"A Force More Powerful"

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Well, seeing as the book is just a case study of 20th Century nonviolent conflicts, criticizing it because it doesn't cover other time periods seems inappropriate.

Now as for the success rate, technically, war didn't solve conflicts very much either, did it? Instead, it often prolonged them while intensifying them.

*************

Unless most people have a tendency to violence, in which case they'd be liable to rationalize violence constantly, to the subversion of evidence that civil disobedience, etc. are effective means of conflict resolution.

No, war doesn't solve anything but merely delays it a while...unless your side completely annihilates the other side down to the last man, woman, and child, so that there aren't any of them left to restart the conflict later on. Except for regional genocides that try to happen in Subsaharan Africa from time to time, thankfully we have moved away from that sort of warfare.

Did the book mention The Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, now the separate Czech and Slovak Republics? That was another successful nonviolent overthrow of a regime. Sometimes I have to admit that I miss the countryside and buildings there but that was a long time ago.....

I also find myself letting my temper get the best of me here at times.

I cannot help with that. Who upsets you more, the people who disagree with you or the people who question your reasoning?

If I were going to be upset I would be upset over the subtle attempts at being insulting with phrases like "our reading comprehension should be higher than average" or "if you actually read the OP".

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

So you get angry about things people type anonymously in cyberspace, but entire nations are supposed to turn into impassive statues of the Buddha anytime they come under outside attack?

Once again, I'm not advocating pure passivity as a response to violence. I don't know if there's a Google Books preview of AFMP but if there is, it might contain the section where pure passive resistance is contrasted with the more proactive style of nonviolence the book tries to showcase. Now as for the comparison between a nation's willingness to wage war and my Internet "rage," well, the latter doesn't involve a desire to kill anyone so I don't think it's hypocritical of me to feel some measure of frustration and ire during debates. (It might very well be stupid of me, however. It doesn't make much of a discernible difference to the fate of the world if people on message boards believe this or that at certain times, so it's not as if I ought to view my "preaching" as somehow necessary in order to the general promotion of my ideals.)

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Did the book mention The Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, now the separate Czech and Slovak Republics? That was another successful nonviolent overthrow of a regime. Sometimes I have to admit that I miss the countryside and buildings there but that was a long time ago.....

I think it did, it had a fairly sizable section on the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Unfortunately my copy is hidden somewhere in my parents' storage far away from where I live so I can't check right now (well, to be honest I could go to Google Books and maybe figure out what's up, but for some reason I'm too lazy to open another tab in my browser and do so).

I cannot help with that. Who upsets you more, the people who disagree with you or the people who question your reasoning?

If I were going to be upset I would be upset over the subtle attempts at being insulting with phrases like "our reading comprehension should be higher than average" or "if you actually read the OP".

Those are the kinds of things I shouldn't say. But I also remember in another thread from a while ago arguing for similar conclusions and getting criticized for not making it clear enough in my OP that I was arguing from within the utilitarian-vs.-Kantian framework. Since I had plainly stated in the OP that that very framework was the one I was working with, I felt that the person who as such criticized me must not have been paying attention to what I was saying. I don't get that upset when people say my arguments are unsound or invalid; I get upset when I think that people are straw-manning my POV and then accusing my premises of being unsound and my inferences of being invalid.