Wink cites examples from the tough love, which causes a battered woman to pull free and submit her husband to the justice system or enables the peaceful turnover of the government under the dictator, Marcos, in the Philippines. But the ultimate goal, he insists, is not victory but opening an aperture for God. It may involve suffering for both sides, but the nonviolent revolutionaries try to absorb the evil and its violence into their bodiesand to avoid inflicting it on others. To use violence against the dominating forces is to join them in their evil,to capitulate in perpetuating the cycle of violence. The revolutionaries, fighting the beast, in turn,become the beast.
Evil is contagious.
But so is good. For Discussion 1. I remember how difficult it was to explain to fellow federal prisoners why we protesters, who had marked a nuclear bomber with hammers and blood, had waited to be arrested when we could easily have escaped. We did this in countries where a handful of wealthy families controlled the economies and the political structures. We taught the most advanced techniques of torture and these were regularly used against school teachers, labor leaders, and others who were not communists.