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SoY
I am the LizardKing



Registered: 06/01/06
Posts: 774
Loc: Everywhere
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Re: I Don't Understand Pacifists... [Re: Madtowntripper]
#7982928 - 02/05/08 02:43 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Does it make any sense that if you don't care, nobody will hurt you? If you value self-preservation you had better be willing to protect yourself.
Remember though, there is a difference between self defense and preemptive aggression....
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   "The choiceless truth of who you are is revealed to be permanently here permeating everything. Not a thing and not separate from anything."--Gaganji "Yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream." "My karma ran over my dogma!"
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Madtowntripper
Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers



Registered: 03/06/03
Posts: 21,287
Loc: The Ocean of Notions
Last seen: 5 months, 23 days
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Re: I Don't Understand Pacifists... [Re: SoY]
#7982961 - 02/05/08 02:53 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Are the two mutually exclusive?
-------------------- After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it. - Ernest Hemingway If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent. -Cormac MacCarthy He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus
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gluke bastid
Stinky Bum



Registered: 12/20/00
Posts: 3,322
Loc: Charm City
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Re: I Don't Understand Pacifists... [Re: Madtowntripper]
#7983060 - 02/05/08 03:24 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Madtowntripper said: I disagree 100%.
Does it make any sense that if you don't care, nobody will hurt you? If you value self-preservation you had better be willing to protect yourself.
Returning to the example of the student in Tianeman Square he had at least the following choices: A) Act out of self preservation by removing himself from the protest at the arrival of armed tanks. B) Continue to peacefully protest despite the very real threat of arrest and execution. C) Arm himself with weapons and attack the tanks, the outcome of which would have been at least as certain as option B.
Apathy in this type of situation is rewarded in terms of self-preservation, although it is useless in terms of getting any sort of message across. Does apathy itself prevent against the threat of violence? No, of course not. But I'm talking about social resistance, not intra-personal violence. I'm talking about being in situations in which resisting violence with violence=death vs. resisting violence with peace=death.
Self-Defense is a different question. So far we have been talking in terms of scenarios in which you can choose to remove yourself from violence. In a certain life or death self-defense situation, in which protecting yourself with force means the difference between living and dying, and nothing is to be gained by death, and the violent opposition to your enemy will not result in your death, who in their right mind would choose not to defend themself? I suppose certain branches of extreme dogmatic pacifists, but I see a huge difference between political pacifism and personal pacifism.
Since we are in "political discussion" I assumed we were talking about political pacifism.
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Society in every form is a blessing, but government at its best is but a necessary evil - Thomas Paine
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Madtowntripper
Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers



Registered: 03/06/03
Posts: 21,287
Loc: The Ocean of Notions
Last seen: 5 months, 23 days
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Re: I Don't Understand Pacifists... [Re: gluke bastid]
#7983132 - 02/05/08 03:47 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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I think the two are comparable.
If a person is trying to kill you personally or a nation is trying take over your country to kill you, the only difference is scale.
Meeting deadly violence with violence *may*, as you stated, lead to a death. But meeting deadly violence with pacifism *will* lead to death. Preparing for such an act, whether buying a gun in a personal situation or maintaining a well-equipped standing army on the national level, can raise your chances of successfully meeting violence towards you with the same.
I don't see how a country can prepare itself to meet a serious foe by passive means. No amount of preparation will prevent the inevitable outcome of defeat and subjugation of a people not willing to protect themselves.
Again, you can use a situation like India under Ghandi as an example but realize that they only prevailed because the British were not willing to use serious force.
-------------------- After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it. - Ernest Hemingway If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent. -Cormac MacCarthy He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus
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dshroom
balshem

