Maybe ignorance is Bliss, pt. 2 but I'd rather not be Ignorant

In continuance of pt. 1, this post deals with a similar failure to look at the whole history of an event. Why look at the whole history when it conflicts with our identity when we can just look at the part that is coherent with our worldview. This post is my attempt to flush out the idea that was mentioned in class: “King has been sterilized to only the ‘I have a dream’ speech.” We don’t want to hear the King that is against war, against poverty, because these don’t fit neatly into the civil rights movement. If we believe that King is dead on with his beliefs, then how do we reconcile his stance against war? We need to bring King’s entire message to the forefront of our consciousness. But his calling against war is something that is deeply antithetical to our national myth. We believe that our freedom—to some the most important fact of America—comes from fighting. Without the revolutionary war, they argue, we would still be British (this ignores the freedom that has been won by Canada, Australia, most of Ireland, India, New Zeeland, and the list goes on). But the message of this myth is that we got our freedom through violence and that is the only way to maintain that. The major fallacy of this argument is the Civil Rights movement—freedom was won and maintained through nonviolence.

I am going to quote two parts of King’s speech. The first deals with the systemic nature of violence and its prevalence in our society.

Read King’s own words in his famous speech and Riverside Church in New York City.

“My third reason [for being against the war] moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”

This quote articulates King’s plan for the future of the world—overcoming violence through love.

“This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

“We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).”

I believe that King is often ignored in terms of war because we’re afraid. We’re afraid that the image that we hold of King as a morally high individual without fault might come into question. We are afraid to deal with the reality of King’s message. It is not one solely of Civil Rights but one of the world. How can we make sense of King’s message in the world? Either the national myth glorifying war is false, or King’s message of the power of love is false. I believe that these are, at their cores, antithetical. Instead of wrestling with the contradiction, we ignore King’s message of love and hope in the world. Which I believe is a mistake. How can we bring King’s message of love to the forefront of our consciousness? Can we reconcile this contradiction? Can we do as John Lennon asked and Imagine a world with out war but one with love?