Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Mae-Wan Ho: I think concentrating on resistance, there is something wrong with that. We are not just concentrating on resistance. We’ll have to create [attractance]. We have to create a new paradigm, which is attractive to go to from this old one. We need nothing short of a social revolution. Sure, we can break the law. We can actually have -- we can go and tear up GM crops from fields. We can stop going to war. We can have non-violent resistance. But that’s not enough. Our young people, people need to be attracted, to be in love, to have their passions aroused. We cannot just say we don’t want these things. We can’t actually fill their lives with a whole lot of negativity because that really is [off putting] that is really what ultimately induce people into paralysis or at least most people into paralysis. And therefore, in my -- in our Science in Society magazine, we take care to say what the solutions are. For example, zero energy options are available now. Non-violent attractive options are really available and we have to go for them.

by Mae-Wan Ho

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Mahsa Shekarloo:

by Mahsa Shekarloo

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Mark Benecke: We always have biodiversity. We always have that for everything. Not only for resistance, but also for the evil brands, the evil governments, the good governments and the good brands. We always have a diversity of everything because that's in the nature of things. In our case also in the nature of mankind. There is no mean value. There is no consent, there is no one good compromise. There will always be diversity. So if you ask yourself, is it better to be non-violent or violent in a fight, then the answer is – it depends. It depends on you and it depends on the situation and it especially depends on how willing are you to take responsibility for what you do? Do you want to shoot the evil dictator knowing that you will be shot one second later? I don't know, you have to make that decision yourself. Do you want to give your life to work in an organization that does support a goal that you like? Be it rescuing whales or forests, be it an economical goal to make people rich all over the world or just your people. How much are you willing to give? How convinced are you of your goal? And then you can choose the weapons. It could be a pen, it could be a gun, it could be a camera, it could be a piece of paper, it could be a knife, it could be your life.

by Mark Benecke

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Martin Almada: We should organize and mobilize people to go to the streets and demand justice, democracy and freedom. The mobilization of people to go to the streets is our best guarantee. We can see how successfully people both in Argentina and in Bolivia made unpopular governments to leave. The power with social basis is necessary, it should be a wide-spread and decentralized movement. We also shouldn´t forget the anti-colonialist revolution in India led by Mohandas Gandhi, which was carried out with public pressure and without violence.

by Martin Almada

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Masami Saionji: I believe non-violent resistance is the only choice for us. Armed struggle choice is totally wrong. Although most human beings think that non-violent resistance (in common-sense term) is ideal, we must pursue it. If each of us bears the strong beliefs and passions that we do not allow to use violence under any circumstances, I believe we can move the people. The impossible can become possible with our passion. However, negative thoughts, such as the thinking of "it is not possible" or "it is too difficult", can easily take over each mind of human beings. Because some people cannot recognize the meaning of one's existence and get used to living depending on others, they cannot select or decide things. If we select to use violence to offer opposition, we meet with armed struggle later as well. Therefore, we must try with great ardor to maintain a constructive dialogue without using violence. When we carry on a constructive conversation with other side at the risk of our own lives, I believe that we can come and go together without armed struggle. We hope world peace every day. For the true peace around world the peace of mind for each human being is necessary. Since not all of us have peace of mind, I think that wars break out. Therefore, the right thing to do is to establish the peace of mind for each human being. I think this is the first task to hold back violence.

by Masami Saionji

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Masuma Bibi Russel: Actually, non-violent resistance and arm struggle, we don’t go anywhere because its really, you know, we just get slowly and slowly ruin and its effective that we are – we have to resist, we have to have enough energy, enough to come up and face this, but to have this, violence and arm struggle should go away. That is not today is the most important thing. I think that we have to come together and resist and make this stopped, because how much a person can resist non-violent resistance because there are so many other way we can give our energy. So, there is arm and violence should be gone in this world to live, to have us peacefully – to live peacefully we should use our energy to continue to live the life better not having resistance for non-violence or arm struggle. I think that we need to use our resistance, our struggle to have a better life, to give this maybe to have the people to – the people who are suffering from poverty, doesn’t have a sustainable income, we should use our energy, our everything for them to make them feel they are part of this world, so they can live better. I mean, shouldn’t use, I think that it’s – it’s what’s happening and what people are going through to resist themselves or struggle. I mean, it’s sad today there are so many things we could do, use our energy to continue to live better.

