Roberta Bacic is Chilean and came to Europe three decades ago to work for the War Resisters’ International. She is the curator of Conflict Textiles https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/ and a Visiting Professor at Ulster University.
– Rob Fairmichael spoke to Roberta Bacic and there is also a short input in the interview from Clem McCartney.
Rob Fairmichael: Roberta, I’m delighted to be talking to you here about secularism, and about secularism and nonviolence. So, I don’t know if you could start off with just a general kind of comment about where you come from in relation to secularism, the world, humanism, religion.
Roberta Bacic: Well, I’m not going to go that road, because I don’t have to put a label. You know, enough labels, enough ranks for everything, and I think I stand with the position based on observation of the world, of our capacities of thinking and feeling.
My position on pacifism and nonviolence comes from the empirical observation of the human condition and the natural order; by rational reasoning in which I act with feelings of affection and empathy. I have as much affection for a robin, or maybe more, than for a human being who’s throwing plastic around the world.
So my position in the world is a humble position in front of the huge power that is in nature and is in the world. So, that is my stand. It’s a philosophical stand. It’s not necessarily translated into an operative system. I’m not pretending to create and subvert the system. I’m intending to live a coherent life by which I can empathise with others, I can live in empathy, or not so much empathy, but we can coexist by basic principles of respecting also the environment.
Rob: How did this approach develop within your life? I mean, where did you start from, and how did that approach develop?
Roberta: Well, my parents survived the Second World War. One was in the concentration camp, and the other in prison because he didn’t want to kill. So, I have no empathy for the idea that it is either you have to forgive, or you have to reconcile, or you have to do this and that. The institutions that have been responsible and colluded with what happens are the same institutions that expect us to conform.
So, I have questioned from the age of 12, that was my first moment in which I decided I would not engage by being part of those institutions, I had to find another way to observe the world, in which I would not have to obey orders, and I would be in a position that I could be connected to everybody around, and not necessarily starting from the humans.
I had one of my first affectionate relationships with a snail that I had in the little tin on my windowsill, and I saw it grow and live and progress, so I don’t need so much the humans as a reference. I coexist with humans, and maybe that’s also why I have developed all this effort to create different languages, like textile language, to allow different ways of expression.
The system is very monolithic. I don’t want to hear anybody preach. Most people who preach at the end don’t behave the way they preach, or they think they can be forgiven or what they did can be forgotten because they had good intentions. I don’t have the ambition to convert anybody, I just want to be in harmony, and in that way it builds on those instincts in the natural order of cooperation, caring, consideration, and altruism.
I don’t want to be antagonistic, having to reject those whose instincts are control and dominance, and to use their tactics. No point. When there is no communication possible, I stay outside.
Rob: Would you define your approach as a secular one, or a philosophical one?
Roberta: Philosophical. It comes from philosophy, it comes from the rational. I don’t need anything superior. I don’t need to know from where I come or how the world was constructed. I don’t need answers. I can look at my cat and see that she has a wonderful life and enjoys the sun, doesn’t like the rain, and doesn’t need to know why she was born, and who gave her life, and when will she die, and she has no belongings. I look at the birds, they don’t need a passport, they can travel 2,000 kilometres without having eaten and having a ticket, you know? So that makes me be much more humble. I don’t need the big answers. I am very pleased to have a good life. I live simply, and that is what guides me.
I recognise the incredible complexity of the cosmos, from a philosophical point of view, and the earth within that of which we are a part. Wonder, awe, humility. We are only part of it. Where do we get all this idea that we are the centre, we humans are the centre? Why should we be the centre? We have no reason to be the centre.
Rob: Somebody who I believe was important in your thinking was Jorge Millas. Do you want to say something about his influence on your thinking?
Roberta: Yeah, I think he had a big influence on me, first of all, for his humility. He would get into the class to do his lesson, and would not throw it onto you. He would just share his distilled thinking of life, and would never speak against anything or anybody. But he would be very strict in that you had to reason, you had to be coherent, you have to live a life according to the world of natural order, not the world order created by mechanics or other things, you know? So, he was very important in the way that he gave us freedom, but a freedom that was freedom to push you to do better. You always can do better. He would have absolutely disliked the teaching of, “oh, how good you are doing” – this very pampering thing.
