Pacifism

Rational discussions on metaphysical and abstract topics.
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RaktaZoci
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Re: Pacifism

Post by RaktaZoci »

Jiva wrote: This was one of the reasons Nietzsche considered Christ the last true Christian. Actually, it’s only just occurred to me that Jesus wasn’t an advocate of the total passivity that could be inferred from the ‘turn the other cheek’ parable as his example of the Cleansing of the Temple demonstrates.
I'd see this differently. As Ervast suggests that this 'cleansing' would be a metaphor for one's body, which should be cleansed from all hypocrisy and earthly things and this body would be the actual temple, because "The Father's House" is in all of us.
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Insanus
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Re: Pacifism

Post by Insanus »

Jiva wrote:
Wyrmfang wrote:Just a note about the categorical imperative, this is from Deleuze´s Kant´s Critical Philosophy:
We have seen that faculty of desire is capable of a higher form: when it is determined not by representations of objects (of sense or intellect), nor by a feeling of pleasure or pain which would link this kind of representation to the will, but rather by the representation of a pure form. This pure form is that of a universal legislation. The moral law does not represent itself as a comparative and psychological universal (for example: 'Do unto others! etc.). The moral law orders us to think the maxim of our will as 'principle of a universal legislation'. An action which withstands this logical test, that is to say an action whose maxim can be thought without contradiction as universal law, is at least consistent with morality. The universal, in this sense, is a logical absolute.
The well known basic structure of Kant´s moral philosophy is not that much about anything normative like the golden rule (although no doubt Kant thought it was about that too) but it is an essential element in a metaphysical justification that there truly is such thing as morality (or more precisely, that we necessarily believe so), and as such I find it very successful.
Yeah, I still haven’t been able to appreciate Kant from a more esoteric perspective. It’s the link between the physical and the metaphysical that eludes me, if that makes sense. I realise it’s just a summary, but what’s described above could be crudely summed up as a framework that excuses actions that the conscience (or perhaps super-ego) otherwise wouldn’t allow. I think this what Insanus was referring to above.[/quote
I don't mean that all immorality can be excused, but that there is a higher (spiritual) principle to follow that surpasses morality & reason as well. It's certainly something conscience & superego won't allow & I think that's a big part of the so-called "death of ego".
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Nefastos
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Re: Pacifism

Post by Nefastos »

RaktaZoci wrote:I'd see this differently. As Ervast suggests that this 'cleansing' would be a metaphor for one's body, which should be cleansed from all hypocrisy and earthly things and this body would be the actual temple, because "The Father's House" is in all of us.


I don't think Ervast meant that the temple episode wouldn't have happened at all, but instead opened there just one layer of its symbolism. The gospels are full of stories about Jesus losing his temper (although on purpose, I believe):

Fosforos V:VI wrote:Let us recognize that Jesus, “the amender of the sins of Christendom,” arrives not to bring peace but a sword, thunders at the corruption of the temple and prophesizes its destruction, makes the fig tree wither, and according to his own words has come to set children at variance against their elders. In other words, in a world where there always exist two truths – the external and the internal, the political and the personal, the spiritual and the material, the universal and the individual reality – to create is always to destroy.

Jiva wrote:The quote I was referring to was Gandhi’s comment on the holocaust:
Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions.

Essentially, his advice was to basically transpose his experiences in India to a different situation, something I don’t think necessarily works on a practical level. And yes, as Cancer said, this leaves an open-ended question for every such situation, each with a variety of possible answers.


Sounds like dear Gandhi got a bit carried away there... One certainly can't just take one tool out of the box and think that it can be applied in all situations in a similar fashion.

Still, I think that pacifism/ahimsa per se is a toolbox more than just one tool. Gandhi himself said elsewhere that if one must choose between fighting and cowardice, it would be better to fight. Things are seldom black & white, but that doesn't mean one must compromise on his or her ethics. It just means those ethics but be pondered very thoroughly, keeping in mind the possible changes in nuances & situations.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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RaktaZoci
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Re: Pacifism

Post by RaktaZoci »

Nefastos wrote:
RaktaZoci wrote:I'd see this differently. As Ervast suggests that this 'cleansing' would be a metaphor for one's body, which should be cleansed from all hypocrisy and earthly things and this body would be the actual temple, because "The Father's House" is in all of us.
I don't think Ervast meant that the temple episode wouldn't have happened at all, but instead opened there just one layer of its symbolism. The gospels are full of stories about Jesus losing his temper (although on purpose, I believe):
I'm not that well versed in the Bible in general, but I don't doubt your word on this. Ervast' way of explaining the matter just made me see it in a completely different light, but of course there must be other point of views as well..
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Wyrmfang
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Re: Pacifism

