非暴力: Nonviolence
There is so much violence appearing in the world today: the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, terrorist attacks all around the world, and even harsh invectives
thrown among American politicians, making everyone
in the United States hot for humility
as their government becomes the laughingstock of the world. It seems that the
philosophies of people like Mahatma Gandhi,
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez, famous proponents of
nonviolence, have been forgotten, despite their obvious success; prospects are
only going to become grimmer hereafter.
In an article commemorating Dr. King and alluding to Gandhi, Chavez uses artful
rhetoric to support nonviolence. By
explaining that violence will lead to either destruction or demoralization
(lines 19-21), and appealing to people’s religious nature, Chavez effectively
convinces the farm workers, and anybody after him who is fighting for a cause,
that “nonviolence is more powerful than violence” (lines 12-13).
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| Cesar Chavez, labor union organizer and civil rights leader |
Sometimes people feel detached from the horrible
events occurring all around them; ironically,
the mass media of modern days contributes to that. Every day, so much news
about war updates and shootings and politics is spread around that people have
become numb to them – they’re just another part of daily life. And the fact
that this information is often viewed among the videos of cats and haikus about refrigerators on the
internet makes it even more difficult for people to differentiate heavier
topics. There is a lack of realization that violence is too prevalent in the
world, and so there is no motivation for change. This may have been the case in
the 1970’s, when Cesar Chavez wrote this article, but there is no doubt that
this is definitely the case in the world now, and Chavez’s same article is
needed for the same purpose it was first written for – to remind about the
power of nonviolence.
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