He wanted you to be consistent, and that your capacity of thinking was innate to your humanity, and you shouldn’t be applauded for that. You were doing what you had to do. It wasn’t something that you praise, and you give a grade, or whatever. So his attitude was very important to me. He was very important also in his physical element. He walked very gently, very, I would say almost slowly, but he had a halo. You would feel that there was an air around him of serenity that came from complete clarity of where he stood.
When he entered the class, we had people who came to listen to him, even if it wasn’t part of their course. They were times when you didn’t work only for the mark. He would just develop a concept. So this idea of following a thinking process, but also feeling the thinking, and that you don’t impose, and that you wonder how do you get to this realisation.
And to get to what one of his followers calls “the joy of thinking”. It’s a joy to think. It’s a joy to think that we have limitations, that we don’t have the answer. That we can progress and be and feel, having doubts. And the more doubts we have, the more tolerance we have to others.
So I think he was central. He was also very important insofar that he came with his books; he would read a word, a sentence, and would give you the space. He would also answer questions from the students in a very calm, measured way.
I remember once a very irritated Marxist student wanting to turn the philosophy class into a class of politics. He asked him what role did religion have in his thinking. Jorge Millas walked along the room, very calmly, he didn’t answer strongly. He didn’t get irritated, he didn’t dismiss him. He put his hands under the chin. I can vividly still see him today as he said “Thank you for your question. In this class, in this thinking, there is no space for God.”
So it was a key point in my definition of how far I would go in politics too, because though I have been all my life very aligned with Marxism, I never became a militant, because I’m not going to endorse the terrible things some people have done to other people in the name of socialism, or Marxism, or Communism.
Rob: Coming on more specifically to nonviolence and aspects of nonviolence and so on. Nonviolence is sometimes very identified with religious points of view, whether that might be Christian or Buddhist or something else. Do you think that can be problematic in terms of a wider approach or understanding of nonviolence, or is it a matter of letting a thousand flowers bloom? You know, wherever you come from, you can come to nonviolence……
Roberta: Absolutely, nonviolence has been taken over. But nonviolence is a way of living and behaving in the world in which you use your reason to what can be effective and what cannot be effective. I can well remember being part of the movement against torture in Chile, Sebastian Acevedo, being a leader, and the big discussion was, shall we accept the communists? He said, “welcome, welcome all the communists. That means they haven’t found answers. They might come seeking protection for themselves and come and help us to find answers and ways to respond to the dictatorship.” You embrace everybody. It’s a strategy to live and to act in front of what’s happening.
Rob: I suppose as a Christian, I see no contradiction between my religious beliefs and what I see as the effectiveness of nonviolence. So, for me, the two things would mesh together. I very much think that nonviolence can stand on its own two feet, that it, in a way, doesn’t need a religious backing, but if it does have a religious backing, whatever source it…
Roberta: We all have to have our own ways of survival and standing in the world. We step into nonviolence as a way to respond to the world with those principles, and we can live with other people. I think in nonviolence strategy, to be efficient, you have to be accepting the principle of nonviolence. That’s the only thing that you can expect in common. The rest can come from different parts of thinking, philosophies, religion, mystical or non-mystical.
You don’t have to agree in everything. You have to agree in a strategy, and if you’re going to be in the street and you’re going to be in an action. I was quite often in actions with people who were very political, and from different strands of life, but together we held hands and we stood together. It’s the image of the apilleristas* holding hands in front of the Congreso Nacional, they were not pretending that we were all equal. They dressed in different colours, not to look like the military in uniform. It was a strategy to be different, each different. But the thing was we were showing that we were living up to other principles.
The importance of that is also nonviolence in daily life. It’s about being able to say what you agree with and where you disagree, and not to find the middle way, because quite often there is no middle way. It’s to accept the other, living different, having different principles, and coexisting.
I don’t think that you always want to come to a middle way, you have to give up a bit, and the other has to give up. So why should they? You can coexist in different beliefs, in different religions, in different stance, in different work. That doesn’t matter.