Post by Wyrmfang »

As far as I´m aware, the only historical fact we know about Jesus is, that there was an agitator called Jesus who was crucified at the relevant place at the relevant time. If this Jesus is the Jesus of the Bible, it seems trivial to me that Jesus actually did these things that the Romans considered as agitation (which it of course was). How else would he have been crucified? The rulers don´t basically care about spiritual teachings at all unless they cause something in society.
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Re: Pacifism

Post by Nokkonen »

Ahh, pacifism. It is such a fascinating topic all and all because it is such a beautiful ideal that is notoriously hard to put to practice. I really like Nefastos' thought on pacifism being an absolute esoteric ideal, which it is alongside with other do no harm and do not kill principles like veganism and the first of the five precepts in Buddhism "I undertake the training rule to abstain from killing". Yes, these are deep spiritual truths that are present in so many religions and philosophies, but are impossible to practice in real world.

I mean, you theoretically could if you would: Refrain from joining the army (easy), refrain from participating in personal physical fights (easyy), refrain from joining an army when a notoriously cruel militia is evading your country (think something along the lines of ISIS for example, a bit harder), and refrain from using the gun when a burglar decides to rape your child (no way!), and so on and so on.

But I don't believe that refraining from using violence in real world is always the right course of action, just like veganism doesn't mean absolution from the fact that you feed on lives of others. I think it's a great spiritual principle by which to live, but there must be times when the right course of action is to use counter violence. When would that be? I couldn't formulate a rule for that. Perhaps when you are conscious of the need to kill, and approach the need with discernment, like when you kill a moose that is going to feed you and your community for a long time and you do it carefully and full of thankfulness for the life that is taken.
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Cancer
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Re: Pacifism

Post by Cancer »

Nokkonen wrote:But I don't believe that refraining from using violence in real world is always the right course of action, just like veganism doesn't mean absolution from the fact that you feed on lives of others. I think it's a great spiritual principle by which to live, but there must be times when the right course of action is to use counter violence. When would that be? I couldn't formulate a rule for that. Perhaps when you are conscious of the need to kill, and approach the need with discernment, like when you kill a moose that is going to feed you and your community for a long time and you do it carefully and full of thankfulness for the life that is taken.
I think this approach is a bit problematic. Someone who doesn't use violence personally is of course just as responsible for the violence that our culture uses collectively, but that is no excuse for giving up the ideal of pacifism. For example, one person's being a vegan does not stop even one animal from being killed, but in the economic situation in which most of the Western world is (nobody needs meat to survive), eating meat is wrong, period. The fact that animals (or people) get killed whatever I do does not mean that it's any more right for me to kill. Collective violence is possible because individuals believe that it is necessary, when in fact it is just convenient for them.

I'm sorry if this reply sounds rude; I'm not blaming you for anything. I just think that there is no clear distinction between practical considerations and allowing violence.
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Insanus
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Re: Pacifism

Post by Insanus »

On the other hand, I think that principles of non-anything fail by default. To "not kill" matters only in situations where you might kill or prevent a murder. Something being "morally wrong" doesn't matter one bit unless it serves a concrete positive purpose. Like laws in general. We are not constantly preventing murders & we don't even try. There's too much other stuff to do.

If we lived in a society where it'd be a law to rape & kill your mother when it's clear she won't live another year & this was generally accepted as a ritual way to send her to honour her memory...it would be useless to start yelling around how morally wrong that is. What would she think if you declined to do it?

If there are times when it's right to use counter violence, there are also times for active violence and by making moral guidelines for when to and when not to, our thought is dependant on violence either way: even in the extremes of never & always.
Maybe those two can be called Good and Evil, but it makes no difference.
If I can kill a deer for my community, why can't I honour the memory of a shopkeeper I killed to rob his store for my community of social outcasts...? Moral of the story: it's absurd & makes no sense either way unless we follow a principle " just because", wholeheartedly, for no reason, to glorify and/or mock existence/God.

