(NKARC Letter) Vol. 3, Number 2, Mar-Apr 2019

Nonkilling Arts Research Committee Letter: Vol. 3, N. 2 (Mar-Apr 2019)

Bimestrially sent from our site: Nonkilling.org.

"Nonkilling art explores the spirit and practice of how to prevent, respond to, and to improve individual, social, and global well-being beyond killing." —Glenn D. Paige

Dear NKARC members and friends,

Thank you for your thoughtful contributions on Nonkilling Arts and the material you have pointed to me. These are eclectic and inspirational. My contributions this time include a commentary on this year’s award winning Mexican film, Roma and a review of the book of poems by David Krieger. Both works seek to awaken passion to connect with life, making us experience essence of nonkilling, our inherent desire to live in peace.

1. Poetry and Nonkilling

(a) How to Talk to Nature

DEAR NATURE,

When do we treat you with respect?
When appropriate Nature conservation policies we select?

When drilling the ocean floor, how responsibly do we care?
When considering how in that process marine fauna/flora will fare?

When your natural phenomena do we understand?
When the impact of its forces we learn to withstand?

When with Climate Change will we deal effectively?
When pollution prevention/control legislation we´ll implement globally?

To YOU, NATURE when will all Humanity learn appropriately to refer?
When to YOU, full ECOlinguistic recognition Humanity will confer

Dear NATURE, when will you provide Humanity with Earth-dignifying lights?
When all global citizens share the effort of implementing NATURE´s RIGHTS

by Francisco Gomes de Matos, a peace linguist, co-founder of ABA Global Education, Recife, Brazil.

(b) The Big Lies

The big lies
don’t really have
short legs.

Their legs
only appear to be short
because their arms
are so long.

The arms
of the big lies
stretch so far
of truth,
they can make legs
or skeletons.

The Big Lies (DIE GROßEN LÜGEN) by Austrian poet Erich Fried (Translation Germain Droogenbroodt – Stanley Barkan), ITHACA 565

(c) A Conspiracy of Decency

We will conspire to keep this blue dot floating and alive,
to keep the soldiers from gunning down the children;
to make the water clean and clear and plentiful,
to put food on everybody's table and hope in their hearts.
We will conspire to find new ways to say people matter.
This conspiracy will be bold.
Everyone will dance at wholly inappropriate times.
They will burst out singing non-patriotic songs.
And the not-so-secret password will be Peace.

By David Krieger from his recent collection, IN THE SHADOW OF THE BOMB: POEMS OF SURVIVAL. (Read a review of this collection).
Also published in Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Global Poetry websites.

2. Nonkilling Cinema

ROMA -A black and white Mexican feature film, directed by Alfonso Cuaron. In cinemascope, 135 min.

Alfonso Cuaron's new award winner film, ROMA is a richly textured nonkilling masterpiece. Tomriss Laffy’s review of the film in Time Out describes it as "cinema at its purest and most human". The film keeps us on the edge taking us through the daily lives of a house maid and her middle class mistress. Alfonso Cuaron’s unfolding of the story in Roma takes a Nonkilling approach. Usually in cinema or tv, a director to keep the viewer engaged in the narrative, has not only one but a series of killing moments (climaxes) to satisfy audience’s insatiable urge for emotional excitement. In Roma, such contrived manipulation of the audience is almost non-existent. The end of Nonkilling art is not lamentation but to celebrate continuation of life, to live another day with dignity.

The film reminded me of a conversation on Nonkilling I had some years ago with Glenn Paige who often asked why don’t authors try to write nonkilling fiction or a nonkilling play etc. He didn't buy into the argument that artists primarily create art for the art sake. Glenn believed that an artist immersed in nonkilling thought would have no problem producing a nonkilling artistic work. I searched through my files to find a short story that might fit in with his description of NK art. The story entitled, ‘The Last Tiger’ is about a hunter who kills a tiger and regrets having killed this prey that was supposed to lead to the end of that species. I wondered that might prove to be a perfect Nonkilling narrative. Glenn thought action of the hunter to kill the prey did not necessarily made it a NK story. To begin with, the killing of tiger was gratuitous. It was being done merely for an effect. He insisted humans (and animals) had basic will to live. Heeding his advice, I tried the same story with a different ending, this time the hunter confronts the tiger but does not shoot the animal. In new version, the tiger stares at the hunter, looks around and then drifts into the woods. That was perhaps a more plausible plot line than the one involving a deadly confrontation.

Cuaron's Roma depicts the way life unfolds, the tension is not artificially created or resolved, the core truth of the narrative resonates and lasts with the viewer for long. Reality is that less than one percent of the humans have deliberately killed another human being. More about the film, see Tomris Laffly’ review.

