Resistance Strategically in a Changing World

We’ve seen that peace is a dynamic thing. It’s something we must build all the time in a world that is always changing and is made by us. In this world, violence and feeling weak are not just things that go wrong sometimes. They are always here, part of how things are in the world.

So, fighting back the domination (resistance) and helping others (care) become very important ways to live our lives, both for ourselves and in groups. But we must also be careful not to think about fighting back and helping in simple, storybook ways. Fighting back is not just about romantic heroes who are good fighting against bad monsters. Helping others is not just about strong people being nice to weak people because they feel sorry for them.

Let us examine. Both resistance and helping others are smart actions. They are not forever, they can break easily, and we must always change how we do them because dangers change and people get hurt in new ways.

In old, simple stories, fighting back often looks like heroism. A small number of truly good people fight against many terrible monsters. These stories suggest that they will win because they are simply on the side of Truth. But if we see the world in a more real way, we know that no one side is completely right. And fighting back is never simple or only good. Even a fight for a very good reason can become bad. Even a very cruel power can sometimes do a small good thing, we look hard.

So, resistance is not saying that one side is forever Good and the other is forever Evil.

It is a practical, careful promise to say "no" to being controlled, to being treated as less than human, and to giving up hope. We do this even while knowing that we ourselves can never be perfectly good or clean in the fight.

Smart resistance asks us:

• Where and how can I say "no" to being controlled in the best way, without causing too much unnecessary harm?
• How do I avoid turning into the bad thing I am fighting against?
• What good things am I helping to build for the future, not just reacting to the bad things happening now?

In this way, resistance is not like a play on a stage. It is like careful gardening. It means pulling out the weeds of cruelty. But it also means making the ground ready so that something better might, one day, grow there.

In the same way, helping others – the act of taking care of people who are weak or hurting – must not be just about feeling emotional or being "nice." Helping is a choice you make carefully. It is often hard and has a price. It means deciding to protect lives and connections that can break easily, even when you know you won't always get something good back, and even when the world still has problems you can't fix easily.

In a world that is not fixed and always changing, helping must be smart:

• It must know its limits. We cannot save everyone. We should also not try to carry all the heavy problems alone.
• It must not treat people like babies. Real help makes people stronger; it doesn't trap them by telling stories that they can only be weak.
• It must know that help goes both ways. We do not help others like we are gods looking down; we help with them, knowing that we are all weak sometimes and need help. Besides, by helping others, we develop better habits.

So, mutual helping is important for the whole community, not just a private act.

It builds small groups and ways of being together that respect people through friendships, groups working together, and sense of community. These fight against the cold, cruel power of others with the strong, warm feeling of sticking together.

Perhaps the hardest but also most beautiful thing is that resistance and mutual helping must be done together, at the same time. Fighting back without helping becomes being mean but calling it fair. Helping without fighting back becomes giving up but calling it kindness.

To live in a good way in a world that is not fixed is to become skillful at holding two ideas that seem to not fit together. It is dialectics.

• To fight against the things that make people feel less than human without starting to hate those things or the people who do them.
• To help the people around us without pretending not to see how systems and power hurt them.
• To keep going knowing we will lose some fights, and that we will never have a final, sure win that lasts forever.

This is the good quality of people who choose to be active in the world without pretending things are perfect. They do not hold onto ideas of perfect places that don't exist. They do not give up and think nothing good can happen. Instead, they build, even in groups that don't last forever, with broken hopes, in systems that are not finished – the strong but breakable ways of living where respect, sticking together, and hope can still live.

In this strange, changing world, smart resistance and smart mutual helping are not things we can choose to do or not do. They are what give us our respect and worth as humans. They don't promise there will be no violence, or that we will never feel weak.

They give us something calmer, stronger, more like real people: the ability to live, to act, and to love like our lives are important even when the world doesn't promise that they are important.

And maybe in that "like," in that kind, strong act of pretending that becomes real when we promise to do it, we find the closest thing to being saved that this changing world gives us.

Let me recite the first words of Dhammapada.

Preceded by mind
are phenomena,
led by mind,
formed by mind.