by Masuma Bibi Russel

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Mayank Mehta: I think it’s easier to answer that question in terms of the long range solution or the long term solution. And the long-term is no, no violence, period. Non-violent resistance seemingly is non-violent to the people who are perpetrating violence. But it is violent to the people who are the sufferers because, of course, the people who are violent, they’ll be hurting the people who are non-violent and the goal is to minimize pain overall, not just to the perpetrators but also to the sufferers. So, the long-term goal is, from what I’ve been saying, hopefully and it’s only hopefully, I don’t know if any of this is feasible, it’s just thoughts. Perhaps by people to feel that first reaction is to be non-violent, period. To go for peaceful solution towards minimizing pain. But having said that, perhaps what you’re asking is the current day scenario, we are not there clearly. Violence is perhaps often time the first reaction in human beings these days. It has been perhaps forever since we know in history. So, how do we deal with that? I don’t know what is the best way to deal with it? I want to say that we should always go as long as possible, perhaps forever, with non-violent resistance. But I have no reason to believe that that will always work. I don’t know. I want to say that it should work. People have closed dispute that it has work or it has work ever. But I do see many examples of countries and places in the world which have become non-violent, for example, let’s look at right here in Germany and in Europe. Many of these countries here in this part of the world were at each others throat for hundreds of years; and now, they share no threat from each other, in fact they share currencies. So, it can happen here, why can’t it happen elsewhere? And if we can go to their situation where we are not threatened by each other, but we are really part of, we are sharing; we are involved, if the well-being of our neighbor helps us, with sharing currencies in the rest of the world too. Then my guess is that this kind of violence will go away and the solution towards that, I will believe is, perhaps what is going on here which is to share more to generate stronger interdependencies between your neighbors, without then stronger [inaudible], stronger involvement. If we can do that, then this will go away but in the mean time, we are, all of us are in situations where there is any danger or violence situation involved [audio ends].

by Mayank Mehta

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Michael E. Tigar: Arundhati Roy, you know the answer to this based on your own experience better than any answer I can give you, but okay. I'll try. You can grade my paper. Yes, we need a bio-diversity of resistance. And that is not an abstract proposition. In the demonstrated history of movements that have transformed their societies and been responsible for social change - progressive social change - there has been a spectrum of action from nonviolent resistance, to political organizing, to speechmaking to armed struggle; legitimate arms struggle based on the principles laid down by, among others, the African National Congress and Che Guevara to distinguish between mere terrorism, violence for its own sake with unnecessary casualties, and arms struggle that is undertaken to mobilize and protect a majority - an oppressed majority. The African National Congress had its message of peace in change it also had [more in another language], the armed wing. The struggle for change in every single place where struggle has been successful has employed what you term a bio-diversity of tactics. It is not for you and not for me to judge within that very large, wide, legitimate spectrum, what tactics are appropriate. Only at the end - only at the end where the use of violence shades off into what a consensus would say is illegitimate, and we can find plenty of literature on that, Would we say these methods become something that deserve the condemnation of the entire international community. And I in an earlier answer talked about the hypocritical way in which the French dealt with Bambela and the British government dealt with Jomo Kenyatta and so on, simply to point up that all of this posturing about the need to try to make change peaceful when a repressive regime imposes extraordinary restrictions on efforts to get peaceful change. All that posturing has simply got to be rejected in the interest of giving our deference to the people who are there and who are engaged in struggle.

