"So far, many individuals and organisations in 57 countries have signed the Nonviolence Charter."

Well that's nice isn't it, as my grandma used to say. Though, come to think of it, she always added, "But I wouldn't get your hopes up too high."

"...can humanity survive?"

Is there an answer if we assume Spock has really 'beam there' done that... before he said, "It is not life as we know or understand it. Yet it is obviously alive, it exists."?

Unfortunately the episode is called 'Operation - Annihilate!'

As the world currently exists and given the direction it is heading in, humans will not survive.

It will founder on the rocks of capitalism and imperialism and serial militarism.

If the U.S. goes bankrupt, we might have some better chance of survival but only if we depose the Oligarchs and Nations who make money from war and plunder and exploitation.

David, it almost sounds like you are suggesting we should have the traditional old family land grab? No more nations, just individuals taking whatever they can get?

Is that what you meant?

Of course it's not what I mean, Random Guy!

What I mean is a civilized world (that means no humans) where things like caring, sharing, altruism, honesty, compassion, generosity, morality, grace, nobility, humility, etc, seriously afflict the barbaric two-legged apes who are currently destroying our world.

Cheers!

I admit my last comment was a bit tongue in cheek but still I'm glad you cleared it up. I cant help but think of the lion king, where the hyenas are dancing around laughing "Gread idea! Who needs a king? No king, No king, lalalalalala"

Possibly immature but at the same time I get the impression that your idea is more "circle of life" rather than hyena party.

Humanity will NOT survive.

It may take one day for humanity to be extinct, or it may take 5 billion years when the sun explodes into a red giant, or anything in between.

Does it matter?
In any case, humanity is pre-destined to be gone!

The purpose of human-embodiment is spiritual, not the impossible tasks of physical survival or of leaving something after us. Gandhi practised non-violence (ahimsa) because it is a well-established spiritual principle, rather than due to fear-based worry for survival.

My grandma had sayings like that too, WmTrevor.

>>Well that's nice isn't it, as my grandma used to say.<<

One of her favourites was, "if you can't say anything nice, Pericles, it's better you don't say anything at all".

So, with apologies to grandma...

There are so many false notes in this article, it's a cacophony.

"...one challenge we face is to celebrate his life in a way that Gandhi himself would have found meaningful. Gandhi was not a man of token gestures."

Which presumably means that it is beholden upon us to make a non-token gesture.

And the best we can come up with is this?

"'The People's Charter to Create a Nonviolent World' invites people and organisations to consider publicly declaring their commitment to work to end human violence by signing an online pledge".

So everyone, stop playing Candy Crush Saga, and sign that online pledge. That sort of non-token gesture should sort it once and for all, and allow you to feel at one with Ghandi. After all...

"The Nonviolence Charter has been signed by many great people, even if you have never heard of them."

It's ok, I'll stop now. It's just that after many years of study, I can safely be assured of three things in this world. One, is that we are all going to die at some undefined point in the future. Two, that mankind will also cease to exist in a recognizable form, at some undefined point in the future - quite possibly in the next few hundred years, well before our sun turns into a white dwarf. And three, that mankind is chemically disposed to live in conflict.

Always has been, always will be.

But go ahead, knock yourselves out and sign the charter, if it makes you feel all warm inside. It is of course a completely honourable gesture of utter futility, but hey, the world needs earnest and well-meaning people. They will, of course, never have greater force than the mean and nasty folk. Simply because they are not mean and nasty.

Our very survival relies on universal cooperation!
When we all finally get that! We as a species, may still have a chance!
Rhrosty.

I've signed it lots of times and will a few more, it was such a sacrifice. Makes me feel SOOOOO nice that I have done something meaningful, much nicer than the rest of you meanies. Is there a pretty plastic wrist band available?

Such nice people always love State violence.

Dear Rhrosty,

<<Our very survival relies on universal cooperation!>>

I must assume that you include the worms in this universal cooperation!

<<When we all finally get that! We as a species, may still have a chance!>>

Sorry to be your messenger of gloom, but either us as species or the laws of physics do not stand a chance: these two cannot survive together indefinitely - one or the other must give way and go.

Oh god, don't these people take themselves so seriously. Talk about airs & graces, you'd have to reckon they think their manure doesn't stink.