Clem McCartney: Pacifism and nonviolence within religion, it’s a good question where that comes from because the early religious thinkers, tended to adopt a position of love and compassion and basically non-violence. But where did they take it from? They may have taken it from existing thinking along those lines in different ways. Buddha renounced his power, his influence, his status, and meditated and searched for the meaning of life. And he probably was drawing from all these other disciplines that he studied and learned about.
The Old Testament prophets were very far from nonviolent, and very far from being pacifists, and in a sense, Christianity was a rethinking, a New Testament, a rethinking of that particular religious strain. And it came at a time when the Jewish community was under pressure from the colonial power and powerless, so it incorporated a much more non-violent element into it. So it’s not a question of where it comes from; it comes from so many different places. It reflects, when Roberta says that you find the concept in your own study of nature or human behaviour, human attitudes, emotions, and so on. But you can find it in other places as well. I think there’s a problem of saying you’re a secular pacifist, because that means saying something you’re not, you’re not religious, rather than saying, I’m a pacifist.
Rob: One detail that I would like to look at briefly before we come towards an end, is it comes to mind about the life and writings of Gene Sharp, because one of the issues within the nonviolent movement was the moral or pragmatic approach, if you like, to nonviolence. And some people accused Gene Sharp of not adopting a sufficiently moral kind of approach to nonviolence, but simply emphasising the pragmatic.
Roberta: Well, I don’t know if it’s a debate. I think Gene Sharp has done great contributions, and he has been trying to also implement methodologies, but the methodologies come after, and procedures on how to live according to that; it comes after you have taken a position, and from where you stand. So I think his ideas and his position of trying to create a movement are very valid. How we do it is our responsibility, and if we can’t do it, we can’t make the other responsible. Because whenever he was writing, he was writing in a time in which it seemed, like, for us engaging with agendas, it seemed to be a change of the world order, and we were going to come to a more fair world. It didn’t happen. Gene Sharp wrote at the time that nonviolence was becoming quite strong, there had been all the movement of Gandhi and other movements in the United States. So, the writings also respond… I don’t know if you agree on that, but writings respond to the times you live.
If I would have decided to fight the dictatorship with a gun, I hadn’t achieved anything, but I have to concede that Pinochet had to go because of the nonviolent struggle, the public discourse, and also the ones who threatened the order with guns. So, it’s a combination of things; there is no one position that will sort it out.
And now, I have been taken quite aback with a book I am reading on the Magdalene girls, an extremely good book that also has textiles that speak to this horror, and looks from the point of view of archaeology and anthropology. You know, all that was happening in Dublin, and people were seeing the girls through the windows and did nothing. So that shows that we haven’t had the simple values of empathy and outrage, engaging and putting myself in the situation of the other. I think that it’s no time for preaching. It’s a time to be humble and to act.
Rob: And I think, just in regard to an ending point here, it is a difficult time to believe in nonviolence, because violence is everywhere, and, violent approaches within states, and between states, and, all sorts of things.
Roberta: It’s always a time to be nonviolent, because we see that violence brings more violence and more violence. So, it is impossible to think that if I would change my position, I would achieve anything more. What is clear is we have not been able to achieve more inclusive spaces in which people think more and choose better presidents or prime ministers or all of that, because in many countries they are not imposed on them. There are elections but it is not democracy, because people are not participating in making decisions. So we are in a moment of absolute crisis of a system that’s not working.
And we don’t have prominent leaders or states people who inspire us. To be able to move forward, we need to engage with lots of respect in the difference because the commonality is very easy. I find it always more interesting, a conversation with people who think different. One has to find a way in. Is it through affection? Is it through a hobby? Is it through a sport? Something that unites, some food that you like, whatever unites you, that allows you to discuss all these differences.
Because the reality is that we can live with different viewpoints. Certainly we can. My father and my mother were from different religions, suffered differently, but they had a life together. What united them was emigrating and being refugees, or asylum seekers in Chile. And that big bond of making a new life together was enough to overcome any differences. So, it wasn’t because they were against this or that, it was what they did together. And I think it’s this togetherness that is very important.
* https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/search-quilts2/fulltextiles1/?id=222 ‘Encadenamiento / Women Chained to Parliament Gates’, Anonymous. (© Conflict Textiles, Photo: Martin Melaugh)