by Michael E. Tigar

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Michael Laitman: Neither of these can help. We cannot win by the force of the fist or by other forms of resistance. We already see this as the result of everything happening to us in the world. We cannot achieve peace, balance, understanding, unity, and harmony in the world by means of resistance—whether it is resistance by force or resistance by means of any other actions and methods. We must act only by means of a widespread dissemination of the science about the structure of the world, which explains how it must appear according to its nature and how to bring the world from the egoistic to the altruistic format. Only thanks to this will we be able to transform the savage, egoistic, hating and arrogant man, who has the ability to use the neighbor, to a person who thinks and understands, and in general—to a person. Since "man" (Adam)—means "similar" (Dommeh) to the Upper Force, similar to the Creator, similar to the One Who is Good and Who Does Good. None of the forms of egoism will ever bring us to victory. Egoism will always bring us to defeat. This is why it does not matter by what means we will wage war or resistance. Victory is achieved in a long-term perspective, for eternity—and we can win only by explaining and educating the world and the young generation about what the altruistic law that exists in nature is, how it obligates us, and how it will obligate us to arrange our lives. In reality, all of humanity's mechanisms are already ready for the altruistic education. No one wants to admit that he is an egoist and hates others; rather, everyone asserts that he is an altruist. We can use precisely this inner inclination that man has. We must only expand this respect to altruistic actions everywhere with the help of different organizations and international forces—in such a way that we will value each other, as well as countries, governments and organizations, only according to their contribution to altruism and to the general peace. If we speak only about this, then we will achieve success.

by Michael Laitman

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Michael P. Totten: That’s a wonderful term, biodiversity of resistance. We absolutely do need a diversity that it provides the immune system against I think infectious thoughts that would lead us to or zero thoughts that would lead us to attack instead of tolerating. There’s such a low level of tolerance because, I think, we have taken this view of homogenizing everything in the name of a very narrow definition of efficiency that if we simply make things more efficient for making more profit, more rapidly that will somehow solve all these problems. But life is not just a market, there are still many non-market ways of experiencing with reality that we need to get diversity of institutions and settings that allow us to experience the richness that life has created and is unfolding over these many centuries. So a biodiversity of resistance is a beautiful term. It obviously begins with each individual striving on a daily basis for that and learning how others are doing that, learning how to share with others about that or to engage in conversation to learn about that. One of the positive hopes for events like Dropping Knowledge is to demonstrate that the collapse in the cost of computers and the collapse in the cost of connecting people worldwide to the Internet is not just with words, but actual voices and faces and not just one-way flow but simultaneous two-way flow that we will see an evolution for sharing more insights than we normally get in our colloquial provincial locations where we have a media that may feed us very filtered information. Now we can go directly and talk to people and find out how much more complex the situation is. We no longer have to rely upon a government or market-filtered source of information, but we now live in a world where there’s a richness of information. I don’t think that means information overload, I think we are seeing a peer-to-peer information exchanges that allow for filtering through very quickly. If I see somebody that I trust, an Arundhati Roy who writes and is passionate is insightful, and she suggests other people who she thinks are insightful, that becomes a filtering process that allows me to gauge a well defined meaningful insight.

by Michael P. Totten

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Mohau Pheko: I think that 10 years ago -- no, 15 years ago actually, if I had thought about this question, I would have had no doubt in my mind that armed struggle was the right way and was always a legitimate way of struggling against injustice in the world. And this is probably because the context in which I was living in at that time was a South Africa which was under subjugation, which was under apartheid and colonialism, and the only way that it seemed to eject a very unjust government from power was to use the armed struggle to eject these governments or these regimes that were unjust and it seemed that non-violent resistance was a soft way of doing it. But 15 years later, when I think about non-violence as a mode of resistance and I look at armed struggles and I look at Palestine, for example, I look at violence against women, I look at a 30-year-old man raping two-year-old, 18-month babies, something comes up inside me that wants to reject a response or a resistance that is non-violent. I almost feel that we should go up in an armed struggle and get rid of these people in society who violate our bodies and our children's bodies. But I think that we do need a new biodiversity as you correctly say, biodiversity of resistances because I think context are shifting all the time and I think that even the nature of non-violent resistance is changing, it's different from the way it was during the Civil Rights movements. When I look at in particular the direct action campaigns that have been formulated around the anti-globalization movement, I begin to see that at different levels and at different contexts and at different layers and different times in our history, we actually need to create a biodiversity of resistance. And I think that it actually opens up a whole avenue of building new resistances that can serve different purposes at different times in our history. I think for me that really creates new levels of excitement because it enables us to build new political imaginaries through this biodiversity of resistances.

