Change only comes about through Violence

To many people, Violence is abhorrent. While I look at that as an Enlightened perspective, I see attaining such enlightenment (with the hope of Ascension to a higher plane of consciousness?) as one of the fundamental paradoxes of Life. The quintessential Catch 22 between Survival and Morality...

I say that, because Enlightenment specifically implies attaining (dare I say, obtaining?) something you don't start out with. Such Change requires Violence, yet attaining Enlightenment requires abhorring Violence.

Many would say that such a paradox does not exist because my base assumption that Change requires Violence is incorrect.

To those people I say, "Please, prove me wrong."

Many of those people would start off quoting the ideals of the non-Violent movements as espoused by Martin Luther King, or Mahatma Gandhi. To those people I say that Movements based on non-Violence only achieve their goals because instead of applying violence, they instead open themselves to receive violence. If the police dogs and fire hoses had not been used on the demonstrators in Birmingham, would that Civil Rights movement have achieved as much exposure and ultimately the critical mass of righteous indignation that enabled it to succeed? I believe not.

It is my belief that not only is Violence required for Change, but the amount of Change is directly proportional to the amount of Violence used to achieve it.

I believe that this is at the heart of why the Gay Movement has achieved change so very slowly. Through being the victims of the THREAT of Violence for so long (which can be far more psychologically impairing), it is my belief that the Gay Movement is made up of more people that abhor Violence than any other group since the pre-WW2 Jews. Which means that Change comes slowly, and usually at greater cost to the few vs. the many (Stone Wall, Matthew Sheppard, etc.). I just hope it won't take an application of Violence equal to the Holocaust for Change to be achieved, but sadly I feel that the amount of Violence necessary to overcome our abhorrence OF Violence will be substantial and costly...