...In the book, he provides a pragmatic political analysis of nonviolent action as a method for applying power in a conflict.

Sharp's key theme is that power is not monolithic; that is, it does not derive from some intrinsic quality of those who are in power. For Sharp, political power, the power of any state - regardless of its particular structural organization - ultimately derives from the subjects of the state. His fundamental belief is that any power structure relies upon the subjects' obedience to the orders of the ruler(s). If subjects do not obey, rulers have no power.

In Sharp's view, all effective power structures have systems by which they encourage or extract obedience from their subjects. States have particularly complex systems for keeping subjects obedient. These systems include specific institutions (police, courts, regulatory bodies, etc.), but may also involve cultural dimensions that inspire obedience by implying that power is monolithic (the god cult of the Egyptian pharaohs, the dignity of the office of the president, moral or ethical norms and taboos, etc.). Through these systems, subjects are presented with a system of sanctions (imprisonment, fines, ostracism) and rewards (titles, wealth, fame) which influence the extent of their obedience.

Sharp identifies this hidden structure as providing a window of opportunity for a population to cause significant change in a state. Sharp cites the insight of Étienne de La Boétie (1530 - 1563) that if the subjects of a particular state recognize that they are the source of the state's power, they can refuse their obedience and their leader(s) will be left without power.

Sharp published Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential in 2005. It builds on his earlier written works and documents case studies where nonviolent action has been applied, presents the lessons learned from those applications, and contains information on planning nonviolent struggle to make it more effective.

"How to Start a Revolution", a feature documentary by the Scottish director Ruaridh Arrow about the global influence of Gene Sharp's work, was released in September 2011. The film won "Best Documentary" and the "Mass Impact Award" at the Boston Film Festival in September 2011. The European premiere was held at London's Raindance Film Festival on October 2, 2011, where it also won Best Documentary.

...Together with Maria J. Stephan, who was then at the U.S. Department of State, Chenoweth co-wrote the book Why Civil Resistance Works. Chenoweth and Stephan organized an international team of scholars in identifying all the major violent and nonviolent governmental change efforts of the twentieth century. They translated the results into a theory of civil resistance and its success rate for political change compared to violent resistance.

Their team compared over 200 violent revolutions and over 100 nonviolent campaigns. Their data shows that 26% of the violent revolutions were successful, while 53% of the nonviolent campaigns succeeded. Moreover, looking at change in democracy (Polity IV scores) suggest that nonviolence promotes democracy while violence promotes tyranny.

In the research data set, every campaign that got active participation from at least 3.5 percent of the population succeeded, and many succeeded with less. All the campaigns that achieved that threshold were nonviolent; no violent campaign achieved that threshold.

Their research work on non-violent civil resistance inspired the movement Extinction Rebellion.

Radical compassion is a term coined by the philosopher Khen Lampert, in 2003. His theory of radical compassion appeared in Traditions of Compassion: from Religious Duty to Social-Activism (2006). Lampert identifies compassion as a special case of empathy, directed towards the "other's" distress. Radical compassion is a specific type of general compassion, which includes the inner imperative to change reality in order to alleviate the pain of others. This state of mind, according to Lampert's theory, is universal, and stands at the root of the historical cry for social change.

Radical compassion means total compassion - nothing is excluded. <...> It involves a sense of social responsibility and a desire for the common good (Traditions of Compassion: From Religious Duty to Social Activism, 2005). Insight meditation teacher, Tara Brach, calls radical compassion an embodied experience - "a felt sense of tenderness, that is inclusive of all beings, and naturally moves us to act from a caring heart".

Research is telling us that the seeds of compassion are inborn and that we can learn to cultivate this beneficial quality. But, any natural instinct can be oppressed by cultural norms and social pressures. Mainstream US culture overvalues a number of qualities and behaviors, such as competition, rugged individualism, bootstrap mentality and put-down humor, that can limit our interest in cultivating compassion. In addition, the very same technology that brings us wondrous innovations can also serve to disconnect us. So, it's important that we are intentional about exercising our innate capacities for caring and kindness and pursuing authentic human encounters that trigger our natural empathy.

