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.