The Nature of Death and Violence

[FoolOfWorms]

Heavy topic warning if that wasn't clear.

 

So I don't think its entirely controversial to say openly that pacifism is extremely ideal. Its preferable to all options morally and in terms of effort needed to go through with it. Most people are unwilling to kill and are right to do so. Most of the time. Pacifism is so Ideal in fact, that you could even say its idealistic.

 

The world it requires for a fully pacifistic individual to be entirely morally correct and just would necessitate a world in which there exists no groups of individuals who would be better off dead due to the drastic amount of suffering they cause others and fervent unwillingness to change or reduce that whatsoever. It requires the world that these individuals who ought not exist, to have no philosophical or moral excuse to cause harm, which would make it extremely difficult to convince these people of their moral shortcomings before they commit grievous acts of cruelty. It requires a world in which when these grievous acts of harm are committed, it ends there, instead of motivating other individuals to either retaliate or perpetuate the same kinds of horror unto others, creating a cycle. It requires a world in which passive forms of violence in which no direct contact with an individual can still lead to said individual being grievously harmed in the form of starvation or homelessness or social ostrizisation and abandonment does not exist. It requires a world in which these individuals who cause this form of passive violence to feel guilty about said situation and act in ways the avoid it as much as possible instead of ignoring them as though they aren't directly responsible for their death or harm. It requires a world in which incarcerations, if it is to ever be required, to work most of the time, with repeat offenders being very few and far in between. It requires a world in which the vast majority of these incarcerations are inflicted upon those who deserve it rather than petty offenders, and to exists primarily for the purpose of rehabilitation and reintegration rather than punishment or containment (or financial incentive). It requires a world in which humans do not have a primal, visceral satisfaction in killing and eating the flesh of other living things.

 

And sadly I do not believe we live in that world, or will ever live in that world.

which leads me ultimately to the question. Is death necessary? Is it sometimes required to kill certain agents in order to be moral?

 

I feel I am already at the edge of the line of acceptable discussion with this particular topic, so I wont point fingers as to who needs to go for my own, and this forums safety, but it seems to me that there is purpose and need for direct action in the world in order to remove certain agents who themselves are the cause of even further grievous harm, and to be pacifist would be to allow said agents to continue to work unopposed in a way where even in your most ideal of situations in which they are removed from a position or desire to causes grievous harm, the harm they have already done at that point would be unjustifiably large in scale, something that would have been expedited through the act of removing said agent with immediate violence for their transgression.

Am I right to think this? Am I missing something?
Legal repercussions aren't to factor into this discussion considering morality itself is independent from the law regardless of what the government wants you to think. You should be willing to die and go to jail to do the right thing after all.

[kerdios]

Is this a "should everyone be vegan?" thread?

[FoolOfWorms]

On 12/21/2021 at 11:30 PM, kerdios said:

Is this a "should everyone be vegan?" thread?

n
no?

[HeartaceX]

I think you have been a bit too abstract and vague on certain

regards, still, the moral quandary you are going through is 

not unheard of, I'll give you a Karl Popper quote to chew your

mind  upon, it's from "The open society and its enemies" from 

1945.

 

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance

even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the

onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this

formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of

intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in

check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the

right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not

prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they

may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to

answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of

tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

 

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I still probably 

will continue to think about it well into the future.

Edited December 25, 2021 by HeartaceX (see edit history)

[Im_CIA]

There are no true axioms of morality to stake a crusade on- those change by the hour.  I think righteous indignation is just a pathway to greater entropy, real change can only be achieved gradually.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Im_CIA (see edit history)

[Mira]

There has to be a democratically established legal basis for the use of force. If political factions start using violence whenever they feel it's justified, it's only the most brutish who come out on top in the end. In other words: not the people that you (presumably) sympathize with.

[FoolOfWorms]

On 12/29/2021 at 3:02 PM, Mira said:

There has to be a democratically established legal basis for the use of force. If political factions start using violence whenever they feel it's justified, it's only the most brutish who come out on top in the end. In other words: not the people that you (presumably) sympathize with.

