Definitions: (1) characterizes one who opposes war and the military solution; one who proposes all disputes be settled by arbitration and other means; (2) nonviolent; peaceable
Balancing Qualities: Humor, Luck, Strength
Compatible Qualities: compromising, courage, moral conviction, objectivity, patience
Familial Quality: Satyagraha (Sanskrit): literally “insistence on truth” or “truth force” [pressure for social and political reform through friendly passive resistance]
People Who Exemplify This Quality:
• Mohandas Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) political and ideological leader of India
• The Quakers: The Religious Society of Friends
Quote: I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war. — Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Inspiration: Count Lev Nikolayevich [Leo] Tolstoy (1828-1910) at the age of fifty experienced a religious conversion to the Gospel of Peace and lived his last thirty years preaching the ethic of nonviolence.
Comment: To make political pacifism work there must be unity, loyalty, daring, and mutual respect.
Advice: Remember there is personal pacifism and political pacifism. Do not castigate yourself if you are not Gandhi with his combination of personal and political aplomb. Your personal belief, that might does not make right, is laudable. Do what you can in your daily life to live peaceably.
Bibliography: The true story of effective nonviolent resistance to Nazism. The townspeople sheltered, and saved the lives of, many hundreds of Jews even though the penalty was deportation or death. — Philip Paul Hallie (1922-1994) Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of The Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There {1985}