Satyagraha

Thirdly on the problems of people using Satyagraha, Gandhi said “In order to figure out what Truth is, you need to obey the laws to find unjust ones”. The problem is that most people experience the unjust laws everyday and are ok with them. I would say that when it comes to unjust laws most people are like the Untouchables in that they’ve accepted the idea that that’s how it’s always going to be and nothing can change that. It almost requires a very special person every time like Gandhi to motivate the masses and to show them the light, but the problem with that is these special people are very hard to come by. Gandhi, Jesus, and Martin Luther King Jr. are a few people that come to mind when I mention special, motivational people. The unfortunate correlation between these three people, that I think most people see is that they were all assassinated for trying to better the world during their time in history.

I have a very pessimistic view on those in power like the British during Gandhi’s time. I am guessing that it was the people in power that had those three people mentioned murdered. I can’t really imagine a normal, rational person murdering any good person like Gandhi unless he had something to gain. Gandhi was not a fan of the economic system of Capitalism, but Capitalism is and was a big part of the global economy and it revolves around money. In psychology, money is a secondary extrinsic motivator. Money could be the thing that Gandhi, Jesus, and Martin Luther King Jrs’ assassins could have had in common. The people that have always have had money throughout history were the people at the top. Not the slaves during Jesus’s time, the Untouchables during Gandhi’s time, or the blacks (for the most part) during MLK’s time. It was the Kings, the British, and the capitalist rich white men during MLK’s time that had the money. To sum up my points of the last few paragraphs, you don’t find many people enlightened and willing to be assassinated enough in the present day. If there are people like that in the future however, I think that Satyagraha can in fact eliminate the all problems that will ever face society.

All problems are in some way moral issues, but let’s more specifically look at political problems and even more specifically racism. Politics is the study of power and according to contemporary Social Psychologist Dr. Zimbardo, “Evil is nothing more than a demonstration of power”, so political problems are really evil problems. The Love Force has already successfully defeated one major evil problem that we all know about. During the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, police officers that thought it was ok to consider them 2nd class citizens, very poorly mistreated black men and other minorities. During the Civil Rights movement, the minorities working to have better lives endured so much and they accomplished what they wanted through the ideas of Gandhi’s Satyagraha ideals, even if Martin Luther King didn’t specifically call it that. They were jailed, physically beaten, and suffered for years before America and its citizens started to see that they loved us more than we could punish, humiliate, and beat them. They used Satyagraha so much that the privileged people of that time started to see them as human and deserving of the same equal rights that they already had.

Peace, freedom, and equality are three ideas that my mentor used to encourage me to use as my basic tenets of life. There are no ways to create problems if those are three goals that people strive for. I think Gandhi would have agreed with my mentor on those beings goals to aim for in society. Satyagraha is a moral way to solve problems, but in the best case scenario there wouldn’t be any problems and therefore no need for Satyagraha. I personally think that Satyagraha has some relevant issues in today’s society because the world is much more different than when Gandhi left it. Those issues however have the ability to be resolved and Satyagraha could change into something even better than when Gandhi came up with it.