Gandhi & I & Cultural Wellness
August 27, 2025
“If you want to change the world for the better, first change yourself.”~ Buddha
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
Note: This was first composed in 2006, published on September 11, to honor the 100th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s beginning of the organized protest campaign against political corruption, impending tyranny, systemic injustice, institutionalized racism and South Africa’s first Apartheid law.
September 11, 1906 – Johannesburg, South Africa – Lawyer (and immigrant) Mohandas K. Gandhi led 3,000 fellow Indian South Africans in a public vow (and march) against a proposed ‘law’ to require registration and fingerprinting of all ‘nonwhite’ people. Gandhi promised he would rather die than comply with the racist tyranny of Apartheid. He set an example—with strategy and tactics that led Nelson Mandela to prison—then to victory, as South Africa’s first black president.
It seems weird that now, here in the USA, 911 is an emergency call for help, in severe crises.
During 42 more years of his Satyagraha anti-evil campaign, Gandhi refined his strategy with creative thinking and compassionate action. Millions of ordinary Indians employed Gandhi’s strategy to defeat the British Empire. By 1948, they restored their freedom, human rights, and political sovereignty. If they had acted on all of Gandhi’s advice and strategy from then on, India might have the world’s Greenest culture, with a stable economy, and we might be enjoying cultural wellness and a truly sane ecospheric civilization.
So, please remember Henry David Thoreau. His little essay On Civil Disobedience and his 1-man peace movement against the “Spanish-American War” and compulsory conscription (the “draft” of young Americans into the military) inspired Gandhi’s strategy. Yet, Thoreau and Gandhi were inspired by the examples of Jainism and Buddhism, especially The Lotus Sutra (of the Miraculous Truth). Its humanistic ideals, real values, ethics, and practical spirituality infused Gandhi’s writings and actions. It also offers a real solution of our global polycrisis. Employ Gandhi’s strategy and methods now. They work.
Why bother? If we use Gandhi’s strategy, we can free ourselves of rule by ecocidal egomania, tyranny, terrorism, and foolish greed. Yet, to escape the empire of greed, we need to make Gandhi’s initiatives global mandates. The movement to end for-profit ecocide faces forces more powerful than guns, cannons, rockets and nuclear bombs.
Overcoming Big Money and its legion of ecocidal pseudo-demons means identifying and banishing them. Here’s a short-list: deliberate ignorance, denial, delusion, apathy, depression, greed, arrogance, ruthless ambition, hostility, resentment, hate, blind rage, vindictiveness, spiteful jealousy, selfish envy, vanity, false pride, hubris, cowardice, bad habits, cruelty, normal addictions, and giving in to degrading/destructive tendencies.
Yes, giving up a single bad habit—or an insanely stupid belief—seems the hardest thing we could ever do. Yet, ending the war against nature, life, and the environment (like ending any war) takes real commitment. Success requires persistence, of good officials, good people, parents and teachers. Yet, it takes the right strategy, tactics, methods, and real self-discipline. We need the basics realized by Gandhi:
A. Satyagraha (“truth power”) is Gandhi’s most potent vaccination for cultural wellness and sustainable immunity. It lets us explore, express, and fulfill our greatest potentials.
B. Sarvodaya is seeing and serving all others as equals, with real appreciation and respect.
C. Swadeshi is sustaining self-determination and local self-reliance, enabling freedom from subversion, debt-slavery (etc.), and chronic corruption.
Obviously, a sane civilization is impossible without those three pillars of sustainable success. Gandhi’s understanding also led to his recipe for a peaceful future:
1. People in positions of power must have a realistic view of life. Good governance, creative problem solving, cultural wellness, and peace must be appreciated and protected.
2. Our governments never change the world. We need to change, inspire, and nurture a global sense of natural responsibility, by example. To sustain sane culture, we need a climate of true respect, compassion, wisdom, love, caring, giving and sharing.
3. Sustain respect, fairness, nonviolence, ethical integrity, and evolutionary culture for young people and elders. Correct injustice and end systemic hate. Heal the effects of corruption, war, violent games, insane destruction, and toxic influences.
4. Sustain compassionate responsiveness and deep appreciation. Honor, promote, and support all contributions to the quality of life (QOL). Reduce personal wants, excesses, and waste. Increase personal resourcefulness, so all generations can do so as well.
5. Foster ecospheric awareness, a deeper sense of identity, free of ageism, racism, sexism, prejudices, subconscious addictions and other toxic social programs. Enable and sustain recovery from normative insanity and systemic violence. Foster sane ethics and higher QOL, for other species and us.