3. The Nonkilling Song

(a) Better Way (5 min)
by Ben Harper
{ Watch videoclip }

An excerpt from the lyrics of Better Way
“...reality is sharp
it cuts at me like a knife
everyone i know
is in the fight of their life
take your face out of your hands
and clear your eyes
you have a right to your dreams
and don't be denied
i believe in a better way.”

(b) The Music That’s In All Of Us by Robert C. Koehler
Chicago-based peace journalist Bob Koehler writes: “I want to focus not simply on what's wrong with the world but what we're doing right. This week's column, about Musicians Without Borders, takes a close up look at an organization devoted to transformative change.”

Honoring cultural diversity through collective vocal practices across indigenous communities is the theme of alt.theatre’s insightful conversation. One of the voices in the conversation says: “I have learned through the years that singing while certainly confessional, is as much response as it is call. It requires an opening of self - a signal of invitation, a promise to accept what is received.” { See alt. theatre’s pdf attachment }

4. Visual Arts and Nonkilling

(i) ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS (HIPPOCRATES)
By physician-poet colleague Hugh Mann, he writes on Life and Arts

“Artistry is alchemy. With talent and palette, artists use poignant oils, idyllic acrylics, charming charcoals, playful pastels, and stellar stencils with colored pencils, in order to communicate, commemorate, contemplate, and celebrate God's consecrated but complicated Creation.”

(ii) NKARC colleague Maureen Korp’s review of an art exhibition, entitled, Life Cycle Conversations published in IMAGE, p.15 of Dec, 2018-Jan 2019 issue.

(iii) Bubble Peace - the conceptual piece about Peace on Earth was created by Maureen McIntyre, an art historian at Dawson College in Montreal. Maureen notes: "the image is made from a soap bubble in the process of freezing and is as fragile as the wish that it embodies for us all: Peace on Earth".

5. Video and Nonkilling

“Banning the Bomb; Smashing the Patriarchy”– TED Talk (12 min) by Ray Acheson:
Ray Acheson challenges the foundation of international security to raise one simple question: do nuclear weapons really keep us safer? Her ambition is to show through unique policy lens that the nuclear arms race is a manifestation of masculine power and dismantle the supposed natural order of things to build a more secure and peaceful world. New York based Ray is the Director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament programme of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

6. Nonkilling Commitment

NKARC colleague Rashida Khanam from Bangladesh sent the following on Prof. Paige’s second death anniversary:

“On this Day- the 22nd January We on behalf of the Center the members’
compassion, empathy, and love to humanity
composing of all faiths, cultures, colour, creed, gender and race, be in one
mind and soul as a member of a family;

To be Nonkilling, Religion must embrace the entity of God in soul
transforming it, the embodiment of
infinite Love for His creations;

We will highlight the spiritual view of soul having reflection true love
of God, keeping heart away
from mere observance of rites and ceremonies;

Nonkilling Religion, prepare the soul

We will fall in love with music, literature, and arts to let heart in
rapturous transformation go deeper and deeper
swimming in the ocean of imagination, ideas, and form the beauty and
truth;

Nonkilling Religion helps prepare the soul fit for meeting the supreme
Lover-God, instilling the essence of greatest beauty; imbuing Godliness in
heart for serving humanity and all creations”.

7. Nonkilling and Documentary Film

In Jan-Feb NKARC letter, there was a mention of a beautiful doc film, A Handful of Leaves by Sri Lankan film maker Vishnu Vasu. We have now link to the full doc film from its producer narrating the shaping of humanist rural development movement SARVODAYA, pioneered by Dr. Ariyaratne and a group of school teachers in SL.

8. Nonkilling Activism and Reports

• "A Nuclear Arms Race Will Produce No Winners: Despite everything, it is still in our power to avoid nuclear confrontation". By Mikhail Gorbachev

Gorbachev writes: “...It is possible to suggest that Washington’s decision to withdraw from the treaty is based not on the reasons cited by U.S. leaders, but on something very different: Washington’s desire to free itself from any limitations on its weapons and to achieve absolute military superiority.”

