I was talking to someone on Sunday who quoted a slightly different version of the Gandhi saying, 'an eye for an eye would make the whole world blind,' which nonetheless meant the same thing. He told me that he hoped by being nice to people it would positively influence their behaviour, & that you could always stop someone being horrible by being nice to them.
My first reaction was that he must have been incredibly lucky in his dealings with other people - or else possibly was so determined to view things positively that he would wind up ignoring the simple fact that people abuse, hate, take advantage of other people, etc, all the time. In my dramatic way I used the example of Pol Pot to counter his argument - I mean we can all have a bad day, but we don't all spend it killing several thousand people merely for wearing glasses! The irony is, of course, that Pol Pot himself should really have been killed in his own programme of exterminating intellectuals, since he had a degree from the University of Paris.
This phrase 'an eye for an eye' is often misunderstood. People who haven't read their Bible attentively enough think that Jesus gave it as an ethic to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. Actually it's the place where he tells them not to resist evil but turn the other cheek.
It's that kind of thing that leads to a martyr-complex, & opens the door for the great potential for abuse in Christianity. On the other hand I'm with Gandhi that if we keep evening the score everyone will be blind. In Gardner's High Magic's Aid, it is said that the joke among witches is that you must return threefold - this is specifically in the context of initiatory scourging but is clearly applicable to other situations, indicating that early Wicca had a quite different ethic from the don't-do-anything-ever ethic you can find among the eclectics but not among the Hard Gards. There is a spell for protection of property in one of Scott Cunningham's books that invokes the law of threefold return, which I actually find quite shocking, because I would never multiply someone's harm on them. On the other hand you have the left-hand-path crowd who (apart from clearly not understanding magical polarity) are overdoing their own place in the universe. They're in danger of ending up being one of these people who take up too much space, leaving them at risk of a karmic bitch slap, or possibly falling over into being a white light-type. I don't have an answer to this one, I'm just thinking aloud.
I think of these various approaches I'm actually most with Gandhi, whose nonviolent action is often misunderstood. Not initiating something but refusing to be moved is not to be confused with trying to charm people around or just accepting anything that's thrown at you. The way nonviolent action actually works is by in effect creating havoc & outnumbering the resources that are stacked against you. The downside of this approach is that it will mean having bad things happening to you, it's aimed at stopping rather than preventing, & you have to be prepared for some fallout.
However, here's my problem with this whole thing - & like I say I don't have an answer. As we go through life we meet people who don't give a damn about other people, they live their everyday lives without thought for anyone else. When cornered they will lie their way out & be convinced even as they say it that it's the truth. These people are c*nts. The best argument against the idea of trying to bring people round is that we live in a world where a staggeringly high proportion of the riches are owned by a *tiny* minority who intend to keep hold of them, & the poor can starve. There is *no* headway in a poor person appealing to the better instincts of these people, not that they could, since the rich are safely insulated from the poor. 'Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of those who were oppressing them,' is a saying of Assatur Shakur. It's completely true. However, I didn't know who she was when I read it, & now I realise she's the only woman on the FBI's Most Wanted list for multiple murders. I can also see that going down the terror route causes defensiveness in the oppressor. I don't have an answer to this conundrum of why inequity, abuse, hatred, all flourish.
At least not an ethical one, I think there may be a partial answer in the witch world. We know that our world encompasses all possibilities, which are held in a dynamic tension, rather than being static. Inequity, hatred, fighting & competition may be partly inevitable. I feel the witch must incorporate this possibility into magic, being realistic about what we can expect. This is not to say we should accept things as they are, but should work this into our world view, or even use it. The universe always strives for homeostasis, & being a c*nt invites a bitch slap!
But as an individual witch we have to be easy on ourselves sometimes. It isn't possible to go through life fighting *everyone*, like the mother in Oranges are Not the Only Fruit. I'm quite fond of servitors myself: it means you actually have someone to get on with magic & you can do something else. This can work even when it is an individual witch against an evil. But have you noticed witches don't come singly? You literally *cannot* be a witch alone, others will come along, forming a bond stronger than any family or mafia cabal, when you need them. If you're under pressure you may not be in a good place to work magic anyway, & it may be necessary to ask someone else to do it or assist with it. This is merely being realistic, if you're ill or cornered.
I suppose what I'm feeling my way towards is a situational ethic, while also expressing my dissatisfaction with most of the existing ones! Incidentally - I realise spinning has Indian or Hindu-specifc meanings, but isn't it interesting that iit also has witch meanings as well? As I remember Gandhi also said 'You must be the change you want to see in the world'.
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