Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance. —  Hannah Arendt

However, we don’t need to be at war to experience violence. Even if we were to get rid of the weapons of war, we would soon replace them all because, as Thick Nhat Hanh, the Living Buddha, believes “the roots of war…are…in our hearts and minds”, they live in our “prejudices, fears, and ignorance”. How many of us have experienced violence? How many of us know intimately physical or psychological violence? How many of us have been turned inside out by violence: by war, discrimination, mental and physical torture, economic exploitation, political repression, revenge, sexual violence, slavery, abuse, competition, feuding, homicide, genocide, cruelty, domination, sexism, and classism? How many of us know someone who has suicided because of bullying at school; during an apprenticeship; at work; in the family or community; or in cyberspace? This is an extreme but sadly, an increasingly common solution to bullying and humiliation .

Man becomes what he believes himself to be…if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning. — Mahatma Gandhi