• Two reports from colleague Pierre Jasmin of Quebec’s Les Artistes pour la Paix
(i) Our Common Future - Quebec Movement for Peace
(ii) Déclaration d'Urgence Climatique

• Report on Violence and Women in India from Australian researcher colleagues Topsy and David Evans who travelled across India in December to present a paper on the subject. In last 15 years, over 30,000 men, women and children have been killed in the name of Honour Killing in India. When innocent love is not honoured it is an act of cowardice, a crime against humanity. { See David and Topsy’s trip report }

• 4 gods-within - from Koozma J. Tarasoff
NKARC colleague Koozma writes: “For the past 6 years, 3 friends and myself occasionally meet for coffee in downtown Ottawa . We first met at local peace events and discovered we shared a common humanity of ‘the god-within’. We enjoyed meeting for coffee, and soon called ourselves the ‘4 gods-within’...This is my third report about our meetings which began in December 2013.” { Full article, at Koozma Tarasoff’s Spirit Wrestlers Blog: '4 gods-within -- continued' }

• Finding Home: Stories from Brooke Valley, Celebrating 50 years: This is a book about pioneers “back to the land” peace building communities of artists, artisans and peaceful folks who moved from cities to rural Ontario, Canada in the sixties. Silke Reichart reviewed this fascinating book about their settlement over half a century.

9. Nonkilling Reflections

(i) A Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together
Signed by Pope Francis and Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque

An important document that talks about significance of Nonkilling and Human dignity. On Nonkilling: "life that God has forbidden to kill..."; "Whoever kills a person is like the one who kills the whole of humanity...":

On the concept of Dignity: "...human beings equal in rights, duties, and dignity"; "To achieve a dignified life.."; "The dignity of women..."; "The dignity of children"; "To ensure a dignified life for all..."; "...principles of their dignity"

{ Complete document: Document on “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” signed by His Holiness Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahamad al-Tayyib (Abu Dhabi, 4 February 2019) }

(ii) A Special Lecture "Protecting Religious People and Sacred Spaces: Nonkilling Political Science as Alternative" by Professor Chaiwat Satha-Anand, was held on Feb 18 at Thammasat University, Bangkok. Thailand. It was attended by representatives from 14 countries. The thesis of Chaiwat’s lecture was: "There is indeed a global trend of conflicts accursed with deadly violence when sacred spaces- temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, etc., and peoples of cloth: monks, priests, ministers, imams and nuns become targets; and that once these have taken place, conflicts that are already dangerous turn even deadlier. Nonkilling alternatives could be a factor to mitigate such deadly conflict."

10. Nonkilling Research

Curriculum development and bibliography by colleague Paul Hubers
    From: paulhubers@netscape.net
    Subject: 2018 Nonviolence Manual 101 Report*
      2018.1–12 Nonviolence 101 Manual Report*
_ 2018 Nonkilling, Nonviolence, & Civil Disobedience Course Outline or Syllabi Online
_ 2019 Nonkilling, Nonviolence, & Civil Disobedience Course Outline or Syllabi Online
_ 2018 Nonkilling, Nonviolence, & Civil Disobedience Guides & Manuals Online

   Please Note – 2018 concerned the developing, writing, & editing of entire Nonviolence 101; An Experience-based Manual for Approaches, Methods, and Outcomes in Academic & Activist Organization; Draft of Table of Contents with Chapters 1 and 10, plus related – selected notes & sources, about 100 of 400 pages can be downloaded. .

If you would like a draft “review” pdf copy emailed to you in exchange for your comments or critique – if you please also email your relevantly-significant icons, photos, logos, graphics, or video urls – if illustrating the power of nonviolence – all, if used, to be separately-annotated and fully-cited in Endnotes – please email me at paulhubers@netscape.net.

Last Word

An Epic Poem For Our Times?
by Nonkilling Poet Laureate Francisco Gomes de Matos, peace linguist, Recife, Brazil

An epic poem for our times?
It would show how the history of humanity climbs

From a history of violent civilizations
To the growth of nonviolent civilizations
From a history of humiliation
To the growth of humanization

From a history of ecological transformation
To the growth of spiritualization

From a history of imaginative sciencetechnologization
To the growth of interplanetarization

From a history of local
peaceful/nonviolent/nonkilling communication

To the growth of UNLIMITED LOVE globalization

An epic poem for our times?
It would show how Humanity wisely
climbs the mountain of humility
thus bringing together all of you and me

My deep gratitude to all who contributed and pointed to the material for
the Letter.

Looking forward to your inspirations and comments as always.

Nonkillling regards,
Bill

Bill (Balwant) Bhaneja
Coordinator
NonKilling Arts Research Committee (NKARC)
Center for Global Nonkilling (CGNK)
www.nonkilling.org

"Nonkilling Culture crosses all the lines." —Glenn D. Paige

Nonkilling is THE measure of Human progress

[THIS IS AN INTERNAL NEWSLETTER OF THE NKARC. COPYRIGHT FOR ALL MATERIAL IN THE NEWSLETTER REMAINS PROPERTY OF THE SOURCES/WRITERS/ART CREATORS.]

{ For back issues of NKARC Letter, see Nonkilling Arts page of CGNK site }

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