Scilla Elworthy: Fighting with non-violence

How do you deal with a bully without becoming a thug? In this wise and soulful talk, peace activist Scilla Elworthy maps out the skills we need -- as nations and individuals -- to fight extreme force without using force in return. To answer the question of why and how non-violence works, she evokes historical heroes -- Aung San Suu Kyi, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela -- and the personal philosophies that powered their peaceful protests. (Filmed at TEDxExeter.)

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Find closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages at http://www.ted.com/translate.

Follow TED on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tednews
Like TED on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED


If you have questions or comments about this or other TED videos, please go to http://support.ted.com

• Category

  News & Politics

[Whopwhopable]

You're right and its certainly a reason for optimism, but its not the reduction in violence that worries me ;-)

In hunter-gatherer times it wasn't possible for a single person to affect millions. The past century we grew from 2 to 7billion people. Now it only takes a handful of well-placed people to ruin it for a lot, if not all, of us.

With the technological advancements we're making: 99.999% of humanity could be peaceful, but 0.001% could tear it all down. Seems like a tricky problem to solve.

[sqw33k]

This video should be translated into every single language there is and spread all across the planet. Hopefully some people will listen.

[Jill Jordan]

shame on you

[Crotalus Atrox]

I can't wait for the day an alien civilization comes and invades this world and humans face extermination or slavery. We shall see just how this non-violent bullshit works. The universal law is force on force. The Creator set forth these rules and you must abide by them. The non-violent preaches weakness and is used by people who need others to do their fighting for them because they themselves are powerless.

[Lanka Adikari]

Hats Off!

[JornikHendrix]

dictatorships are ugly bastard tools of democracy. they are planted by democracy and rooted when needed; by democracy

[Ran dy]

Forget about him. He´s a paranoid kid having watched too much Alex Jones...

[newforesttree]

한국어 버전으로 보고 있습니다 감사합니다

[MrHuskerOne]

So you want a few people to control the minds of the masses, like hitler. He changed the minds of millions.

[RantKid]

But those crazy people are single people. She is referring to changing the minds of large groups of people, assuming most are normal human beings capable of change.

You can't go ahead and equate people with twisted views ripe for change with mentally insane people like HIltler. Your context is off.

[Minncord]

what a shitpiece of video man. are you that much of an idiot? just because holding signs in groups dont work well, doesnt mean the whole idea of love is false. look at afghanistan&iraq. guns n violence didnt do shit for a better living. people go to war for exactly that people, we must destroy. if we would know where they are, then I also would pick my gun to chase them down, but to use violence against people just like yourself? for me this means being a fucked up pussy. closeminded bro.

[dobriensd]

Amazing and powerful. I love that woman with all of my heart and I have never met her or spoken with her. What an experience. Share it, please.