Registered: 08/30/06
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Re: I Don't Understand Pacifists... [Re: Madtowntripper]
#7983198 - 02/05/08 04:05 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Madtowntripper said: Don't they realize that their little philosophy only works if *everyone* is pacifist? And that as soon as you have one person willing to use force to push their ideas on everyone else, that at that point you can either acquiesce and go quietly into that good night, or you can fight.
There are obviously groups out there, other than the United States Boogeyman, who are willing to use force to subjugate peace-loving people around the world.
So how can anyone just advocate that we sit back in our country and do nothing while people are slaughtered all over the globe.
What kind of real policy is this?
yes, a thinking pacifist does know this. this is the goal. goals are for the future.
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wyldeman007
Student



Registered: 06/03/06
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Loc: Los Angeles, CA
Last seen: 8 months, 28 days
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Re: I Don't Understand Pacifists... [Re: dshroom]
#7983330 - 02/05/08 04:42 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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You talk as if violence is the right decision always..... People who embrace tolerance and who don't impose views through force are the only moral people in my opinion. Read/watch Carl Sagan and you might be able to understand where I'm coming from. If you embrace faith/speculation as the only answer then there's no point arguing over what you believe in. This is my philosophy that we are all individuals but at the same time we are derived from one common ancestor so we are in-separable from nature. The world can have less suffering if everyone would start to see it in these terms and that's all I have to say.
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"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here." - Richard Dawkins
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Divided_Sky
Ten ThousandThings

Registered: 11/02/03
Posts: 3,171
Loc: The Shining Void
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Re: I Don't Understand Pacifists... [Re: Madtowntripper]
#7983567 - 02/05/08 05:37 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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It is true that people seem to have certain more less innate drives for security, happiness, self-preservation and reproduction. However, I don't think the method by which these things are attained is ingrained. People generally use violence (or manipulation) because it is the most primitive way and the most easily grasped at an early age.
It is certainly possible to find more constructive and mutually beneficial solutions to problems, but that requires a certain degree of awareness and insight that is often discouraged by thousands of years of social conditioning.
-------------------- 1. "After an hour I wasn't feeling anything so I decided to take another..." 2. "We were feeling pretty good so we decided to smoke a few bowls..." 3. "I had to be real quiet because my parents were asleep upstairs..."
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SlashOZ
:D



Registered: 10/20/06
Posts: 3,557
Loc: Following the water cycle
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Re: I Don't Understand Pacifists... [Re: Divided_Sky]
#7983575 - 02/05/08 05:39 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Divided_Sky said: It is true that people seem to have certain more less innate drives for security, happiness, self-preservation and reproduction. However, I don't think the method by which these things are attained is ingrained. People generally use violence (or manipulation) because it is the most primitive way and the most easily grasped at an early age.
It is certainly possible to find more constructive and mutually beneficial solutions to problems, but that requires a certain degree of awareness and insight that is often discouraged by thousands of years of social conditioning.
bingo
-------------------- "Life sucks but in this really beautiful way" - Axl Rose "Life's a bitch and then you die that's why we get high cuz you never know when you're gonna go." - NAS "When people don't know what you're about they put you down and shut you out" - Black Sabbath "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" - Gandhi "Look up at me I am God, look down on me and I am evil, look at me I am you." - Charles Manson. "Don't question my reality." - Me (as far as I know)
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gluke bastid
Stinky Bum



Registered: 12/20/00
Posts: 3,322
Loc: Charm City
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Re: I Don't Understand Pacifists... [Re: Madtowntripper]
#7983797 - 02/05/08 06:28 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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I initially disagreed with you because you said pacifism doesn't work if as much as one person is willing to use force.
Pacifism's success is not measured by its ability to erase violence. It is entirely dependant upon the situation.
I never meant to suggest that a sovereign nation shouldn't defend itself if a foreign country invades it. Clearly if one army invades another country with the intent to conquer it, pacifism will not prevent that from happening.
It all depends on the situation. I stand by my assertion that pacifism has, at times, acheived its goals. It was a cornerstone of the civil rights movement. As a method for national defense? Of course not.
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Society in every form is a blessing, but government at its best is but a necessary evil - Thomas Paine
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