Attempting to create a democratic and legal basis for the use of force is paradoxical in nature. Applied force is an act against mutual agreement in of itself and attempting to create a "democratic" legal basis of it only reinforces a government's right to rule through violence they only permit when done amongst their collaborators.
I am not saying there should be brutish anarchy or even that violence is a good and righteous thing to use in order to establish ones goals, what I'm trying to say is that violence is an inevitable sin one has to bear if one is to stand against tyranny.

There should be limitations on the use of violence, and people should try to insure it does not occur wantonly, what Im asking however is when is it necessary to employ force for ones own life and liberty, because its getting hazy frankly. You could argue that a lot of nations now have democratic processes in order to achieve one's goals peacefully, but you could also argue many of them are plutocracies that make true freedom impossible, or that the world is going to shit so fast that trying to take things slow and peaceful actually might cause more harm overall than trying to overthrow the whole thing and try to cut down as much killing the world as possible.
If I were in a position to make this choice I would Ideally try to do something slow and steady, because to do so otherwise would be authoritarian and against my nature. I dont want a position of power ruled with an iron fist, I want the world to be equal and for violence to be as useless as possible in order to get what you need. The problem lies in the fact that in order to achieve that world I have to consider the reality that many people are just fine ruling with an iron fist and my soft ideals would be an easy target if I dont think about this harshly.

I intentionally used provocative language because I didnt want to sugarcoat the question itself, but dont mistake the question as a confession that it is a good thing to use violence to get what one wants, its a question of when is it necessary to do so and why.

Edited December 29, 2021 by FoolOfWorms (see edit history)

[FoolOfWorms]

On 12/28/2021 at 9:30 PM, Im_CIA said:

There are no true axioms of morality to stake a crusade on- those change by the hour.  I think righteous indignation is just a pathway to greater entropy, real change can only be achieved gradually.

 

See the problem with that is climate change tho.
We've really been taking that one slowly, and from what I can tell its to our detriment.
How are we going to fix things slowly and carefully with all of the agents and organizations and governments working really hard to make that basically impossible?
I'm not trying to be facetious I hope there is genuinely an answer but its getting more "idealistic" the more time goes on.

[Shaddy]

Historically, incrementalism itself is a concession to stifle change, a crutch for tone policing. The question we should be asking is not "does it work" but "which people demanding it know that it doesn't work"?

[Im_CIA]

On 12/30/2021 at 2:03 AM, Shaddy said:

Historically, incrementalism itself is a concession to stifle change

Because I see quite a lot of historical evidence to the contrary, where a road to hell was paved by righteous machete swinging

[Shaddy]

I kind of doubt that. Either way, I would challenge you to name one real change to society that came with people just asking nicely for small concessions.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Shaddy (see edit history)

[Im_CIA]

 

On 12/30/2021 at 6:00 PM, Shaddy said:

Either way, I would challenge you to name one real change to society that came with people just asking nicely for small concessions.

 

Easy. The civil rights movement. No one was  exactly nice about it, but they didn't Rawanda style "chop the tall trees" like OP is suggesting.

[FoolOfWorms]

On 12/30/2021 at 11:24 PM, Im_CIA said:

 

Easy. The civil rights movement. No one was  exactly nice about it, but they didn't Rawanda style "chop the tall trees" like OP is suggesting.

Frankly I find this a kind of ignorant understanding of the civil rights movement considering the massive number of really important riots that occurred. Malcolm X would also absolutely disagree with you, not to mention that the biggest leader of non violent protest during the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. Was literally assassinated under very strange circumstances, which lead to its own riot, before which the FBI was actively harassing him and even drew up a fake suicide note. 
I'm not saying MLK did not contribute whatsoever, but I am saying peaceful protest was not the only form of protest around, nor was it necessarily the most effective. We remember MLK because he's taught in schools as paragon of justice, equality and peace, and rightfully so, but its often to the detriment of more controversial aspects of the Civil rights moment, like the black panthers.
Peaceful Protest help gain more followers, but the riots helped show the government that if they didn't capitulate things were going to burn, and in my opinion that helped move it forward.

[BTGBullseye]

On 12/30/2021 at 10:32 PM, FoolOfWorms said:

Malcolm X would also absolutely disagree with you

Not the greatest guy to be citing the ideals of, since he thought murder of innocent women was a good thing.

