Cruelty Is Spreading. This Is Why Compassion Will Win.

Cruelty is spreading. It’s in the hateful language of the killer of Renee Good, as he walked towards her corpse: “F____ b___!” It’s in the rants of the most powerful people in the world, who do not wait for an investigation (or funeral) before insulting the deceased as “deranged” and “terrorists.” It’s in the reactions to state violence by the Left, including calls for armed resistance by politicians like former Rep. Dean Phillips.

And the cruelty is in each of us, as the pain boils over into rage. We want vengeance or justice or something—anything—to fill the holes in our hearts. From that hole, cruelty is born.

The shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis is bringing it all to a head. I don’t know if this is the inflection point. But with trust declining and cruelty rising, the inflection point will come eventually. And before it is too late, before that moment comes, we must learn one simple lesson from the last 200 years.

Nonviolence is key.

When the British gunned down Indian peasants for gathering salt, nonviolence freed them from empire. When racists attacked civil rights activists with police dogs in Birmingham, nonviolence sparked the conscience of a nation. And when the plague of AIDS killed hundreds of thousands of gay Americans, as a hateful government nodded approvingly, nonviolence taught the nation to love.

Evidence from history and science shows us that nonviolence gives our species the best chance to survive and flourish. Movements and nations that descend into violence end with failed states and endless suffering.

And, yet, in today’s movements, nonviolence has mostly disappeared. Leaders of Free Palestine at Columbia defended murdering Zionists. Climate activists talk openly about bombing pipelines. And even winners of the Nobel Peace Prize celebrate armed men using kidnapping and killing to achieve “peace.”

There are many reasons for this. Nonviolence is a moral muscle that must be trained. And there are virtually no spaces left in American life for that training to occur. Civil rights activists trained in churches. Indian independence activists had temples and ashrams. With churches empty, and ashrams taken over by consumerist gurus, where can we train people today?

There is also a profound loss of hope, which provides the foundation for nonviolence. The Civil Rights movement, at its strongest, was an optimistic movement. Even as lynchings and bombings terrorized Black Americans (and their white allies), polling data shows they grew more optimistic every day. They believed in those who oppressed them. That prevented them from returning hate with hate, or violence with violence. These were not enemies; they were future friends. And that hopeful nonviolence did something miraculous: it won over their most dangerous adversaries.

But the main reason nonviolence has disappeared is that it was always rooted in a hypocrisy: the tyranny of humans over other beings. No society ruled by terror can sustain nonviolence for long. It was impossible for an American nation grounded in slavery to be a peaceful one. So too, for a British nation operating by empire. Violence begets violence, and what is inflicted on the vulnerable one day will be inflicted on the rest of us on the next. The corruption of violence inevitably spreads through the system, like a rot or a virus. After all, if “might makes right” for some victims, then what is there—logically, psychologically, or culturally—to stop it from spreading to others?

You can see this in what happened today. There are deep parallels between the assault on the man in Minneapolis, and the daily scene in slaughterhouses and factory farms. Animals are frightened, ganged up on, and beaten. And, at the end, they lose their lives. Envision an animal in a factory farm or laboratory, and the mob violence we saw is not a shocking anomaly. It is an everyday reality most Americans simply choose to ignore. When our entire civilization—indeed our very bodies—are built on such violence, how can we possibly expect to find peace?

There is a simple solution to this problem: kindness to all beings. But it is not as easy as it is simple. Tradition, culture, money — all those things weigh against us. And yet, over the long arc of history, we know that we will win. Cruelty is common. Violence is easy. But, much as the universe abhors a vacuum, morality abhors hypocrisy. We love our own lives, and our children’s. We love our dogs and our cats. That is enough to have, not just hope, but confidence.

Cruelty is spreading. But its foundation is brittle, weak. Compassion is the future. Because compassion is built on something stronger: the truth of who we truly are.