Compassion is Good for Us All

Although we may get temporary relief from our own distress by hating those we blame for it, this mind state takes a toll on us. The immediate gratification we sometimes experience from anger can make it self-perpetuating. But this state of mind requires an amazing amount of mental space and energy and, over the long term, it can have harmful effects on our health. Research shows compassion provides a buffer against stress and increases our sense of connection with others. This creates a beneficial cycle that, over time, can:

* improve social relationships
* increase longevity
* enhance positive emotions and levels of reported happiness
* decrease mental illness
* reduce inflammation in the body

Out of control or chronic anger is not only harmful to the individual, it causes problems for the greater society, even becoming a threat to public health. It's much easier for us to mistreat those we judge as fundamentally bad. Research tells us that punitiveness isn't nearly as effective for behavior change as reinforcement and people generally live up or sink down to the expectations we set for them. Finally, hatred results in counter-hatred and a harmful escalating cycle emerges. In my blog post, Is Anyone Beyond Compassion? I list a number of very interesting situations in which a compassionate approach has been the most effective response to some of society's deepest problems.

"While it is easy to love the lovable, it may be the unlovable who need our love more." - Thich Nhat Hanh

It's not always easy to love. There may be a secret fear that having compassion for people who do evil deeds will make us seem guilty by association - that we will be seen as somehow complicit. Also, the people we help can bring up unresolved issues or push our buttons, which can lead us to feel resentful or overwhelmed. If we have a mistaken view of compassion as permissiveness, we might feel fearful of allowing ourselves to have kind feelings for people we perceive as dangerous or threatening.

Wise compassion can be firm and fierce, but never angry. It takes great courage and determination to set and maintain a boundary or to sit unwavering in the burning heat of another's disapproval. Setting a limit does not mean closing your heart. It means seeing the bigger picture and allowing your intention to help outweigh your desire to be comfortable. In this way love can be a powerful force for transformation.

"...the natural love of the heart has to be balanced with the wisdom of equanimity. If we focus only on feelings of love and compassion without the balance of equanimity and peace, we can get overly attached to the way we want things to be." - Jack Kornfield

How Can We Cultivate Radical Compassion in Our Lives?

Be Mindful - Consider pausing before reacting to perceived threats or strong feelings, taking a moment to examine your own thoughts, emotions, body sensations and urges to action. This will create space for wiser responding.

Practice Supportive Attitudes & Mental States - In his book The Five Invitations, Frank Ostaseski describes three other qualities that support compassion. Loving-kindness, the foundation for compassion, is the goodwill and friendliness we feel toward others. Appreciative joy, which like compassion is an expression of loving-kindness, happens when we wish for others' joy or good fortune to continue. Finally, equanimity is the balance and stability that protects the other three qualities, allowing them to be universal, skillful and sustainable. In addition to these sublime mind states, we can also cultivate patience, which might be characterized as the ability to abide with our own suffering.

Connect with your Personal Blocks to Compassion - When unexamined, our own suffering can become a barrier to loving fully. Can you dare to explore your own vulnerability, fears, and uncertainties with self-compassion? Be like the poet Rumi who said, "Seek and find all the barriers we've made against love and then love them."

Cultivate Humility - Having compassion for someone who might seem hard to love takes humility. A modest estimation of one's own importance in the grand scheme of things is a great equalizer - we realize that nobody is any less or more deserving of happiness than we are. We can see actions, but we can't see motivations and we don't have all the information - we aren't all knowing. When we acknowledge the limits of our control and understanding, we realize that we can't fully know the heart of another.

Get In Touch With Our Interdependence - Find opportunities to connect with our common humanity and the ways in which we depend on others in daily life. Notice how the misfortune of others, societal unrest and dissatisfaction, ripple out and impact us all. See if its possible to respect the disrespectful and love the unloving without endangering your own personal integrity. Investigate the ways in which increased personal happiness and decreased personal suffering makes the world a better place for everyone.

Connect with Others Directly - Our actions have an effect even when they are committed with anonymity or in secret. The Gyges Effect, based on Plato's Ring of Gyges, is a phenomenon in which the impersonal nature of the Internet can foster disinhibition in our social interactions. Meeting in person whenever possible helps us be more mindful of the humanity, complexity and three dimensionality of the people we interact with and triggers our natural capacity for compassion.