[FoolOfWorms]

On 12/31/2021 at 1:36 AM, BTGBullseye said:

Not the greatest guy to be citing the ideals of, since he thought murder of innocent women was a good thing.

You can disagree with Malcolm X but you can't deny the influence he had on the civil rights movement, which is kind of the point I was trying to make. The civil rights movement wasn't just MLK and peaceful protest. There was some direct action taking place. Its undeniably a very prominent part of it and you cant just pretend there weren't some people ready to take up arms if the united states chose not to listen which was partially why peaceful protest was successful to begin with.

Edited December 31, 2021 by FoolOfWorms (see edit history)

[Shaddy]

On 12/30/2021 at 8:24 PM, Im_CIA said:

 

Easy. The civil rights movement. No one was  exactly nice about it, but they didn't Rawanda style "chop the tall trees" like OP is suggesting.

I want to frame this post and hang it on my wall. This is one of the most hilariously misinformed answers you could have given.

[kerdios]

On 12/31/2021 at 1:00 AM, Shaddy said:

I kind of doubt that. Either way, I would challenge you to name one real change to society that came with people just asking nicely for small concessions.

 

Scandinavian change from monarchy to social democracies?

[Im_CIA]

On 12/31/2021 at 4:12 AM, Shaddy said:

I want to frame this post and hang it on my wall. This is one of the most hilariously misinformed answers you could have given.

Really? How many bad actors were killed and used as mortar in the new order? (I mean, apart from the guy who believed that the white race was a grafted into existence after Yakub crashed his black Jimmy Neutron rocket into the flying saucer and the end of Serious Sam: The First Encounter- but he became less unhinged by the time of his murder, so it's hard to place him)

 

It wasn't a sudden coup either, it was the culmination of decades worth of gradual changes. So I believe it fits the parameters. 

Edited December 31, 2021 by Im_CIA (see edit history)

[HeartaceX]

On 12/30/2021 at 10:18 PM, Im_CIA said:

Do you see a single fact to back that up?

Because I see quite a lot of historical evidence to the contrary, where a road to hell was paved by righteous machete swinging

 

On 12/31/2021 at 5:24 AM, Im_CIA said:

Easy. The civil rights movement. No one was  exactly nice about it, but they didn't Rawanda style "chop the tall trees" like OP is suggesting.

 

  I'd argue that the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s has failed more

than it has succeeded. Giving that it led to Neoliberalism, also, nowadays

the economical Gap between rich and poor is bigger than in the Gilded Age;

if incrementalism worked the US would probably have a national Healthcare

system by now but it doesn't.

Furthermore this is a classic quote from MLK himself:

 

“This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the

tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

 

   I am also pretty confident there is also consistent evidence that the 

civil rights was much more radical in conception however both the

HUAC and covert sabotage by the FBI and CIA have had a strongly

attenuating effect on it to be light on the words, and after it was

weakened the top down co-optation went into effect.

 

Quoting Journalist Vance Packard (The Naked Society, early 1964) :

 

Perhaps the most relentless inquisition of educators in the last few years occurred

at the University of Florida in Gainesville. A gubernatorial candidate who happened

also to head a committee of the state legislature moved his committee to Gainesville

and for seven months conducted his investigation on the campus. Yale historian C.

Vann Woodward, in reporting on the affair, related: “With the aid of lawyers, police,

detectives, and paid informers, the committee dragged in hundreds of witnesses,

mainly students, to testify against professors. Disclosures of political heresies were

disappointing, but sexual deviations supplied headlines

 

Ultimately the Civil Rights movement has been stifled, softened, re-moulded and 

co-opted into nothingness, just like environmentalism nowadays (for the most part,

especially in the mainstream). There is extensive evidence that a sizeable chunk

of late 60s musical revolution and countercultural fashion was a top down 

predicament, not the opposite.

Edited December 31, 2021 by HeartaceX (see edit history)

[HeartaceX]

On 12/31/2021 at 2:15 PM, kerdios said:

Scandinavian change from monarchy to social democracies?

   Excluding Finland and Iceland which managed to become independent

in the early 20th century, all the famous Scandinavian countries that are

usually looked at as social democratic models are actually Constitutional

Monarchies similar to Britain. 

Edited December 31, 2021 by HeartaceX (see edit history)