Non-violent Resistance: What Part Leo Tolstoy And The Pacifist Christians Played

               Almost three years ago, I posted on Facebook about the "Arab Spring"  that swept across the Arab world and on how I admired the non-violent "people power" revolution that toppled the dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and  Egypt. Well, it turned out to be premature because the next country bugged with the democratic reforms fever, Libya, had less than peaceful transition. In fact, it was a bloody conflict that was only cut short with the help of the West. It then spread into Yemen and Syria. The war in Syria turned out to be very ugly and bloody, killing thousands of innocent civilians up to the present. 

               Even the initial success in Egypt turned out to be premature, too. The Muslim Brotherhood appeared to have hijacked the gains of the people power revolution as soon as they were voted into power. They were later overthrown by the military and a lot of uncertainties followed. Despite the setback, there were those who hope that real democracy will finally take roots in the Arab world. They are specially encouraged by what's taking place in Iraq after so many years of total control by Saddam Hussein although big challenges remain. In the West, the hope was that, if President Obama continue to play his card right, the United States will reap the benefit that comes with the spread of democracy across the Arab world with gentle prodding and guidance. 

                    A similar political wind swept the Eastern bloc of communist regimes in Europe over twenty years ago that led to the fall of the infamous Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. A decade ago, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and similar "color" revolutions also brought down unpopular regimes. All these are achieved through non-violent resistance. In 1986, the people power movement in the Philippines ended Marcos' iron rule for over two decades with minimal fatalities. Here in the United States we remember Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement of the sixties. King and other non-violent resistance leaders like him ( Nelson Mandela comes to mind) were influenced by the original non-violent resistance advocate, Mahatma Gandhi of India. Yet few people realize that Gandhi himself was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian author of such classic novels as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. In fact, the two were in constant communication up until Tolstoy's death.

              In 1894, he published a book titled "The Kingdom of God Is Within You", the culmination of Tolstoy's years of Christian thinking.  In it he argued that the mainstream Christian churches were the ones who deviated from Jesus' teachings and are the real heretics. When Jesus says to turn the other cheek, Tolstoy asserted that he simply means that and rejected the interpretations of church scholars who attempted to limit its scope, writing: “How can you kill people, when it is written in God’s commandment: ‘Thou shalt not murder’?” His interpretation of the sacred books may be controversial but it is interesting to note that the origin of non-violent resistance has a religious undertone, Christian in fact. Tolstoy "advocated non-violence as a solution to nationalist woes and as a means for seeing the hypocrisy of the church." In this respect, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Amish and other pacifist Christian churches are way ahead of most mainstream Christian churches including the Roman Catholic Church. Add to it their plain dress code, simple living and emphasis on humility and equality, these groups seem to understand better the teachings of Jesus. They were also among the first to oppose slavery and giving women equal part in ministry as men.

            The next time you pick up a copy of War and Peace, it is worth remembering that the guy who wrote it was the same guy who influenced Gandhi, MLK, Mandela and others like them who, instead of waging a bloody war to topple a bad leader or government, took the "road less traveled" that make all the difference. The next time we visit the Amish in Pennsylvania, it behooves us to remember that the Plain people are practicing the teachings of Jesus possibly better than most Christians. I'm not advocating conversion but it will not hurt to emulate their good traits to become better Christians or, at least, better persons ourselves.

The Real Wolves Of Wall Street

With the addition of the movie "Wolf of Wall Street", the public are now more keenly aware how the stock market can be a mad house, especially Wall Street. Many of the small individual investors are emotionally affected by the gyrations of the market and easily "herded" into the slaughterhouse, hence the term "herd mentality", like those wildebeest of Sarengeti in Africa driven like mad into their death while crossing a river full of hungry crocodiles.

Smart people like Warren Buffett know this particular psychology of the market, hence his famous advice "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."

From Business Insider

There's a new kind of craziness in the stock market and this abnormal behavior in recent years is related to the Federal Reserve("Fed")'s quantitative easing program that keeps borrowing in the United States at historically low rate for many years now. Because of that, investors fled the bond market into the stock market. Since the US economy is showing signs of recovery, the Fed in recent months indicated that it will start unwinding the program and stop feeding new money into the circulation by buying long-term bonds. So, now, every time there are good news about the economy, investors in Wall Street - the big guns with the big herd of small investors following them - get the jitters and immediately unload their hot stocks (including those from emerging markets like the Philippines) and move into bonds or at least those stable boring stocks for fear that the Fed will stop the quantitative easing program. When there are good economic reports, the stock markets nosedive, and when there are bad reports, they surge. That's crazy!!

This is how Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, described it and I agree with him:

"In case you didn’t notice, the stock market surged yesterday after the lousy jobs report. Why does bad news on the jobs front cause the stock market to rise? Because investors assume
(1) the Fed will now continue to keep interest rates low (despite its announced intention of reducing the amount of long-term bonds it buys monthly);
(2) which will continue to push savings into shares of stock rather than bonds;
(3) and make it easy for big investors (including corporations) to borrow money to buy back their shares, thereby pushing up their values; and that
(4) employees, desperate to keep their jobs, won’t demand raises, thereby keeping profits high.

But that's bad for Main Street and good for Wall Street in the short term is bad for both in the long term. The American economy is at a crawl. "

When, if ever, will Wall Street learn? 

The sad part is the Big Kahuna of Goldman Sachs and other big shots of Wall Street have enormous power in Washington regardless of who sits as president. When Wall Street finally paid the steep price of their follies in 2008, Washington let the taxpayers bail them out at the tune of trillions of dollars. The Fed, for example, created a secured credit facility of up to US$85 billion to prevent the collapse of AIG, the parent company of Phil-Am Life in the Philippines.

