Fighting with non-violence - Scilla Elworthy

[Music] [Music] in half a century of trying to help prevent Wars there's one question that never leaves me how do we deal with extreme violence without using force in return when you're faced with brutality whether it's a child facing a bully in the playground or domestic violence or on the streets of Syria today facing tanks and shnol what's the most effective thing to do fight back give in use more Force this question how do I deal with the bully without becoming a thug in return has been with me ever since I was a child I remember I was about 13 glued to a grainy black and white television in my parents living room as Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest and kids not much older than me were throwing themselves at the tanks and getting moan down and I rushed upstairs and started packing my suitcase and my mother came up and said what on Earth are you doing and I said I'm going to Budapest and she said what on Earth for and I said kids are getting killed there there's something terrible happening and she said don't be so silly and I started to cry and she got it she said okay I see it serious um you're much too young to help you need training I'll help you but just unpack your suitcase and so I got some training and went and worked in Africa during most of my 20s but I realized that what I really needed to know I couldn't get from training courses I wanted to understand how violence how oppression works and what I've discovered since is this bullies use violence in three ways they use political violence to intimidate physical violence to terrorize and mental or emotional violence to undermine and only very rarely in very few cases does it work to use more violence Nelson Mandela went to jail believing in violence and 27 years later he and his colleagues had slowly and carefully honed the skills the incredible skills that they needed to turn one of the most vicious governments the world has known into democracy and they did it in a total Devotion to nonviolence they realized that using Force against Force doesn't work so what does work over time I've collected about half a dozen methods that do work of course there are many more that do work and that are effective and the first is that the change that has to take place has to take place here inside me it's my response my attitude to oppression that I've got control over that I can do something about and what I need to develop is self knowledge to do that that means I need to know how I tick when I Collapse where my formidable points are and where my weaker points are when do I give in what will I stand up for and meditation or self inspection is one of the ways of G it's not the only one it's one of the ways of gaining this kind of inner power and My Heroine here like satish's is on Suchi in Burma she was leading a group of students on a protest in the streets of rangu they came around a corner faced with a row of machine guns and she realized straight away that the soldiers with their fingers shaking on the triggers were more scared than the student protesters behind her but she told the students to sit down and she walked forward with such calm and such Clarity and such total lack of fear that she could walk right up to the first gun put her hand on it and lower it and no one got killed so that's what the master of Fear Can Do Not only faced with machine guns but if you if you meet a knife fight in the street that we have to practice so what about our fear I have a little Mantra my fear grows fat on the energy I feed it and if it grows very big it probably happens so we all know that 3:00 in the morning syndrome when something you've been worrying about wakes you up I see a lot of people and for an hour you toss and turn it gets worse and worse and by 4:00 you're pinned to the pillow by a monster this big the only thing to do is to get up make a cup of tea and sit down with the fear like a child beside you you're the adult the fear is the child and you talk to the the fear and you ask it what it wants what it needs how can this be made better how can the child feel stronger and you make a plan and you say okay now we're going back to sleep halfast 7 we're getting up and that's what we're going to do I had one of these 3 a.m. episodes on Sunday paralyzed with fear at coming to talk to you um so I got I did the thing I got up made the cup of tea sat down with it did it all um and I'm here still partly paralyzed but I'm [Applause] here so that's fear what about anger wherever there's um Injustice there's anger but anger is like gasoline and if you spray it around and somebody lights a match you've got an Inferno but anger as an engine in an engine is powerful if we can put our anger inside an engine it can drive us forward it can get us through the Dreadful moments and it can give us real inner power and I learned this in my work with nuclear weapon policy makers because at the beginning I was so outraged at the dangers they were exposing us to that I just wanted to argue and blame and make them wrong totally ineffective in order to develop uh a dialogue for change we have to deal with our anger it's okay to be angry with the the thing the nuclear weapons in this case but it is hopeless to be angry with the people they are human beings just like us and they're doing what they think is best and that the basis on which we have to talk with them so that's the third one anger and it brings me to the Crux of what's going on or what I perceive is going on in the world today which is that last century was