#364 – How will you improve the world by practicing nonviolence?

Those micro-attacks you think nothing about? They poison your consciousness–and the world

Joy Division was wrong: it's not love that will tear us apart–it's hate.

In a recent study, authors Algan, Davoine, Renault, and Stantcheva analyzed how emotions influence someone's policy views. They found that "negative emotions," namely anger, "increase support for protectionism [and] restrictive immigration policies."

In other words, anger fosters separation. And when we believe we're "separate" from others, when we "other" them, we feel it's ok to treat them with less respect than we think we deserve.

The old us versus them adage.

We feel it's ok to roll our eyes at this person's weight, this one's opinion, that other's outfit. To despise this person for their behavior, that one for an off-hand comment, this other for the way they looked at you.

And soon it's you despising yourself. Attacking yourself for that comment you made, for your weight, for your ill-fitting outfit, for how you looked at the woman wearing that dress you so disliked, for...

Without thinking, you're poisoning yourself, and with it, adding drops of poison into the world.

The solution? Radical nonviolence.

To practice radical nonviolence is to radically refuse to engage in attack thoughts, even the tiniest ones that you think don't matter, or to let them go once you catch them intruding in your mind.

From there, you learn to forgive–first yourself, for having hated, and then everyone else. I know it's difficult, but that's the work.

"(...) To learn how to forgive, perhaps (...) better start with something easier than the Gestapo."

C.S. Lewis

What micro-attacks will you stop poisoning yourself with?

Love,

Carolina