Ahimsa as Civil Action

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There’s something important that we have to admit to ourselves. The social contract all throughout the Global West, and particularly here in the America, is falling apart. This, more than anything, is why people like Trump are getting elected around the world.

The social contract is basically always in flux and at risk of evolving. That’s part of the evolutionary process of history. Our current social contract has roots all the way back to the start of the Industrial Revolution but solidified into to its current form after the Allies crushed the fascist regimes of the WWII era. 

The basic framework looks like this:  

So long as you are a law-abiding citizen, you can enjoy an immense degree of personal freedom. Indeed, the State will hardly impose upon you. There’s no mandatory service requirement, no conscription, nothing really. You aren’t even legally required to vote. All you have to do is maybe occasionally serve on a jury, pay your taxes, and not break any laws and you can enjoy the greatest level of individual freedom in recorded history. 

However, there’s a catch. There’s always a catch, right? 

In order to enjoy this freedom, you must play some meaningful role in the economic order, for you need money to enjoy all the freedoms afforded by the liberal capitalistic democratic world order, the more the better. And to get money, unless you hit the genetic lottery, you must trade your time and energy in the name of productivity and material consumption. 

The fundamental promise of the modern social contract is that this little tradeoff, this sacrifice for the sake of the economy, actually works. Our problem right now is that it’s not really working, or at least not working for enough people to remain a tenable, unifying force for society. 

Look, it’s not like it has been some smooth ride all the way through. Our system almost broke down completely in the 1970’s, for example, but we were saved by globalization and the computer technology revolution. It almost broke again in 2000 during the tech bubble blow-up and then again in 2007-08 during the Great Financial Crisis. So far, we’ve muddled through but with each successive crisis, our economy has grown increasingly dysfunctional and, in recent decades, corrupt. 

Today, our economy is not quite broken or on the verge of some discrete crisis, but there’s a sense of exhaustion in the world, a feeling like people just don’t want to hear another word about the promise of prosperity or a secure retirement or even the American Dream. So many people have given-up or are on the verge of doing so. Meanwhile, our out of touch leaders, many that are obviously way too old, keep preaching the old doctrine. But they’ve absolutely lost the audience.

The philosophical premise of the modern social contract—that democratic capitalism, protected, of course, by a hegemonic Superpower, can give us both freedom and security—has been compromised, perhaps fatally so. And we know from history that if things get bad or crazy enough, people will willingly trade freedom for security. It’s happened time and time again and it looks like we are headed, perhaps inexorably so, for that kind of historical moment.

Is this, then, the end of the Golden Age of Freedom? I sure hope not.

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Faithful Profit+ readers will know that I love Gandhi and his radical approach to political change. What could be more inspiring than the idea that you could bring a modern democratic superpower to its knees through non-violent civil disobedience?

Anyway, I’ve been wondering whether something like Ahimsa could work today. 

I don’t think it can, at least not in the way it worked for Gandhi. It’s not that we’ve fallen so far as a society that a Gandhi-like figure would be killed—she/he certainly would in Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China—but rather we’ve become so morally apathetic and corrupt that we wouldn’t be moved in the same ways we once were. In our cold indifference and selfish pursuits, we’ve lost that sense of honor and nobility that so moved us in the last century.

If non-violent, civil disobedience won’t work, what will? I used to think that the key to reestablishing our great society was through the revitalization of our martial vigor. Yes, I know, a very Ancient or Churchillian idea. But when our response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks devolved quickly into even more morally questionable behavior, I realized how false of a path this was. War cannot save us from ourselves. 

The evil that we are fighting today is apathy. Thus, it’s not civil disobedience that is called for but rather civil action. If there’s a hope for the free world, it’s that we can return once again to the path of responsibility and morally motivated collective action. 

What if we were to envision a new kind of Ahimsa, one suited to our times and our problems? What would that look like? 

In my mind, the Ahimsa of Civil Action begins with four fundamental commitments:

1. The refusal to see suffering in the world and do nothing

2. The refusal to accept an unjust or inequitable status quo

3. The refusal to allow corruption to proliferate anywhere

4. The refusal to allow inefficiency or ineptitude to exist where it doesn’t have to. 

These refusals are a kind of civil disobedience, for they stand as a direct challenge to the status quo and those who stand to benefit the most from things staying just the way they are. They are revolutionary as well, in this day and age at least, because they would demand a 180-degree mindset shift for the vast majority of people. Most people believe that if they just focus on doing things right in their own lives, everything will be ok. But that’s not actually true. Every time you see something wrong in the world and do nothing, every time you close your heart to the suffering of others or take on an air of cold indifference, there’s a damage that happens—I say it’s in the soul but whatever you believe, something happens in these moments that is decidedly not good for you. 

The secret lesson of history is that there’s no such thing as “someone else’s problem,” for sooner or later “their” problem will become “yours.” This is one of those inevitable processes of history. We learned it the hard way during WWII and may be headed for a similar lesson in our age. No, we cannot just ignore the things that are wrong in the world.

The Ahimsa of Civil Action will be a vigorous affair. What comes to mind are the words of one of my favorite Americans, Theodore Roosevelt (note: I even named my son after him):

Yes, something like that!

For individuals, it will mean working to become better in life, not as some personal optimization exercise or in the pursuit of ever-more money or even the latest fad of trying to live forever, but rather in the ultimate sense. “Will you be a Good person?” is the question that’s on the table. Is there anything more serious or more important than that? 

For businesses, it means being efficient, effective, and profitable but also more socially and civically conscious and less exploitative.

For political leaders, it means more rational debate, more compromise, and better laws and policies. 

For government, it means efficient and effective functioning that is free from all corruption.

The Ahimsa of Civil Action is a call to a new kind of life, a life of purpose and vigor. It is a call to sacrifice, hard work, and struggle. But if it can save us from what we know will come—just ask the generation that fought the last great war what it feels like to be forced to care—it’ll be worth every ounce of effort. 

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