Long before I found myself face to face with the barrels of guns, I knew that advocating nonaggression would attract aggression. I also knew that if I didn’t survive to see a society based on love, the idea would not die with me.
My five resisters, the men whose words and actions form the basis of my Tenets of Common Wealth, did not die quietly for the most part.
But their ideas live on, centuries later. You can’t kill an idea. And few ideas are so powerful than the notion that when we love one another, when we treat others as we wish to be treated, when we give more than we receive, we all prosper.
Violence on violence merely extends the cycle.
Violence cannot create a nonviolent world.
Non-peace cannot create peace.
Hate cannot create love.
Hate cannot create love? Oh, no.
I had reacted to True’s attempt to recruit me with anger. In that moment I hated him and all he stood for.
There was another way. It was the way I had been, for lack of a better word, preaching all along.
I had not convinced enough Sirians to turn my philosophical musings into practical action. If Earth was to be beaten back, it would be with violence. I didn’t endorse this; I simply accepted it.
But I knew with sad assurance that another opportunity would come. The cycle would be extended, and another revolution would be required to achieve freedom.
Entry 65
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