Pacifism - The only way forward?

[sandandfoam]

I view pacifism and warring as extremes. Neither behavior can provide any real long lasting satisfactory results when facing every situation, so the best that can ever be produced is a check. IMO.

What is half way between violence and non-violence?

 

[Storm]

Amongst others the Soviet Empire,

My understanding is that economics played a much bigger factor.

the British Empire in India.

Honor and shame, like I said.

However I think that perhaps one of the best examples of the power of nonviolent resistance is that of Te Whiti in New Zealand.

I know nothing of this.

Edit:- I read this today which I think is relevant to your question 'Dictatorships are prepared to crush armed resistance; it is non-cooperation that confounds them'

Except it doesn't. Or, if it does, they crush it anyway.

 

[TheKnight]

Modern warfare is big business.
Violence is inherently immoral.
I think pacifism is the future. I think the world needs to reject violence. War is wrong.

Peace is the rule. Peace must be attempted in all situations. However, when an entity decides to transgress that peace and commit evil or violence, that entity must be exterminated. If we sit on our hands and be passive pacifists in the face of violence, violence will either destroy us or convert our power for its means.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Modern warfare is big business.
Violence is inherently immoral.
I think pacifism is the future. I think the world needs to reject violence. War is wrong.

I agree in some respects, but not in terms of the overall principle.

I think that war can be entered into for good reasons. It does nothing to reject violence to allow people to inflict violence on others without opposing them.

OTOH, I agree with you about modern warfare... aspects of it, anyhow. The idea of war being waged by contractors makes me very uneasy. Aside from the issues of accountability that this creates, I don't think it's good to create a situation where escalation of war is in people's financial interest.

Well we're almost in agreement!

Regards Hitler and particularly the holocaust - I am convinced by the argument that the isolation and brutality of war facilitated Hitler in the mass murder of his regime.

I disagree with this. I realize that it's difficult to say with certainty which hypothetical historical scenario would have played out if things had been different, but I think that the Holocaust would have happened whether or not World War II did. I agree that Hitler accelerated the Holocaust when he realized that the war was going badly for him, but I think the end result would have been the same.

But to go completely against my point above, I'm going to point out that Hitler's rise to power was a consequence of the conditions in Germany that resulted from the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, so I suppose without war at all, there would have been no Holocaust.

I disagree. Empires have fallen because of non-violence.

But empires have also fallen because of violence. And empires have also stood because their enemies would not violently oppose them.

Amongst others the Soviet Empire, the British Empire in India.

I disagree with the idea that the Soviet Empire fell as a result of pacifism.

To begin with, IMO, the largest contributing factor to its fall was the Cold War, which I would certainly not call pacifist.

And the final blow to the Soviet Empire wasn't non-violent resistance; it was a coup attempt by the military. I realize that in the end, it had the opposite effect from what the conspirators were after, but the decline and fall of the Soviet Union wasn't really an example of political change through non-violence.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

What is half way between violence and non-violence?

Maybe indirect harm like blockades and embargoes?

Maybe the threat of violence?

 

[MSizer]

I do not believe that humanity will ever stop engaging in war as long as we remain our current species. We have too many behavioural predispositions for violence and in-group out-group classification that are built into our psychology from our socio-biological past. I agree that war is absolute lunacy. I refuse to ever take part in a war unless the vast majority of countries conclude that it is necessary to stop a spreading evil (such as was with Hitler). I'd choose to sit in jail for 25 years before choosing to partake in the UN efforts right now in the middle east. I don't think pacificm will solve anything any more than war does. Humans fight. It's what we do.

 

[sandandfoam]

Re the Soviet Empire.
No doubt about it. Nonviolent resistance was the root of it's downfall. In Poland you had Solidarity arising from the 1968 demonstrations against the closing down of a stage production by the authorities. In Czechoslovakia in 1968 didn't make the same mistake as Hungary a decade earlier and nonviolence met the Russian invasion. In his memoirs Gorbachev wrote that nothing was the same after the 1968 invasion of Czchoslovakia.
There's more but I'm short on time. Later

 

[sandandfoam]

Humans fight. It's what we do.

If that were true how do you explain the difficulties armies have experienced getting soldiers to kill?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Re the Soviet Empire.
No doubt about it. Nonviolent resistance was the root of it's downfall. In Poland you had Solidarity arising from the 1968 demonstrations against the closing down of a stage production by the authorities. In Czechoslovakia in 1968 didn't make the same mistake as Hungary a decade earlier and nonviolence met the Russian invasion. In his memoirs Gorbachev wrote that nothing was the same after the 1968 invasion of Czchoslovakia.

