Non-Violence Is To Be Yourself

Non-violence is to be yourself. Non-violence begins by honoring one's self as a singular soul-body, refusing to identify with labels of race, gender, religion, or nationality. When we honor ourselves, as selves, we can honor others: not as groups, but as Persons.

But just as right-wing movements divide us, so today's 'progressive' movements promote conflict by labeling Persons by their group identities. Some of us who talk most about 'diversity' actually stifle it, because real diversity is not to promote the tribalism of 'blacks' and 'whites,' Muslims and Christians, straight and LGBT, liberal and conservative - but to recognize the incomparable Personhood of each human being.

Violence begins by making generalizations about people. It is easier to hate a category than a Person. But the general type melts away when we meet the individual, and dare to listen.

I am not a type. I am not a category. I am not a liberal or conservative, a Christian or Pagan. I am not a nationality. And I am not a color.

Remember the great civil rights leader who asked us to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin? If Martin Luther King said that today, many would accuse him of not sounding 'black' enough. But when he wrote his essential document, A Letter From Birmingham Jail, he did not derive his concept of civil rights from racial or tribal law. He referred to the Biblical prophets, to Jesus, to Plato, to a Western tradition of jurisprudence that struggled for centuries to lift us above tribal law, honoring the bold new concept of individual rights. Civil law does not judge you by your identity-group, but your personal actions, in a trial by a jury of your peers.

Let us each take a moment to contemplate the thousands of years of blood and toil that it took humanity to evolve this concept of individual human rights... But now this precious heritage is threatened by those who would herd us back into categories, group-identities, tribes. Such categories are  chains that shackle the boundless mystery of the human Person.

To superimpose a group identity on me is an act of violence against my Personhood. Yes, you are free to label me, but I am also free. And my radical act of freedom is this: I refuse to identify with your label.

There will only be peace when we allow one another to be Persons. I am neither superior to you, inferior to you, nor the same as you. I am unique. And I am not your concept of me: you are your concept of me. I am who I Am.