Post

Unconquered frontier wrote:

Keep waking up with deep thoughts in my head. This morning's one was about pacifism.

It's easy to be a pacifist when you have your rights: right to vote, right to assemble, right to protest, right to a trial.

Pacifism becomes a virtue when that's taken away. However, it doesn't become a virtue to become passive. When that stuff's taken away, you have to keep on assembling, talking and protesting despite the risk of arrest.

That's me looking at it from a distance, though. In practice, I can't know that I wouldn't fight and I can't promise I wouldn't cower because I've not been in that situation. I just like to think I'd be brave enough to speak out and risk arrest but not hurt anyone. I wouldn't know for sure unless I was in that circumstance, nobody who hasn't been in it does.

Pacifism is tricky. It runs the risk of succumbing to the very type of the world it seeks to avoid. In the end, "though who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't," as someone said (maybe Jefferson, but it seems inconclusive). Pacifism is one of those things that works when everyone wants it to work, and even then, it can be difficult, as circumstances force people and groups into making hard choice that amount to either bumping someone "off the island" or being themselves bumped by forces beyond their control. As the New Zealand singer Lorde said in a song from when I was younger, "everything's cool when we're all in line for the throne, but I know it's not forever." When there is enough "stuff" (i.e. resources, time, money, attention, opportunity, space, freedom, etc) to go around, it's easy for everyone to cut their losses and all decide that peace is better than what might result from struggle or conflict. When resources are in short supply, it is natural for there to be a struggle for each unit (the individual, the group, the clique, etc) to position themselves to be on top or to at least not be overwhelmed by some other force.

That's essentially why I think the best avenue to the largest amount of peace is by equitable distribution of resources, at least insofar as people need them to survive, and to also have a clear power structure that is constructed in such a way that every group benefits by working within the structure, but in which no group benefits from breaking or trying to work outside of the structure. It's not going to be some la-la-land of happiness and sunshine, but it's better than attempts to blow up the system and just "hope" that conflict won't ensue in the power vacuum that results.

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I've been watching those Roman Empire documentaries again, haha!! Vive Imperium Romanum! :-)