Strength to Love

Originally published here January 18, 2009.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes of his, the first from his book, Strength to Love, in 1963:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction... The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

The second is from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm on December 11, 1964:

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

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Comment by Tyler Stowell on February 9, 2011 at 5:15am: Very nice post!

Comment by Marlaine Cover on January 17, 2011 at 9:30pm: Thank you for the shares Carl! Here is one in return...

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Comment by Ferdinand Zanda on January 17, 2011 at 4:51pm: I really like this! One of the key factors in teaching (letting children develop) is also safety and security. If one not feels safe he or she will not dare to come and try. When something goes wrong we should not feel bad about it, of course it's not nice, but it's the way it is and we should deal with, take a look what went wrong and try again.

On a large scale this also works. The problem here is we have to deal with multiple fundamental system errors. Like:

-the privatisation of the money system

-the principle of interest

-legislation that rid big companies (multi nationals) of responsibility

-the media used as a propaganda machine for commercial interest and the spreading of fear

-short term politics

-unbalanced educational systems (only cognition, no heart, no physical skill and a total lack of creativity)

-etc.

War is a symptom of our collective consciousness, but it's an error we can correct. We could stop and even forbid the production of weapons. We could actively collect and destroy the weapons we have. That would help for weapons are the tools of violence. And if enough people change their consciousness and start working on the fundamental problems stated above, as a result we'll feel more secure and start learning to love.