02-28-2003, 08:41 AM
I think I was rather clear elsewhere about what I mean by a pacifist. And no, it's not "realist with passive tendencies". Someone who believes that fighting will lead to a better world is not a pacifist. I think that's not an unreasonable definition, although the other is possible. Indeed, it is admirable. It simply isn't who I am.
You seem to be ignoring the concept of passive resistance entirely, which is the recourse of the pacifist in a time of enslavement or conquest. A pacifist has no more need to be a slave than anyone else. How likely they are to survive, vis a vis someone who fights depends on who is trying to enslave you and how well armed they are, but usually your chances are much worse. That's the price you pay for a pacifistic principle; its utility, if it is ever realized, is in the long haul, not the immediate future.
This is not an easy road. It doesn't have a high success rate, and the only person whose blood you get to see is your own, or those with you. But that's the choice you make. You don't have to (as you seem to be implying) accept whatever someone with a gun tells you, simply because you refuse to kill him even if you can. He might shoot you. Depending on who he is, he'll probably shoot you.
But if you kill him, you can't claim I owe you anything. Both my freedom and my life are mine to give. So long as I'm willing to give them in the cause of peace, even in futility, you need not intervene on my behalf.
This takes convictions. Again, if I were simply not wanting to do the dirty work myself, and rejoiced at the death of my would-be opressor, then all I would amount to is a coward.
The biggest problem is when others are threatened. There, all you can do amounts to very little. You place yourself in the line of fire and save them at the cost of yourself, or, if this is impossible, you die trying. Hence, human shields. Buddhist monks have been doing this kind of stuff for centuries.
I'm not at all sure this philosophy is correct. It feels right, but also difficult, dangerous and impractical. Perhaps you consider it too impractical, that a billion pacifists couldn't change the path of one conqueror one iota. Maybe that's true. There are no experiments that could possibly prove this. If that's the case, then one can only hope that I don't convince very many people.
Maybe the time of wars is still with us, and to try to move past it will only sink us deeper into it. There probably was such a time, and I don't know when it ended, if it did, or if it ever will.
I just don't think it's at all certain. And, on the strength of that hope, I'm a pacifist.
Jester
You seem to be ignoring the concept of passive resistance entirely, which is the recourse of the pacifist in a time of enslavement or conquest. A pacifist has no more need to be a slave than anyone else. How likely they are to survive, vis a vis someone who fights depends on who is trying to enslave you and how well armed they are, but usually your chances are much worse. That's the price you pay for a pacifistic principle; its utility, if it is ever realized, is in the long haul, not the immediate future.
This is not an easy road. It doesn't have a high success rate, and the only person whose blood you get to see is your own, or those with you. But that's the choice you make. You don't have to (as you seem to be implying) accept whatever someone with a gun tells you, simply because you refuse to kill him even if you can. He might shoot you. Depending on who he is, he'll probably shoot you.
But if you kill him, you can't claim I owe you anything. Both my freedom and my life are mine to give. So long as I'm willing to give them in the cause of peace, even in futility, you need not intervene on my behalf.
This takes convictions. Again, if I were simply not wanting to do the dirty work myself, and rejoiced at the death of my would-be opressor, then all I would amount to is a coward.
The biggest problem is when others are threatened. There, all you can do amounts to very little. You place yourself in the line of fire and save them at the cost of yourself, or, if this is impossible, you die trying. Hence, human shields. Buddhist monks have been doing this kind of stuff for centuries.
I'm not at all sure this philosophy is correct. It feels right, but also difficult, dangerous and impractical. Perhaps you consider it too impractical, that a billion pacifists couldn't change the path of one conqueror one iota. Maybe that's true. There are no experiments that could possibly prove this. If that's the case, then one can only hope that I don't convince very many people.
Maybe the time of wars is still with us, and to try to move past it will only sink us deeper into it. There probably was such a time, and I don't know when it ended, if it did, or if it ever will.
I just don't think it's at all certain. And, on the strength of that hope, I'm a pacifist.
Jester