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Taken from ‘Nonviolence’ by Mark Kurlansky and the Dalai Lama. Written as 25 lessons in the history of nonviolence Each one of these is at least one blog in and of itself. Many of these require much more information to be fully understood. But nonetheless each one is a great conversation starter, and will get you thinking. Hopefully I’ll expound on these ‘lessons’ in coming blogs.

• There is no proactive word for nonviolence.
• Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.
• Practitioners of nonviolence are seen as enemies of the state.
• Once a state takes over a religion, the religion loses its nonviolent teachings.
• A rebel can be defanged and co-opted by making him a saint after he is dead.
• Somewhere behind every war there are always a few founding lies.
• A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings.
• People who go to war start to resemble their enemy.
• A conflict between a violent and a nonviolent force is a moral argument. If the violent side can provoke the nonviolent side to violence, the violent side has won.
• The problem lies not in the nature of man but in the nature of power.
• The longer a war lasts, the less popular it becomes.
• The state imagines it is impotent without a military because it cannot conceive of power without force.
• It is often not the largest but the best organized and most articulate group that prevails.
• All debate momentarily ends with an “enforced silence” once the first shots are fired.
• A shooting war is not necessary to overthrow an established power but is used to consolidate the revolution itself.
• Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.
• Warfare produces peace activists. A group of veterans is a likely place to find peace activists.
• People motivated by fear do not act well.
• While it is perfectly feasible to convince a people faced with brutal repression to rise up in a suicidal attack on their oppressor, it is almost impossible to convince them to meet deadly violence with nonviolent resistance.
• Wars do not have to be sold to the general public if they can be carried out by an all-volunteer professional military.
• Once you start the business of killing, you just get “deeper and deeper,” without limits.
• Violence is a virus that infects and takes over.
• The miracle is that despite all of society’s promotion of warfare, most soldiers find warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.
• The hard work of beginning a movement to end war has already been done.

~Mark Kurlansky

My wife, Kelly, asked me today while we were watching a movie (The Patriot w/ Mel) “If we are anti-violence, is it OK to watch violence in the movies?”. This made me think pretty hard. I didn’t have a good answer. I wanted to say it was OK, so I could continue watching what ever movies I felt like watching. But I didn’t feel right saying that it was OK either.

So I came to this temporary conclusion. If the movie didn’t glorify violence then it was OK to watch. But that’s a simple answer to a far more complicated ‘problem’. What if a movie showed the harmful effects of violence on society in the end, or at some moment in the movie, but for the most part glorified it in the rest of the movie. I think that a majority of violent movies fall into this category. Even if the movie doesn’t glorify violence in the end I think it’s easy to gravitate, and remember the violence without it’s negative impact on society. I remember watching Goodfellas when I was younger and thinking the mafia was pretty cool. Somehow still thinking this even after the terrible lives the characters were living at the end of the film. The same went for Casino, Bravehart, Gladiator, and countless other action packed movies. So this really proved the point that a violent movie with some redeeming value still can be harmful, at least in my life.

So what about reality? The reality is that our world is violent. So to accurately portray the real world, a film must show violence. I think this is true to a certain degree. Watching a movie on the genocide in Rawanda was violent, but I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anyone longing to be in that situation. The same goes for Shindlers List, The Pianist, and others. So there must be a difference between acceptable and unacceptable violence.

I guess I’m starting to understand the difference now. But how do you tell what a movie will be like before watching it? I don’t have an answer for that (as if I have an answer for anthing). I think a good place for me to start is to just deal with the obvious. Some movies are more obvious than others.

My wife mentioned to me a few other things we could also consider when it comes to watching violent movies. How about the historical, or educational value? Watching a movie on Gettysburg is a form of education, and it is very violent. Is this OK? The tricky thing about the educational value of a movie is whether it is the the kind of education that is worth being educated on. I don’t think I can use the education argument for mafia movies, arguing that I need to be educated on blowing someones brains out.

There is a lot more I could say about this, but the blog is getting long. I guess it all comes down to motive. When I watch a movie, am I’m looking for violence to be entertained? Or is it necessary for a good educational cause? I think this question is enough to get me 95% there.