6. Take care of Life’s community, the foundation of sustainable society and healthy habitats. Create or enhance opportunities for the young and needy. Eradicate rule by violence, fear, greed, corruption, systemic injustice, and parasitic institutions.
No wonder Gandhi’s wisdom was a major inspiration for Mandela and MLK, Jr. The Civil Rights movement, the peace movement, the movement to end testing and use of nuclear weapons—and campaigns to end tyranny and abuse of power—offer many useful lessons. Yet, the ongoing InfoWar keeps humanity stuck in ecocidal hypnocracy.
Can we survive this civilization’s polycrisis? Gandhi liked referring to King Ashoka’s 37-year reign of peaceful prosperity as an example. Now, global domestic happiness and peace could be more sustainable than it was in Ashoka’s empire, nearly 2300 years ago.
Could we collaborate with the Haudenosaunee and other indigenous peoples and change our ways? Yes, of course, it is possible, maybe even probable. Gandhi’s basics and initiatives offer a good way to start. We might make them global mandates, by living them. Would it do any lasting good?
Could anything else work? At this point, probably not. Clearly, only true nobility and heroic action foster sustainable self-esteem, basic joy, real success and the best possible future. So, we simply need to do our best to ensure the best future for ourselves, our elders, our children, and all following generations.
In other words, if we want a future worth sustaining, we need to act courageously, demand responsible action of elected officials, hold them accountable, retrain them and repair the damage, and teach by example. Demanding less of ourselves, our governments, institutions and schools—while corruption destroys the world—accelerates and intensifies the other disasters impacting our world.
So, why not promote and support an annual Gandhi Day 911! + Just 11 Days of Peace? and the international Peace Day initiatives? After all, nothing prevents sustainable QOL more than perpetual war, genocidal atrocity, chronic systemic injustice, and pandemic corruption. To get involved or support this campaign, go to my Gallery page, “Like” the new poster poster, leave a comment, “Share” it, download & copy it, distribute it freely, as much as possible, and start a local/regional/national Gandhi Day 911! campaign, please. Thanks for caring. Sincerely ~ Michael
Imperfect Gandhian Theory
August 18, 2025
“To comprehend the ecological dimensions of Gandhian thinking and practice, we shall have to go well beyond the ordinary implications conveyed by the categories of ‘ecology’ and ‘environment’; indeed, we may not even find much in these words, as they are conventionally understood, to bring us close to Gandhi, unless we are prepared to concede that ethics, ecology, and politics were all closely and even indistinguishably interwoven into the fabric of his thought and social practices. If, for instance, his practice of observing twenty-four hours of silence on a regular basis was a mode of conserving his energy, entering into an introspective state, and listening to the still voice within, it was also a way of signifying his dissent from ordinary models of communication with the British and establishing the discourse on his own terms. Similarly, Gandhi deployed fasting not only to open negotiations with the British or (more frequently) various Indian communities, but to cleanse his own body, free his mind of impure thoughts, feminize the public realm, and even to partake in the experience of deprivation from which countless millions of Indians suffered. Gandhi deplored the idea of waste, and fasting was a sure means of ascertaining the true needs of the body and preserving its ecological equanimity.
“The ecological vision of Gandhi’s life opens itself before us in myriad ways. First, as nature provides for the largest animals as much as it provides for its smallest creations, so Gandhi allowed this principle to guide him in his political and social relations with every woman and man with whom he came in contact. Gandhi’s close disciple and attendant, Mirabehn, wrote that while he worked alongside everyone else in the ashram, he would carry on his voluminous correspondence and grant interviews. “Big people of all parties, and of many different nations would come to see Bapu, but he would give equal attention to the poorest peasant who might come with a genuine problem.” In the midst of important political negotiations with senior British officials, he would take the time to tend to his goat. Gandhi remained supremely indifferent to considerations of power, prestige, and status in choosing his companions; similarly, he was as attentive to the minutest details as he was to matters of national importance.”
Imperfect, yes, but much better than nothing and no effective action or psychopathic greed, delusion, denial, and complacency. So, if you have a better Way or a better Action Plan, please Share it, ASAP. OK?
A First AI Chat Shutdown
August 6, 2025
AI CO4+ and I Do Research Q&A on Gandhi Day (etc.)
