Very tenuously P: London marches and revolt

[Robin Landseadel]

Gandhi spoke of Satyagraha, a different kettle of fish altogether from  
"nonviolent resistance" and way closer to "Soul Power". A lot of  
confusion/misdirection came out out the concepts of passive resistance  
and nonviolent protest. What Ghandi preached was Satyagraha.  That's  
"Truth Force" or "Soul Force" or "Love Force",

	I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of
	 satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of
	truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent
	but that he must be weaned from error by patience and
	compassion. For what appears to be truth to the one may
	appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-
	suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not
	by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself
	
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha

Seems like a distinction that Pynchon is attuned to. Note how Pynchon  
is increasingly aware of Karma as his writing career rolls along, how  
the theme of karma is central to Against the Day.

On Apr 2, 2009, at 9:58 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> I have to agree with you Laura. Historically that is what it takes  
> and sometimes worse. We haven't quite got to the stage of civilized  
> debate. Gandhi eschewed the word passive. He spke of non-violent  
> resistance that was active and confrontational.
> On Apr 2, 2009, at 12:11 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>
>> The problem with passive resistance (Gandhi-ism) in a basically  
>> democratic country is that the movement is too easily marginalized  
>> (no news coverage) or co-opted (sit-coms having characters who  
>> comically spout the resistance lingo, Starbucks offering a fraction  
>> of a percent to environmental issues, etc.).  It takes a broad  
>> swathe of protesters (hedonistic hippies, grandmas for peace, neo- 
>> Trotskyites, masked thugs with a yen for window-breaking,  
>> doctrinaire academics, apoliticals pissed off about a narrow issue,  
>> etc. etc.) all acting in concert to force the concepts of change  
>> and/or resistance into the public arena.
>>
>> Laura