There is no reason to expect the human race to survive, so stop worrying about it. You & us are not that important.

The only one reason for us being here is to harvest lots of the earths resources, pile them up in big piles called cities, then p1ss off out of here.

This will give the cockroaches, who will inherit the earth, a nice pile of raw materials to go on with, without having to gather them.

Please stop thinking you are something special. You're not, you are just the cockroaches mining work force, to be eliminated after your task is complete.

It sounds to me from reading this article that the real problem is overpopulation and that what we need is a really decent war to reduce the world population to manageable levels.

This is despite the fact that the combined efforts of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Tojo and Mao-Tse-Tung were unable to reduce the world population in 1945 to below the level it reached in 1939.

Hopefully new technology, particularly nuclear technology would achieve a greater outcome. We can expect more trouble, as the standard technique for the last 100,000 years when there is a shortage of any material, is to have a little war to see who gets the material, and who gets nothing.

still the most dangerous place on earth is inside a mother's womb. Until the barbarity of this murder is dealt with all other violence fades into insignificance.

I can't believe it. Yuyutsu, you have done it again, that is make a really stupid comment.
You assert that humanity will not survive. Either we go today or in the distant future. And then you ask does it matter.
May I assume that you do not have children? or grandchildren? Yes, it does matter. It matters a great deal. Have a child. Invest in the future. Watch that child have children. You will see what I mean.
We may not have much of a say about the approaching red giant, but we do have a say about most of the rest of it.

My plan is to sue the fossil companies for stuffing up the planet. This should cost them so much, that we will have enough money, to build an interstellar space ship to take to everybody to a new planet, where we can start the process of stuffing up the place all over again.

Isn't it wonderful.
So many intelligent unselfish people and so many positive contributions!
And all so wonderfully agreeable and ready to cooperate for the greater good! A bit like Gandhi really, aren't they?
Think, with so many positive people, blessed with so much common courtesy and costless civility, making such positive contributions, how can we not survive!?
Sainthood beckons surely?
Rhrosty.

Dear Halduell,

Having children as a way to "save" humanity is like the ostrich burying her head in the sand. In fact it increases the chances that humanity will end sooner rather than later by exhausting its natural resources earlier.

You and others justify that it matters to you, a great deal in fact, that your progeny will go on, despite the fact that so many wars have been (and will probably continue to be) fought over that matter. What you fail to realise is that the driving-force behind that desire to see your progeny succeed are your genes, whom you follow slavishly, not yourself, that it is only out of weakness of character that you allow them to take the driver's seat. Those genes do not care for you, they act selfishly to propagate their own, then they laugh at you behind your back for giving them such a joy-ride, sacrificing most of your life for their sake, at times even killing others for their pervert ambitions.

Yes, I have made a stupid comment recently, out of that same weakness above. It's not something I'm proud of, yet how about yourself? Suppose you were in a similar situation where all your children/grandchildren lived in Israel (and wouldn't agree to live anywhere else), would you not then support Israel having nukes if it was evidently clear that this was the only way to keep your family alive?

runner, good point about abortion. I bet most of these "great" signators support this violence-on-demand.

Yuyutsu, I am so sick of the anthropomorphising of genes, as if they can think or desire anything!

This belittling portrayal of humans is a misanthropic invention of the same people who preach against "racism".

They don't want "peoples" (especially "White" ones) to exist, so present the natural bond of kinship as robotic slavery.

Robert Burrowes "denials of reality"?

And signing a pledge will solve everything?

The people to fear though are those that (a) would never sign it, or (b) sign it and then contradict it (like Hitler's non-aggression pact)

To have a world without violence, you would need a world without *passion*.

While people feel attachments and revulsions to ideas, people and places, there will be those whose passion is excessive.

One way to increase the likelihood of violence is to mix together as many different types of people (and their variant passions) as possible, exactly what Western immigration policies are doing.

Yes, "humanity" will survive, no matter what.
Particular places and peoples may not.

Disappearing peoples are nothing new.
Where are the Romans now? The Goths?
They're gone, but their descendents live on as "Italians" and "Germans".

Will "Australians" as we know them survive?
Even the calmest weather won't protect us, if we keep the mix-and-match immigration train running.
Bridge out, full steam ahead.