Mohandas Gandhi played a pivotal role in freeing India from British colonial domination. His technique was revolutionary amongst revolutions. He eschewed all violence, but said that the power of love or "soul force" was more powerful and more effective. Then he set out to prove his point with regard to India's independence, with a campaign basically composed of positive propaganda (i.e. education as to his philosophy) and non-cooperation, peppered with organized acts of calculated defiance that were dramatized by the refusal of the participants to react violently, even when beaten or killed.
In terms of evolutionary pattern theory (a tautology: those patterns which are best able to survive and propogate (provive)... survive and propogate, although they also evolve in the process), Gandhi's approach was to introduce the virus of tolerance, a subpattern which is meant to allow patterns to coexist side by side. Recall that there are at least four ways in which patterns may interact affecting their provival: competitively (weakening or destroying each other to increase energy inputs), parasitically (one draws strength from the other, at the other's expense, or weakening of the inertia of the pattern), symbiotically/cooperatively (each draws strength from the other), or separately (side by side coexistence with little significant interaction). Most interactions among significantly interacting patterns employ a combination of approaches, weighting each differently and accomplishing each aspect in a variety of ways.
Tolerance, in Gandhi's sense, is one such technique, which takes very seriously the balancing of these interactions. It basically says, let us look carefully at our patterns. Historically, we have been afraid of each other, and when we have acted upon our fears, it has given us more cause for fear as we look back at our history. But really, our patterns are not different and need not be competitive or mutually destructive to provive. But we must alter our patterns only enough to realize this, and to mutually act upon that information.
Love is another such technique; it recognizes that there is strength and security in not just learning to live side by side, separately, but in strengthening each other and making each other more secure: patterns reinforcing each other. This requires mutuality and a buildup of trust in the long run for effective provival, because otherwise fear and betrayal can also result in patterns of culture going at it with each other once again.
Active love (aka satyagraha, or soul force) takes this one step further. It demands respect at the least, and strives for actual cooperation and mutual love. There is self-love as well as love for the other, a security that the instinctive weapon of violence is not really needed, because the tools of love are available in the here and now.
Non-cooperation is another tool of satyagraha. Think about it. No tyranny has any more power than its ability to command at least the actions of its subjects. If the vast majority of the people refuse to cooperate in tyranny, the tyrant is helpless. Perhaps part of the tyrant's power comes from commanding many soldiers, whom he can pay from some vast resource of wealth. Still, if a brave populace is willing to face death rather than follow the dictates of a pointed gun, this power will self-destruct, just as surely as if the world's last remaining superpower stepped in with all of its military might, probably much more so. For the threats of the tyrant, even if carried out, are futile.
So I imagine the message of Gandhi's famous Salt March thusly: "We will show you how we demand respect and offer our love. We will break your unjust law by making our own salt from the sea in defiance of the British monopoly. You cannot disrespect our right to do so, for we will not cooperate in your disrespectful restrictions of our rights. You can beat us, but we will not hit you back, because you are human, and we love all of humanity. But you're beating us will humiliate you in front of the world while also teaching you that it is a waste of your time and energy to try to hold us subject to your will."
This is a pattern that can survive the world, and spread itself, without altering the positive patterns/values that are most fundamental to our existences. But it cannot do so if it emanates primarily from a single, charismatic individual, who can be killed, as were Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and will surely die one day in any case. It must be learned, pondered, practiced, and incorporated into the hearts of, if not all of us, as many of us as possible, and certainly not by force, but by the sincere reaching out and internal struggle of the individual inspired by teaching and debate that has the ring of truth about it. If one Martin Luther King can do so much to bring about civil rights reform, and one Gandhi can do so much to free a nation, think a few million Gandhis and Kings could do.
Satyagraha,
The Raving Moderate
To the memory of Coretta Scott King.
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