, anger.
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    And it brings me to the crux
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    of what's going on, or what I perceive as going on,
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    in the world today,
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    which is that last century was top-down power.
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    It was still governments telling people what to do.
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    This century there's a shift.
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    It's bottom-up or grassroots power.
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    It's like mushrooms coming through concrete.
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    It's people joining up with people, as Bundy just said, miles away
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    to bring about change.
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    And Peace Direct spotted quite early on
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    that local people in areas of very hot conflict
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    know what to do.
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    They know best what to do.
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    So Peace Direct gets behind them to do that.
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    And the kind of thing they're doing
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    is demobilizing militias,
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    rebuilding economies,
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    resettling refugees,
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    even liberating child soldiers.
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    And they have to risk their lives almost every day
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    to do this.
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    And what they've realized
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    is that using violence in the situations they operate in
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    is not only less humane,
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    but it's less effective
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    than using methods that connect people with people, that rebuild.
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    And I think that the U.S. military
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    is finally beginning to get this.
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    Up to now their counter-terrorism policy
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    has been to kill insurgents at almost any cost,
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    and if civilians get in the way,
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    that's written as "collateral damage."
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    And this is so infuriating and humiliating
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    for the population of Afghanistan,
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    that it makes the recruitment for al-Qaeda very easy,
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    when people are so disgusted by, for example,
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    the burning of the Koran.
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    So the training of the troops has to change.
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    And I think there are signs that it is beginning to change.
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    The British military have always been much better at this.
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    But there is one magnificent example for them to take their cue from,
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    and that's a brilliant U.S. lieutenant colonel
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    called Chris Hughes.
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    And he was leading his men down the streets of Najaf --
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    in Iraq actually --
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    and suddenly people were pouring out of the houses on either side of the road,
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    screaming, yelling, furiously angry,
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    and surrounded these very young troops who were completely terrified,
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    didn't know what was going on, couldn't speak Arabic.
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    And Chris Hughes strode into the middle of the throng
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    with his weapon above his head, pointing at the ground,
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    and he said, "Kneel."
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    And these huge soldiers
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    with their backpacks and their body armor,
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    wobbled to the ground.
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    And complete silence fell.
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    And after about two minutes,
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    everybody moved aside and went home.
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    Now that to me is wisdom in action.
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    In the moment, that's what he did.
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    And it's happening everywhere now.
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    You don't believe me?
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    Have you asked yourselves
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    why and how so many dictatorships have collapsed
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    over the last 30 years?
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    Dictatorships in Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
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    Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
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    Mali, Madagascar,
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    Poland, the Philippines,
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    Serbia, Slovenia, I could go on,
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    and now Tunisia and Egypt.
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    And this hasn't just happened.
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    A lot of it is due to a book
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    written by an 80-year-old man in Boston, Gene Sharp.
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    He wrote a book called "From Dictatorship to Democracy"
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    with 81 methodologies for non-violent resistance.
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    And it's been translated into 26 languages.
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    It's flown around the world.
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    And it's being used by young people and older people everywhere,
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    because it works and it's effective.
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    So this is what gives me hope --
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    not just hope, this is what makes me feel very positive right now.
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    Because finally human beings are getting it.
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    We're getting practical, doable methodologies
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    to answer my question:
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    How do we deal with a bully without becoming a thug?
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    We're using the kind of skills that I've outlined:
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    inner power -- the development of inner power -- through self-knowledge,
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    recognizing and working with our fear,
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    using anger as a fuel,
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    cooperating with others,
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    banding together with others,
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    courage,
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    and most importantly, commitment to active non-violence.
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    Now I don't just believe in non-violence.
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    I don't have to believe in it.
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    I see evidence everywhere of how it works.
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    And I see that we, ordinary people,
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    can do what Aung San Suu Kyi and Ghandi and Mandela did.
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    We can bring to an end
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    the bloodiest century that humanity has ever known.
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    And we can organize to overcome oppression
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    by opening our hearts
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    as well as strengthening this incredible resolve.
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    And this open-heartedness is exactly what I've experienced
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    in the entire organization of this gathering since I got here yesterday.
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    Thank you.
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    (Applause)
Title:
Fighting with non-violence
Speaker:
Scilla Elworthy
Description:

How do you deal with a bully without becoming a thug? In this wise and soulful talk, peace activist Scilla Elworthy maps out the skills we need -- as nations and individuals -- to fight extreme force without using force in return. To answer the question of why and how non-violence works, she evokes historical heroes -- Aung San Suu Kyi, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela -- and the personal philosophies that powered their peaceful protests. (Filmed at TEDxExeter.)

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
15:47

English subtitles

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