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From: kort@hounx.UUCP (B.KORT)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: The use of nonviolence.
Message-ID: <569@hounx.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 03:21:19 EST
Article-I.D.: hounx.569
Posted: Tue Feb  4 03:21:19 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 21:49:57 EST
References: <566@decwrl.DEC.COM>, <1073@mmintl.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
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Nonviolent passive resistance is a very old idea.  In James
Michener's _The Source_, there are a number of episodes dramatizing
non-cooperation with brutish authority.  There is a moving scene
in which a group of people stage a nonviolent "sit-in", defying
an edict of the authorities.  In order to work, large numbers of
ordinary people have to participate.  Gandhi started with small
issues and gradually but inexorably built up a following.  At
every stage he was careful not to push for anything so great that
he was seen as more than just a minor nuisance to the British.
By the time that they realized he was world-class, he already
had a world-class following.  He cultivated the press, and everything
was witnessed by impartial observers.

In White Knights, the dramatic scene at the end is played before
a throng of international diplomats and journalists.  The oppressor
cannot operate in the light of day.  Recall the Chicago demonstrations
during the Democratic Convention.  As Mayor Daly's Police cracked the
skulls of the demonstrators, the chant was heard, "The whole world
is watching."

The power of the presence of witnesses to make the oppressor painfully
and self-consciously aware of his acts of oppression was understood
in biblical times.  Today we call it the Hawthorne Effect.  It's also
a fundamental theorem in Feedback Control Theory: a prerequisite for
controlling some aspect of the output of a system is that the aspect
in question must be *observable* by the controlling agent.  If the
agent is the self, one must first become aware of the self's behavior,
and this is the role of the external witness.

--Barry Kort