EveryDay Nonviolence - The Book

Where to Buy: Amazon

 

EveryDay Nonviolence (EDNV) is about how each of us can take action for cultural, relational and ecological change. With the help of drawings, metaphors, stories, I illustrate why nonviolence matters and suggest training materials and projects that can be replicated in classrooms and communities. The aim is to invite beginners of all ages to step back for the perspectives we need to see problems in their interconnected environment -- and then become activists in our own lives by stepping up to correct course before a conflict leads to crisis, violence and system failure.

This is a holistic way of thinking that applies to living systems of all sizes - one mind, a friendship or marriage, a classroom or community, a culture, an ecosystem. It's about pausing right here in mid-evolution to change our minds about how we set-up problems in the first place – to move our thinking from a dualistic, mechanistic and fragmented worldview that limits our options and leads to extremes and toward a holistic, organic and interrelated worldview that can lead to health and sustainability. It proposes an ecology of human relationships.

The aim of the book is to help us perceive of human relationships and interactions as organic systems (analogous to our own body); practice the skills of logical, demystified, non-moralistic nonviolence; and, thereby, become the "change we wish to see in the world," as Mahatma Gandhi urged. It is grounded in the fundamental structure of Nature, described by the basic framework of philosophical (as opposed to religious) Taoism. That is, to see that all life exists within one interconnected, interdependent, living whole (tao); that it has patterns we can observe and learn from (li); that it requires healthy, dynamic balance to sustain itself (yin/yang); and that we human beings, with our big brains, need to learn to participate as partners (wu wei).