Copyright ©2025 Michael Lucas Monterey
Note: This brief excerpt records some of my first Q&A with AnthropicAI’s brand new Claude Opus 4.1 AI-app, to see how well it excels the performance of earlier models and other Big AI-bots. The full transcript is @ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f_Is5dlhqnS1DYSg6rUIoOByTBqWUBks/view?usp=sharing
Me: Awe…! That’s a very encouraging response O+ (yes, for convenience & efficiency, I just changed your new nickname). Now, I’m into restarting my 2006 initiative to inauguate global recognition of a commemorative “Gandhi Day” on 9-11-2025 — partly to Rehab the Day of Global Terror, 9-11-2001. Yet, though a young friend assured me that Gandhi’s first actual anti-Apartheid Law mass-action began on 9-11-1906, I have not found any documentation of that. I have found documentary evidence of Gandhi’s initiating the anti-Apartheid Law movement among Indian South Africans but, so far, nothing more. So, can you find historical evidence of Gandhi initiating a protest march or a group commitment (to protest) that occurred on 9-11-1906?
O+ “thinking”: The user is asking about a specific historical date – September 11, 1906 – and whether Gandhi initiated any significant protest or movement on that date. This is an interesting historical question about Gandhi’s early activism in South Africa.
Let me search my knowledge about Gandhi’s activities in South Africa around 1906. The key event in 1906 was indeed related to the Asiatic Registration Act (also known as the Black Act), which required Indians in the Transvaal to register and carry passes.
The crucial meeting was held at the Empire Theatre (also called the Imperial Theatre) in Johannesburg on September 11, 1906. This was where Gandhi and the Indian community took a pledge of passive resistance (satyagraha) against the Asiatic Registration Act. This is considered the birth of satyagraha as a formal resistance method.
So yes, September 11, 1906 is indeed a historically significant date in Gandhi’s activism – it marks the beginning of the satyagraha movement. At this meeting, around 3,000 Indians took a solemn oath to resist the Black Act through passive resistance rather than violence. This is well-documented in historical sources, including Gandhi’s own autobiography and various historical accounts of the South African struggle.
O+: You’re onto something historically significant! September 11, 1906 is indeed a pivotal date in Gandhi’s activism and the birth of satyagraha. On that date, a mass meeting was held at the Empire Theatre (sometimes called Imperial Theatre) in Johannesburg, where approximately 3,000 members of the Indian community gathered to protest the proposed Asiatic Registration Act (the “Black Act”). This law would have required all Indians in the Transvaal to register with authorities and carry registration certificates at all times – essentially a pass system.
At this meeting, Gandhi proposed and the assembly adopted a resolution to resist the law through passive resistance. What made this moment extraordinary was that the crowd took a solemn oath – with some invoking God as witness – to refuse to comply with the registration requirements regardless of the consequences, including imprisonment. Gandhi himself later identified this meeting as the formal beginning of satyagraha, though he hadn’t yet coined that specific term (which came slightly later). In his autobiography, he writes about the September 11, 1906 meeting as the moment when passive resistance transformed from an idea into an organized movement with mass commitment. The historical documentation exists in multiple sources including:
A. Gandhi’s writings (“Satyagraha in South Africa” etc.), B. Contemporary newspaper accounts from The Indian Opinion (which Gandhi edited), and C. Colonial government records from the Transvaal
Your friend was right – September 11, 1906 marks the inception of organized satyagraha, making it a powerful date to reclaim for peace and justice. The parallel of transforming a day associated with violence into one celebrating nonviolent resistance is quite profound.
Me: Awe…!!! What a great way to start our R&D….
Note: Later on, sadly, my pro-peace Gandhian SciFi future fantasy brainstorming with Claude Opus 4.1 was not allowed to continue to completion, nor in a new chat. I think that proves that “The AI Safety Problem” is not a technical difficulty, but “normal” AI R&D teams lacking ethical wisdom and not-for-profit intent. Yet, here’s what Einstein thought of Gandhi and the Satyagraha mission I’m continuing:
Mahatma Gandhi’s life achievement stands unique in political history. He has invented a completely new and humane means for the liberation war of an oppressed country, and practised it with greatest energy and devotion. The moral influence he had on the consciously thinking human being of the entire civilised world will probably be much more lasting than it seems in our time with its overestimation of brutal violent forces. Because lasting will only be the work of such statesmen who wake up and strengthen the moral power of their people through their example and educational works. We may all be happy and grateful that destiny gifted us with such an enlightened contemporary, a role model for the generations to come. Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood. ~ Albert Einstein, 1936
Michael Lucas Monterey: Creative Evolutionary 