See the Good in Everyone - Do you believe there is a glimmer of goodness that resides in everyone - even yourself? If so, it can be helpful to remember this when you encounter behavior that makes someone hard to love. Remind yourself that this person too was once in innocent baby and that, underneath it all, they also desire happiness and to be free from suffering (though they may not be pursuing this common goal wisely).

The belief that everything in the universe is part of the same fundamental whole exists throughout many cultures and philosophical, religious, spiritual, and scientific traditions, as captured by the phrase 'all that is.' The Nobel winner Erwin Schrodinger once observed that quantum physics is compatible with the notion that there is indeed a basic oneness of the universe. Therefore, despite it seeming as though the world is full of many divisions, many people throughout the course of human history and even today truly believe that individual things are part of some fundamental entity.

Despite the prevalence of this belief, there has been a lack of a well validated measure in psychology that captures this belief. While certain measures of spirituality do exist, the belief in oneness questions are typically combined with other questions that assess other aspects of spirituality, such as meaning, purpose, sacredness, or having a relationship with God. What happens when we secularize the belief in oneness?

In a recent series of studies, Kate Diebels and Mark Leary set out to find out. In their first study, they found that only 20.3% of participants had thought about the oneness of all things "often" or "many times", while 25.9% of people "seldom" thought about the oneness of all things, and 12.5% of people "never" had thought about it.

The researchers also created a 6-item "Belief in Oneness Scale" consisting of the following items:

1. Beyond surface appearances, everything is fundamentally one.
2. Although many seemingly separate things exist, they all are part of the same whole.
3. At the most basic level of reality, everything is one.
4. The separation among individual things is an illusion; in reality everything is one.
5. Everything is composed of the same basic substance, whether one thinks of it as spirit, consciousness, quantum processes, or whatever.
6. The same basic essence permeates everything that exists.

Those who scored higher on this scale were much more likely to have an identity that extends beyond the individual to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, nature, and even the cosmos. In fact, a belief in oneness was more strongly related to feeling connected with distant people and aspects of the natural world than with people with whom one is close! Also, while a belief in oneness was related to actual experiences of oneness ("mystical experiences"), there was no relationship between a belief in oneness and feeling closer to God during a spiritual experience.

In their second study, the researchers looked at values and self-views that might be related to the belief in oneness. They found that a belief in oneness was related to values indicating a universal concern for the welfare of other people, as well as greater compassion for other people. A belief in oneness was also associated with feeling connected to others through a recognition of our common humanity, common problems, and common imperfections. At the same time, there was no relationship between a belief in oneness and the degree to which people endorsed self-focused values such as hedonism, self-direction, security, or achievement. This means that people can have a belief in oneness and still have a great deal of self-care, healthy boundaries, and self-direction in life.

Implications of a Belief in Oneness

People who believe that everything is fundamentally one differ in crucial ways from those who do not. In general, the those who hold a belief in oneness have a more inclusive identity that reflects their sense of connection with other people, nonhuman animals, and aspects of nature that are all thought to be part of the same "one thing." This has some rather broad implications.

First, this finding is relevant to our current fractured political landscape. It is very interesting that those who reported a greater belief in oneness were also more likely to regard other people like members of their own group and to identify with all of humanity. There is an abundance of identity politics these days, with people believing that their own ideology is the best one, and a belief that those who disagree with one's own ideology are evil or somehow less than human.

It might be beneficial for people all across the political spectrum to recognize and hold in mind a belief in oneness even as they are asserting their values and political beliefs. Only having "compassion" for those who are in your in-group, and vilifying or even becoming violent toward those who you perceive as the out-group, is not only antithetical to world peace more broadly, but is also counter-productive to political progress that advances the greater good of all humans on this planet.

I also think these findings have important implications for education. Even if some adults may be hopeless when it comes to changing their beliefs, most children are not. Other beliefs - such as a belief that intelligence can learn and grow ("growth mindset") - are extraordinarily popular in education these days. However, I wonder what the implications would be if all students were also explicitly trained to believe that we are all part of the same fundamental humanity, actively showing students through group discussions and activities how we all have insecurities and imperfections, and how underneath the superficial differences in opinions and political beliefs, we all have the same fundamental needs for connection, purpose, and to matter in this vast universe.

Perhaps now, more than ever in the course of human history, we would benefit more from a oneness mindset.