by Mohau Pheko

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Monira Rahman: Obviously, we are looking forward to a society where there is no violence, no discrimination, no abuse; the people have equal rights, peace and prosperity. Everyone has the equal opportunity to explore, to share and care for the society. And I think that as people have the power, if we are giving the power to the people for taking decisions, and if we are promoting a society where the social values are promoted, where humanitarian values are promoted, where the human rights are established for everyone and that the law system and [] are actually promoting the human rights or equal rights for everyone. Obviously, it will be possible to have a world, a violence free world. It is not that we have to control people by using guns and arms. It is that we're giving the opportunity to people and the equal rights and promoting the humanitarian values for social development. Obviously, we will go for nonviolent resistance. We have seen in our country how we have evacuated these armed forces just in a nonviolent way. The peoples, the strength and the energy of the people, the strong unity and people's unity was able to evacuate this armed forces and in a non violent way. It's possible.

by Monira Rahman

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Nadja Halilbegovich: Well, inevitably with violence and with armed resistance you have human loss, you have innocent people so often, mostly children and women suffering, either getting wounded, losing their loved ones or even getting killed. So, I don’t think that armed violence, that wars are the way to solve our problems. I think that peaceful solutions have to be found and if we, all of us, even at this table, let alone the whole world, come together and put our minds and hearts into finding truly creative and peaceful solutions to end conflicts, I absolutely think that we could. We just have to have a genuine interest and genuine want to find a peaceful solution. We have to believe in peace to achieve peace. And so often I think we just discard that as even a possibility. We right away go with armed conflicts and war and it destroys, it destructs, and it is so much easier to destroy than it is to, it takes years, far many more years that it took to destroy to actually heal if ever. And so it is not a way to heal the world, to better the world. War is the way to destroy the world. So we absolutely have to find alternative ways to war and violence, peaceful solutions and we can if we put our minds and hearts to it.

by Nadja Halilbegovich

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Neela Marikkar: Well, both methods are effective, both methods are effective – both methods are used to address issues. Unfortunately, often, nonviolent resistance is put down by armed response. And I think which results -- when this happens the tendency is for the non-violent resistance to then become an armed resistance. So, one results -- delivers results on the other, or one feeds off on the other. And the irony of it is that they finally, both sides, both the non-violent resistance and the armed struggle will invariably -- having actually become a struggle -- will end up having to sit together around table and discuss a peaceful resolution. So it’s a cycle, the whole thing is a cycle, and one moves into the other. And, I think that the only way is -- do we need a biodiversity of resistance? I think that is important. I think that is the way that we need to -- I think it shows mutual respect. I think it shows there is a possibility, or there is a way out, and there is a balance.

by Neela Marikkar

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Oliviero Toscani: I like the name bio-diversity of resistance. We need resistance and we need human resistance. Resistance means to ask yourself if there is another opportunity. We have to be creative enough to think that there is that is possible, if you think that that is possible to have a diverse way to make it, we have to go for it. We have to try. We have to explore the possibility of a diverse resistance. I don’t know what is effective. It depends on the – of what we are resisting on what we are resisting. And I think we have to try all the possibility the solution – and the opportunities. We have to have the courage to try them. You know, we always use what has been the most effective up to now, but we have to discover new solutions all the time about everything. We have to re-discuss daily, constantly. We have to put our self into discussion everyday. That’s the way we can make it much more interesting work. We have to make this work more interesting.