That's why pacifism (IMO) shouldn't be understood as nonviolence, but as activity towards the lessening of suffering. Maybe the difference isn't huge, but it is there.
Absolute ahimsa has a problem that it's so easy to understand egocentrically in a "not-in-my-backyard"-way which isn't too different from closing one's eyes & hoping all bad will go away without getting one's hands dirty. It's a super demanding esoteric ideal where the contradictions leading to violence are solved before the potential actualizes - to make the burglar abandon his raping & killing without a gun.
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Cancer
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Re: Pacifism

Post by Cancer »

Insanus wrote:On the other hand, I think that principles of non-anything fail by default.
I agree. This is precisely why morality (or ethics, if it's your preferred word) cannot be formulated. There are always exceptions, so that finally all one can say is something like "act out of love", "do the right thing" etc.
Insanus wrote:To "not kill" matters only in situations where you might kill or prevent a murder. Something being "morally wrong" doesn't matter one bit unless it serves a concrete positive purpose. Like laws in general. We are not constantly preventing murders & we don't even try. There's too much other stuff to do.
Here I don't really get what you mean. Something's being morally wrong or right does matter, it is the only thing that matters. Morality means acting out of love and honesty, or at least I think that's the only sensible definition for the word. If by morality you mean a formulated principle for action, then it's of course different.

It might sound naïve and even hypochritical, but I actually think that as long as we are not murdering, we are in a way preventing murders. Even better if we're conciously trying to spread love and understanding. I of course can't take much credit for never having killed, because this is due to a favorable cultural enviroment, but in the end the culture is made of individual choices. I'm not claiming that anyone is a super strong pacifist idealist just by not killing, only that it's not altogether meaningless that our society is as (comparatively) non-violent as it is. We might not fully realize this, as it's the only kind of life we've ever truly seen.
Insanus wrote:If we lived in a society where it'd be a law to rape & kill your mother when it's clear she won't live another year & this was generally accepted as a ritual way to send her to honour her memory...it would be useless to start yelling around how morally wrong that is. What would she think if you declined to do it?
It would be senseless to use the word "rape" if she truly wanted me to do that, and if the killing would be a kind of euthanasia, then fine. This would not count as violence in the sense that should be countered with pacifism. If, on the other hand, it would be real rape and murder that's socially accepted, it would be very non-useless to "start yelling" about it. So I don't think this example changes anything. If your point is that physical violence might happen out of a positive basis, then it should be clear that I agree.
Insanus wrote:That's why pacifism (IMO) shouldn't be understood as nonviolence, but as activity towards the lessening of suffering. Maybe the difference isn't huge, but it is there.
A very important point here; I agree on this definition. If violence is acting against someones / somethings will, then it happens eveywhere all the time and the only way to be completely non-violent is ceasing to exist. Also, if violence is defined broadly, then it doesn't necessarily entail suffering, and might lessen it in the long run. This is why I talked about the open-ended questions in my previous posts. Can you decide on someone else's behalf when violence is necessary? Don't you actually have to, given that you don't want to totally dismiss your responsinility for other's well-being?
Insanus wrote:Absolute ahimsa has a problem that it's so easy to understand egocentrically in a "not-in-my-backyard"-way which isn't too different from closing one's eyes & hoping all bad will go away without getting one's hands dirty.
Here I'll make the same point as above. Thinking "at least I haven't gotten my hands dirty" might not be very admirable from a psychological standpoint, and it might even cause a lot of suffering indirectly, but that's much better than actually murdering someone. In the end, if no-one dirties one's hands, there's no harm done. I do get what you mean here and I can sympathize with your point of view; aside from motivations, there can't be a philosophically clear-cut distinction between killing someone, letting it happen and trying to prevent it. Never the less I maintain that practically there is a difference, and that not-killing out of a bad motivation is better than killing out of a good motivation. If people's lives are not an end in themselves, I can't see anything good happening.
Insanus wrote:It's a super demanding esoteric ideal where the contradictions leading to violence are solved before the potential actualizes - to make the burglar abandon his raping & killing without a gun.
Yes. It can't be emphasized too much that the harm - or most of it - has already happened when this kind of a situation arises.
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Benemal
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Re: Pacifism

Post by Benemal »

Refraining from violence, because you believe there will be consequences, is in fact violence. You make your choice for yourself selfishly. Also a moral code is violence, because then a situation may be determined according to your imagined righteousness. Morals are hypocrisy and pride. This is not a black and white reality, it is gray. A moral hypocrites choices cause violence and suffering. We see this over and over in history, in every country and culture. In other words, a violent man can be a "better man" than a pacifist, who is only a pacifist out of fear.
I'm the dictator and non-violence is my choice,which I am free to make, without any morality confusing it. I think it's the right way. Everyone thinks they're doing the right thing. Absolutely everyone. I must clarify, this includes serial killers, pedophiles and torturers. So every human makes the same mistake. We all think we're doing the right thing. It seems the only "safe" choice, is being a modest small non-violent human.
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