Why Relentless Kindness Is Strength and Violence Is Weakness

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

The extraordinarily peaceable movement, The Saners, may fade out. Or it may become the most powerful movement in human history.

It seems like what people want is a contradiction.

They want more for their tax dollars yet elect someone who wants to give them less. They work their entire lives for retirement and then, even those who can finally afford to stop, keep working because they don’t know what else to do with themselves. They want better lives for their children, yet support people and policies that will ruin the Earth before their children grow up.

Of course, I’m simplifying and these descriptions aren’t representative of everyone. But they are common and familiar scenarios.

Foolish People Revile the Only Folks Who Try To Help

What’s more important than keeping the Earth habitable? And who are more hated than climate activists?

Al Gore is ridiculed for his personal carbon footprint. Greta Thunberg is portrayed as a child manipulated by her parents. Other protesters are criticized for blocking traffic and being a nuisance.

Why can’t they protest somewhere that they can’t be seen or heard, and leave us alone. Leave us alone and let the planet be cooked by insane, greedy opportunists?

We are kind of okay with climate lobbying. Yes, we can and should do this through the system. We should persuade our leaders to do the right thing. We should mobilize voters. Our American system gives us an outlet for change.

But it doesn’t. We know that it doesn’t. We’ve known about the climate crisis for decades. (Of course, scientists have known about it much longer, as have oil companies.) Nothing has ever been done to stop the crisis.

Let me repeat that.

NOTHING HAS EVER BEEN DONE TO STOP THE CRISIS.

Why do I say that? Don’t we have emerging clean energy technologies? Aren’t electric cars replacing gasoline powered cars? Didn’t the government pass the biggest climate bill in history? And what about the Paris Agreement?

Throughout all of this, carbon emissions continue and even expand at disastrous levels. The failure to address the climate crisis in any meaningful way has brought us to the brink of collapse, and aims to drag us over the “finished line.”

What have we tried within the system? Well, in 2000, a majority of American voters selected a climate activist as their president.

They were overruled by the SCOTUS who installed a Texas oilman in the White House.

Some of us supported a Green New Deal—a vague government plan to protect the environment and redirect financial activity towards more just and sustainable actions. That went nowhere, and was probably too vague to do much anyway.

And there were some protests that the public deemed innocuous enough to avoid rebuke, protests that were easily ignored and forgotten.

Working through the system has been such an obvious and dismal failure that more and more people are becoming doomers, convinced that our civilization and perhaps our species has no future. Indeed, if we continue on our present course, they are right.

The point is that the powerful institutions that guide our lives (and that we allow to guide our lives) are deadly, foolish and unworthy of our support. The government fails. Representative government fails. Media fails. Capitalism fails.

Every bit of it is a catastrophic failure with no credible claim to our support, to our loyalty, or even deserving of our attention. If we want a better future, or any future at all, we must look elsewhere.

We must look to ourselves and each other. To the people who actually care. To those who aren’t hypnotized by money and power and foolishness.

We must be the sane and caring people, who love Nature and humanity and each other and Life Itself. Our leaders and systems don’t care. They aren’t evil geniuses and they aren’t all powerful.

They are astoundingly stupid and pathetically weak. We don’t see it, but that’s the truth.

Why do I say this?

Weakness Masquerading As Power

Power, and not only in a democracy, comes from the people. The government does nothing. Corporations do nothing. All the work is done by ordinary people. Everything that is produced is produced by ordinary people.

Without our active support, there is no government. And no corporations. No democratic government. No communist government. No dictatorship.

We have seen the most bloodthirsty, brutal and violent dictators fall and flee when they lose public support.

Government and corporate leaders who fail to serve the people are liars, manipulators, and swindlers. Lies and manipulation and violence are the only tools they use. They offer nothing else. They have nothing else.

History shows that through nonviolent noncooperation, we can rid ourselves of them. History shows that by building better institutions, we can replace abusive systems with humane ones. History shows that bad rulers and systems can exist ONLY with our active support, and when we withdraw that support, they are done.

Ah, But They Have the Guns!

Guns need people to operate them. Ordinary people—our spouses and parents and children—are the people who hold the guns, who serve the authorities allegedly in service of the public. At various periods in history, when ordered to turn their weapons on ordinary people, including their loved ones, they refuse.

When we stop fearing and stop obeying bad leaders, they are finished. This nonviolent noncooperation doesn’t require all of us. But it requires enough of us, more than we have today.

That’s why our group, The Saners, is actively recruiting. We aim to be perhaps the most extreme group in history, the most extreme in our non-violence and benevolence. This will be our strength, and will enable us to defeat the leaders of the United States, of China, of Russia and all the regimes who continue to accelerate climate collapse.

We will stop doing evil work. We will stop extracting fossil fuels. We will stop producing useless crap that damages the planet AND wastes human lives in senseless—actually destructive—labor. We will protect the Earth and the dignity of people everywhere.

Yes, the evil regimes will do violence to compel us to continue doing their work. But our withdrawal will be slow, subtle and in stages. There will be no case where shooting us will credibly appear justified.

You cannot self-righteously kills someone who is handing you flowers. When you do, those who are sitting on the sidelines will join the revolution. Nonviolent noncooperation will INCREASE, quickly and sharply. And regimes will fall.

I wish we had more time and had more compliant, or even simply sane, rulers. They would realize that “winning” a dead planet is no victory. They would be doing what they should be doing—even if it was only out of enlightened self-interest. But they have a crippling tunnel vision. They are self-destructive and very, very stupid.

If this movement succeeds, in all likelihood you will eventually join. Most people will. But those who join now, who help us in the early stages—and nobody will blame you if you aren’t ready—will be part of something historical and beautiful.

Please consider joining The Saners. Read about us, and if you are ready, sign up.