Duterte: Davao's Dirty Harry and His Brand of Justice

Duterte's brand of justice seems to be getting praises even in the national capital region, a reflection of the people's frustration over the slow pace of justice and anti-crime activities throughout the country. His apparent endorsement of extra-judicial killings (whether he was behind them or not), Davao Death Squad vigilantism and cowboy mentality to keep peace and order in his city seems to win the hearts and minds of many Filipinos. Will these justify the killings of innocent victims, for example, the collateral damage in his war against the lawless elements of society?

At first glance, it seems that Duterte's remarks during the recent senate hearing make more sense than the CHR and the justice secretary's. But be careful what you wish for. If Filipinos allow vigilantism and extra-judicial killings to thrive and go unchecked, they are creating a monster that will bite them back in the future and then the problem of keeping these militia groups in line will be gargantuan. 

Remember the 1980s when Marcos used paramilitary groups to counter the growing threat from communist rebels? The Lost Command in Agusan, Alsa Masa in Davao and Kuratong Baleleng in Misamis are just few of them. The people also heaped praises on them back then. Later, they became uncontrollable and many engaged in criminal activities. Lost Commands all over the country were terrorizing the same areas where they were once praised as heroes by the people years earlier. 

Same thing happened with the New People's Army rebels. Some of us who live and grew up in the rural towns and provincial cities of the Philippines in the 1970s and 1980s had witnessed the kangaroo courts and summary executions by the rebels. At first, the rural folk welcomed them as better alternative to the slow-grinding justice system that favors the rich and powerful when they swiftly punished to death local thieves, crooked government officials, even philandering spouses. Later, members or sympathizers who have ax to grind used the movement to execute their personal vendetta. The people were disillusioned and in fear they might become innocent victims of malicious rumors.

My point is: allowing and even encouraging vigilantism and extra-judicial killings as part of the strategy to combat lawless elements is a two-edge sword that will hurt criminals and innocent bystanders alike and cannot and should not be kept as government policy for the long term.  If Duterte cannot guarantee that there won't be any collateral damage, then he should stop these activities. Nobody is above the law. Even alleged criminals should have their day in court. They are assumed innocent until proven guilty. It is a tedious process and can be frustrating to both law enforcers and the families of victims but it is fair. There are other ways to combat criminality without resorting to extra-judicial killings. 

China's Aggression and Sinophobia In Southeast Asia

Sinophobia or anti-Chinese sentiment often targets Chinese minorities living outside of China. It is complicated by the disparity of wealth between the Chinese minority and the local 
majority. Sectarian violence against ethnic Chinese had happened in post-war Southeast Asia.

In May, 1969, for example, ethnic Malays killed hundreds of ethnic Chinese in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Indonesia's experience is even worse. Thousands of ethnic Chinese were killed between 1965-66, the year of "living dangerously." The latest one was in May, 1998 when over a thousand Chinese got killed or raped in Jakarta. Many properties were burned down.

The Philippines has a different experience. Except for racial slurs, the Philippines seems to have no recorded history of racial violence against the "chinoys" or Chinese Filipinos during the post-colonial era. The 1990s saw a spike in criminal activities against ethnic Chinese in the form of kidnapping. But these were mostly carried out by organized crime groups interested for ransom, nothing more.

I expect Sinophobia to increase in an alarming rate in the Philippines and neighboring Vietnam and Malaysia, all three of which are currently involved in territorial disputes with China over some oil-rich small islands in South China Sea, as China turned unusually aggressive in bullying its smaller neighbors in recent years. The standoff in Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal between China and the Philippines somehow caused many Filipinos to hate China for its 'greed' towards these isles despite its already massive current territory. Campaign to boycott Chinese products began in 2012. Protesters were holding rallies in front of the Chinese Embassy in Manila.

As the Filipinos become desperate with ever-increasing Chinese aggression and the United States not flexing its muscle enough to neutralize the Chinese, will this anger spill over against the local Chinese community and possibly resulting in racial violence similar to what had happened in Malaysia and Indonesia?

On Ethnocentrism And Of Being A Good Christian

The message of Jesus was universal and most likely opposed to racism and ethnocentrism. Yet a recent large study conducted by the University of Southern California found that religious people tend to be more racist. It observed that "members of religious congregations tend to harbor prejudiced views of other races." There are a lot of anecdotal evidence that support that assertion in the Bible belt of the Deep South.

A quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi goes like this: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” Sadly, it certainly describes the disparity between Christ's teachings and many of his proclaimed followers. 

Of course, this tendency is not limited to "Christians." The report concludes that “all religions offer a moral group identity, and so across world religions — including Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim, Judaism and Christianity — the religious in-group is valued over out-groups.” This human tendency is often the driving force in tribalism and nationalism. In social psychology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group to which an individual does not identify. Ethnocentrism is defined as "the view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it" often leading to pride, vanity, beliefs of one's own group's superiority, and contempt of outsiders. 

Ideally, when one becomes a Christian, he is supposed to become free from the shackles of many societal constructs, among them racism and ethnocentrism. "The truth shall set you free." St Paul was one of the early Christians who "got" it early on. In the famous "incident at Antioch", due to St. Peter's reluctance to share a meal with Gentile Christians in Antioch because they did not strictly adhere to Jewish customs, St Paul publicly rebuked St Peter: "When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas [Peter] in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?" [Galatians 2:14]

There are biological and evolutionary underpinnings behind this human tendency to ethnocentrism. Scientists call them "kin selection" and "kin altruism." But as we strive to become better Christians, or simply better persons, it is our duty to become aware of this tendency and transcend above it.