Essay
Let’s make a commitment to non-violence
From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step. – Denis Diderot
History is full of blind belief, believing something without question, no matter the evidence. It’s amazing that the world around us has changed so much over the past thousand years, while the way we think and feel has barely changed at all. So much of how we live is still driven by fear: fear of hell and damnation, fear that nothing means anything, fear that everything will fall into chaos. Every violent act, whether it hurts someone’s body or their mind, starts as a blind belief. A Hindu must first blindly decide that a Muslim is inferior, or an enemy, before he can be violent toward him, and the same goes the other way around. You see this pattern between any two groups in conflict: Jews and Arabs, Democrats and Republicans, and so on. The story repeats itself: one group labels the other as a threat, and then uses violence to get rid of the threat.
Blind belief grows out of a deep need to feel better than others, and that need comes from not loving yourself. Only when I feel not good enough, not worthy of love on the inside, do I look for approval on the outside: through my religion, my politics, or my social group. It can even be as simple as tying my whole sense of who I am to the way I look. But I want to go deeper into this.
Why does a person believe something blindly? Let’s take a closer look. When I blindly believe I’m better than someone else, I put them on a ladder of human worth and decide they’re lower than me. That label then decides how much they’re worth. For example, saying that Black people should die because they’re all criminals labels people by the color of their skin and treats them as less than human. When I call someone ugly, I’m letting something on the outside decide their worth, and so I treat them as less than human too. It’s like saying a person is worth less because they have blue eyes. When you think about it, it’s absurd, yet many of us do it all the time. We treat people differently because of their skin color or their looks. How many of you have treated a beautiful woman differently from an ugly one?
Taken further, an extreme blind belief can turn into fanaticism, and lead to violence. The belief that I belong to the one true religion and I’m going to heaven, while everyone else will burn in hell forever has led to all kinds of horrors throughout history. It’s been said that the greatest warmongers in history were religious leaders. The list goes on and on, but here is one example:
*A short description of each war
Crusades (1095–1291): A series of religious wars started by the Catholic Church in medieval Europe. Their main goal was to take back Jerusalem and other holy places from Muslim rule. There were at least eight major Crusades. The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the most successful and captured Jerusalem. The Crusades changed the medieval world, bringing cultures into contact and shifting who held power.
Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648): One of the most destructive wars in European history, fought mostly in Central Europe. It began as a fight between Catholic and Protestant states within the Holy Roman Empire, then grew into a wider war involving most of Europe’s great powers. The Peace of Westphalia ended the war in 1648 and redrew the map of Europe.
French Wars of Religion (1562–1598): A series of wars in France between Catholics and Protestants (known as Huguenots). They were marked by brutal massacres, like the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, and many lives were lost. The wars ended in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes, which gave the Huguenots important rights.
Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864): A massive civil war in southern China led by Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The rebels tried to overthrow China’s ruling Qing Dynasty and set up their own “Heavenly Kingdom.” An estimated 20 to 30 million people died, making it one of the deadliest wars in history. The Qing eventually crushed the rebellion, but were badly weakened by it.
Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005): A war mainly between Sudan’s central government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). It largely continued the First Sudanese Civil War and was driven by ethnic, religious, and economic tensions. At least 1 million people died, and about 4 million were forced from their homes. It ended with a peace agreement in 2005, which led to South Sudan becoming independent in 2011.
At times like this, I wonder if the founders of each religion feel deeply frustrated that their followers can’t follow their teachings. Didn’t Jesus say to love your enemies? Then how did the Catholic Church decide that God wanted them to kill Muslims (in the Crusades), or other Christians who weren’t Catholic (in the Thirty Years’ War and the French wars)? How could anyone reasonably come to that conclusion?
In the same way, how can devout Evangelical Christians in America connect Jesus with guns and military power? If Jesus is real, and I believe he is, he must be frustrated that his followers can’t follow the path of non-violence and love that he gave his life for.
But let’s get to the heart of it, shall we? At the root of every blindly believing fanatic is very low self-esteem and a deep lack of self-love. Their sense of who they are is so tied to a label, whether religious, political, or something else, that they’re willing to be violent toward anything they see as a threat. And their great battle against an enemy only strengthens their sense of who they are.
On January 6th, 2021, Donald Trump stirred up a mob to force its way into the Capitol Building to stop the peaceful handover of power. The mob (often called the J6ers) blindly believed the election had been stolen. Of course, it hadn’t been, but this shows the problem with blind belief. Even when shown mountains of evidence, people like this refuse to accept anything that goes against what they already believe. Underneath their blind faith in their leader is a sense of self that depends entirely on something outside them: they see themselves as American patriots destined to save America. The whole QAnon movement is built on this same great battle, against the so-called Deep State.
I don’t deny that a Deep State exists. But I do deny that violence is the way to take it apart. We forget that millions of Americans helped put the Deep State in power with their own votes, without realizing it. They couldn’t, and mostly still can’t, tell the difference between a selfless public servant and a selfish politician. So it’s up to us to remove the beams from our own eyes, as Jesus put it, and fix our own blindness, rather than fight a physical battle against an enemy we’ve imagined.
If any MAGA supporters read this, they might immediately call me a “paid actor” or “a member of the Illuminati.” Or maybe I’m just someone who believes in the freeing power of love, and in non-violence as a way to bring about real change. But to someone who believes blindly, anything that doesn’t match their way of life is a threat that has to be wiped out by force or violence.
I don’t hate these people, and I don’t want them gone. Unlike them, I don’t want any harm to come to them. They are human beings, just like me. They may be confused or struggling with serious mental health problems, but they still deserve basic dignity and respect. This, I believe, is what love is. In my view, the way to bring about change is through non-violence. But for that to happen, the shift from violence to non-violence must happen first in our hearts. Together, we must move toward love. To stop fanaticism and keep it from turning into barbarism, we must bring love into the picture, and commit to bringing about change without violence.