Non-Violence

In non-violence, the method of the oppressed is to confront the oppressor with his own humanity. Whosoever strikes them down strikes down himself, and claims willingly the title of monster and enemy-of-humanity. That such a method can prove effective speaks firstly to the unfathomable courage of the oppressed, but also to the basic decency of the oppressor.

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The above is a quick paragraph I wrote on the plane this weekend. I don't know that it says anything surprising, but it is my hope that it does so with some style and brevity. Interestingly, the below-mentioned Schmitt argues non-violence is madness and humanism is essentially meaningless.

Nietzsche is Wasted on Nihilists

Nietzsche suggests a love of versucher, the experimenter, the one who attempts. To love all that is in motion in man. "A dangerous going forward, a dangerous going back," says Nietzsche. To love the brave for their tendency to be destroyed, to love the free for their will to become lost. To love the incomplete that they are always in the moment of creation. To maintain fervently the right of refusal ("hardness!" cries Nietzsche, "severity! command!") because one must drink so deeply of all that is felt and heard and said. To leap in one fatal moment from the love of the incomplete to the love of the broken...
For me there is a constant temptation, passing under the city of New York, that I should stop and question one who is proclaiming damnation -- who spends his days under the earth. Some days there is the will to defy him, to match him madness for madness. But in the truest and most dangerous moments -- to sit and speak and understand him, out of a deep and somehow savage desire, to heal the wounded.