Nonkilling History: Shaping Policy with Lessons from the Past

293 Pages·2010·1.11 MB·English

by  Antony Adolf

Nonkilling History

Shaping Policy with Lessons from the Past

Edited by
Antony Adolf

Center for Global NNonkilling
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© The Authors, 2010
© Center for Global Nonkilling, 2010 (this edition)

First Edition: September 2010

ISBN-13 978-0-9822983-5-0
ISBN-10 0-9822983-5-8
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Cataloging in Publication Data (CIP)

Nonkilling History : Shaping Policy with Lessons from the Past
/ Edited by Antony Adolf
ISBN 978-0-9822983-5-0
1. Nonkilling 2. Peace. 3. Pacifism – Nonviolence.
I. Title. II. Adolf, ntony, ed. lit.

CDU - 172.4 : 327.36
______________________________________________________

A catalogue record is also available from the Library of Congress.

Center for Global NNonkilling

Post Office Box 12232
Honolulu, Hawai(cid:2)i 96828
United States of America
Email: [email protected]
http://www.nonkilling.org
“There is no flag large enough to cover
the shame of killing innocent people.”

Howard Zinn
(1922-2010)

In memoriam

Contents

Foreword 9
Glenn D. Paige

Introduction

Preconditional, Didactic and Predictive Histories 13
Antony Adolf

Nonkilling History is Personal

Army GI, Pacifist CO 29
Scott H. Bennett

Sisterhood in a Time of War 97
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Nonkilling History is Political

President Eisenhower and Dr. King on Peace and Human Nature 147
Ira Chernus

From Imperial to Universal Peace 173
Martha A. Ebbesen

Nonkilling History is Cultural

Ethics of Nonkilling in Buddhist Cultural Practice 195
Chipamong Chowdhury

Nonkilling and Indian Religions 211
Ravindra Kumar
Nonkilling History is Global

Dodging Dystopia 219
Robert Jacob

Nonkilling in Medieval and Contemporary History 237
Israel Sanmartín

Nonkilling History is Pedagogical

No More Air Raids 255
Kazuyo Yamane

Nonviolent Direct Action 287
Howard Zinn
Foreword

Glenn D. Paige
Center for Global Nonkilling

In the life of a scholar, young or old, there are moments of discovery in
the search for knowledge that are breathtaking. One for me was finding the
chapter under Nonkilling History by Antony Adolf and Israel Sanmartin in
the unique interdisciplinary exploration Toward a Nonkilling Paradigm
(2009) edited by Joám Evans Pim. Among other surprise discoveries in that
volume were under Nonkilling Mathematics by Ubiratan D’ Ambrosio and
Nonkilling Engineering by David Haws.
The surprise insight from Nonkilling History is that what did not happen
explains why humanity lives today. This turns upside down understanding of
history as the story of the victory of righteous or reprehensible human vio-
lence in struggles to satisfy human aspirations, wants, and needs.
Hitherto I had argued for human ability to create nonkilling societies on
common sense grounds that nonkilling attributes of human nature must
have predominated over lethal ones. Otherwise humanity long ago must
have spiraled into extinction (Paige [2002] 2009: 40).
In the introduction to nonkilling historiography that begins the present
volume, editor Antony Adolf advances far beyond such common sense un-
derstanding. He establishes seminal methodology for establishing a new nonk-
illing science of history. Such a science will not only help to explain past to
present human survival but will inform decisions, individual and collective, to
promote future killing-free societies that sustain and celebrate human life.
Adolf’s chapter invites close reading and re-reading to grasp basic con-
cepts and to ponder their implications for thought, inquiry, education, and
action. They include deductive historicization (from nonkilling theory to ob-
servation to specificity), inductive historicization (from nonkilling observa-
tion to theory to generality), historical didacticism (investigation of analogs
and assumptions), reflexive relativity (nonkilling in specific cultural contexts,
but universally present across contexts), and predictive history (nonkilling
probabilities based upon past patterns and implications).
9
10 NNonkilling History
Nonkilling history like nonkilling approaches to other academic disci-
plines and other vocations does not mean to neglect the facts of human le-
thality. For knowledge is needed of the causes of killing and transitions from
killing to nonkilling in order to understand human capacity to envision and
achieve completely killing-free societies. Likewise the sciences and arts of
nonkilling are indispensable partners of principles and practices of nonvio-
lence and peace. For being alive is a precondition for pursuit of all other
human values and problem-solving actions.
The invitation to explore nonkilling history in this volume will interest
not only young and old scholars in history and other academic disciplines,
but will surely invite nonkilling questions by general readers as well. For ex-
ample, nonkilling questions can throw new light on conventional explana-
tions of why nuclear weapons have not yet been used since 1945 and why
abolition efforts persist; why powerful regimes in repressive states and do-
minant whites in apartheid conditions have acquiesced in largely nonkilling
political and social change; why the British did not kill Gandhi; and why 95
countries have completely abolished the death penalty.
Combining Adolf’s reflexive relativity with Israel Sanmartin’s historical
survey in this volume of forms of inter- and trans-national organization,
permits one to envision a future Global Commonwealth of Nonkilling So-
cieties bound by a powerful global nonkilling ethic as an alternative to forms
of global governance currently being discussed.
The fact that Nonkilling History follows closely upon Antony Adolf’s un-
precedented survey of Peace: A World History (2009) is itself historic. For
his vast scholarship has enabled him and us to see how nonkilling historiog-
raphy can help to achieve Nonkilling Global Peace.