by Oliviero Toscani

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Oscar Olivera: In the face of the violence of the empire, in the face of the violence of the supranational corporations, in the face of the violence of the states that criminalize every possibility to demand our rights, every capacity to protest in form of reappropriating us what they have refused us and taken from us for many years, there is no other alternative left than an organized and mobilized answer. And we, the peoples know what we want; and in the same way that we know that, I think there is no need for us to use this violonce. The violence comes from the rich, from the powerful, from those who want to go on keeping their privileges at the cost of the hunger of the people, of the exploitation of our peoples. As long as this won’t be remedied, well, there will be violence coming from there. We, the peoples aren’t violent. But there is a process of resistance, of insubordination, which not necessarily means violence. It’s not the people who have the weapons. The armies have them, who correspond to the interests of the powerful.

by Oscar Olivera

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Paul D. Miller: Well, I think Arundhati Roy is a brilliant theoretician of these kinds of issues precisely because economics and ecological issues are just as much linked to armed struggle and they're also linked to the perception, again I keep harping on this word perception, but there's a very, very fine connection between how you can say anything about the world we live in without the physical environment. What do you do? What can you say? Everything is existing in a vacuum? You can’t. Biodiversity is vanishing as we speak. Corporations like Monsanto etcetera are struggling, in fact racing ahead with their struggle to push for more and more narrow food groups and so on. But the same thing is happening with the ideological spectrum, as represented by on one hand the conservatives and the, what you could call the Muslim conservative movement and the Christian fundamentalist movement in the United States and globally. Complexity’s scary. Complexity, like if you're in a jungle, the jungle is incredibly complex, but it's one of the most fertile places on the planet because of that complexity. When you have monocrops and monocultures whether they be ideology and everybody believing one thing or whether they be genetically engineered rice that dies after one generation, you tend to find their life span goes by very quickly and you need to have and celebrate and nurture diversity as a way of not only reinforcing and building up what can be viewed as the human ideal of I think evolving, I mean, really evolving means that you have a lot of different variables going on. If you have less variables, anything can come into the system and wipe you out. I tend to celebrate a kind of diversity of opinion and diversity of the people around me but also diversity of the way that you can think about the world around you. It’s just as much about the framework and the process as it is about getting people to realize there’s multiple frames. There are multiple processes. And looking at that not only as a kind of acceptance of complexity in the face of the conservatives but also getting people to say something like this. Hold on, I'm going to draw this. I'm terrible at drawing. I wish I had my laptop here, but [SPEAKER DRAWS IMAGE ON PAD] multiple inputs like this [HOLDS UP DRAWING] give you a kind of scenario where no one can control those routes, and in fact the nested networks between all of these situations are what makes things more and more complex and enriched. And in fact, the connections become stronger and those bonds, in network kind of theory whether you're looking at, some of the origins of information theory. Complexity in networks is about robust [audio ends].

by Paul D. Miller

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Paul Knight: I think this is an interesting point in that really there is a spectrum, you know, whether you’re non-violently resisting or going to a full on war. The reality is it’s all about being heard, it’s about communication, it’s about engagement with other people. It’s about really developing an understanding of who you are, what you need and where you want to be. So I think there’s opportunities to assert those ideals and the things you want to be heard for in various ways and at various times. The unfortunate thing is the democratic process and environment that we live in which is supposed to be open to these discussions by it’s very nature actually in some ways destroys that because there’s hardly any opportunity for the collective media as the main source of getting information out there and it’s controlled by so few. You also have issues in modern media they talk about the internet as being an opportunity to get information out there but then you’ve got issues around the ability to disseminate that and have people that have that technology and are able to use it to appreciate those situations. I think the latter point about biodiversity of resistance is a valid one. You can’t just say that we will only have a peaceful resistance I think because while that can work and I’m supportive of that as a motion you also need the platform to be able to do that on. I think in environments where that is accepted that would be the way to go but it’s not always an accepted process in all nation-states. So we need to be considering that in answering this question as well. So in some cases we may need to step it up, step up some sort of resistance into possibly a more assertive way. And whether that goes to actually violence which I wouldn’t condone in any way, we may need to be looking at different options.

by Paul Knight