Disadvantages Of Nonviolence Essay

Nonviolence is a simple yet broad term that can reflect two smaller more complex terms that many people turn away from. Within nonviolence there is principled nonviolence and there is strategic nonviolence. To see the difference in the two clearly one only needs to think of separate leaders associated with the two methods: Mohandas K. Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. with principled nonviolence, and retired political theorist Gene Sharp with strategic nonviolence. The problem with the two different methods is that people are unaware that there is a distinction that needs to be seen. Just because principled and strategic nonviolence are both methods of nonviolence does not mean they encompass the same ideas. To better understand the distinction is to better understand nonviolence. To appreciate nonviolence fully it is important to gather the distinctions between the two categories and to understand the strengths and the disadvantages …show more content…
Many people do not realize that there is a distinction between the two. In a sense, it is important to differentiate the two from one another, yet at the same time it is pinning one form of the same method against the other which can lead to conflict within nonviolent protesters. This also greatly takes away from the goal of nonviolence because it focuses too much on how they differ from each other. There is a possibility that if the terms were to be forgotten nonviolence might crumble away into nothingness; clearly the distinction between the two is important. Both types of nonviolence have their pros and cons. Principled nonviolence encompasses a sense of community. This is evident through Gandhi’s Satyagraha where the people who practiced this, or satyagrahis, came together under a sense of unity that was created to “achieve correct insight into the real nature of an evil situation by observing a nonviolence of the mind.”