I agree that non-violence played a role, but my point was that it's not the whole story. Would non-violence alone have been sufficient to topple the Soviet Union? IMO, probably not.

 

[sandandfoam]

Re the Holocust I read an argument which suggested that many less Danish jews died versus those of other countries. In Denmark resistance was nonviolent. I'll read up more on this.

 

[sandandfoam]

I agree that non-violence played a role, but my point was that it's not the whole story. Would non-violence alone have been sufficient to topple the Soviet Union? IMO, probably not.

Who took on the Soviets militarily?

 

[sandandfoam]

Peace is the rule. Peace must be attempted in all situations. However, when an entity decides to transgress that peace and commit evil or violence, that entity must be exterminated. If we sit on our hands and be passive pacifists in the face of violence, violence will either destroy us or convert our power for its means.

I'm not advocating passive nonviolence. 'm advocating active nonviolence.

 

[MSizer]

If that were true how do you explain the difficulties armies have experienced getting soldiers to kill?

Conflicting behavioural tendencies. We also are altruistic. We have conflicting traits which under certain circumstances override one another, depending on the speicific situation and the individual involved. It's viewable under fMRI. Ask a person to inflict harm on another person and the amygdala lights up as they think "no, that's not nice". Tell that same person that the individual they've been instructed to harm is responsible for many murders and that he will not stop except by force. Now all of a sudden the neo-cortex lights up as the individual begins to contemplate the pros and cons of inflicting harm. Also, the anterior cingulate cortex lights up, which mutes the emotional responses so that they no longer impede executive cognition. As a result, a person can say "I hate the idea of shooting an opponent soldier, but if I don't, my family's safety is in jepoardy, therefore, I reluctantly choose to shoot him".

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Re the Holocust I read an argument which suggested that many less Danish jews died versus those of other countries. In Denmark resistance was nonviolent. I'll read up more on this.

There are other factors at play with Denmark:

- strategically, Denmark was less important to the Germans than many other countries. I would think that Hitler wouldn't have wanted to commit the troops to Denmark that would've been useful elsewhere... on either one of his two major fronts, for instance.

- there was a racist element as well. A large part of why the Danish government was generally allowed to stay in place through most of the war was that Denmark was seen as a fellow "Germanic" country.

I don't think the fate of the Danish Jews came out of Danish non-resistance. I think it was more that because of Denmark's general irrelevance to Hitler's strategic objectives and because of his inclination to give the Danes latitude that he didn't grant to other countries. I think that if the war had lasted longer, once Hitler had finished with the central and eastern European Jews, he would have turned his attention to the Jews in places like Denmark.

Who took on the Soviets militarily?

Off the top of my head:

- throughout the Cold War, the United States and NATO.

- in the 1991 coup, hardline members of the Communist party and the Soviet military.

The first one is the big one in my mind. IMO, you can't separate any of the post-WWII political history of the Soviet Union from the context it happened in: constant threat of a war of annihilation by its enemy.

 

[YmirGF]

Pacifism is the doctrine of the naive.

 

[kai]

Pacifism would not have kept my dinner money in my shorts pockets when i was a kid, you had to stand up to the bullies or go hungry.

 

[sandandfoam]

Ymir and Kai,
I tightened up my language a few posts ago and clarified that I'm advocating nonviolence rather than pacifism

 

[kai]

Ymir and Kai,
I tightened up my language a few posts ago and clarified that I'm advocating nonviolence rather than pacifism

Hey! if you try and take my dinner money, i will punch you in the nose mate!:yes:

 

[ericoh2]

I don't think there are many true pacifists and I mean very few. Most of it's adherents are simply acting with the same "group think and act" behavior that the other side exemplifies. I would wager that nearly the entire flock of "pacifists" would partake in violence/murder if under certain circumstances. If however this pacifism we speak of became a way of life from a new understanding, and is genuine, that is something different entirely. I think the latter type of pacifism could be considered a by-product of understanding existence from a perspective closer to reality rather than simply shifting your support from one ideal to another or simply proclaiming to be a pacifist with little genuine understanding of the value of such an idea.

 

[Smoke]

I used to be a pacifist, but I started having trouble with my pacifism, and one day I was sitting in a Culver's in Wisconsin with Alyssa -- I don't remember her RF name because she never posts anymore -- and I mentioned that I was having trouble with my pacifism. She just laughed and said, "I think it's immoral." It was like a light went on. Very powerful woman. I don't exactly think pacifism is immoral, but I think the immorality of violence is sometimes the best we can do. Sorry, Alyssa.

Oh! Standing Alone; that's her RF handle.