I’m not trying to prove you wrong- I think you’ve been consistent. I just think what you describe is clearly fighting. “Not fighting” means either running away without being touched or doing nothing… anything that results in a physical struggle is fighting- whether you are fighting to break free so you can run away, fighting to wrest a weapon from his hands, fighting to keep yourself between a bad guy and his victim, or fighting to prevent him from getting close to a baby he wants to hurt.
I still think you’re a pacifist. I just think you’re a pacifist who is, in fact, willing to fight in certain circumstances- just not willing to kill (or harm beyond scrapes and bruises). As are most pacifists. Very, very few people (perhaps none) would offer no physical struggle in those circumstances.
Could you punch a punching bag? Is it possible that you are misremembering and you really could punch, but were just a bad athlete and scared and just lost real bad? And did you really get knocked out as a kid? I don’t remember seeing that very much in youth boxing, especially with beginners.
My definition fits for Oxford and Merriam-Webster, though not freedictionary, because by attempting to physically prevent someone from harming a baby- even if that just meant pulling them away, or placing yourself in between them, you would be engaging in a violent physical struggle. You would not be hitting them, but you would be resisting their efforts with force- if they swung a knife down at the baby, you would grab their arm or block it; if they charged, you would stand in their way and brace yourself; if they raised a gun and started to pull the trigger, you would attempt to disrupt his aim. You would be fighting, though not fighting to harm or kill.
Czarcasm I’m not sure why you haven’t responded to my last post yet. I hope I’ve made it clear that I’m asking questions in good faith. I’ve tried to spell out what I’m trying to accomplish with my hypothetical, so if there is another way of approaching those issues that you prefer, I’d be eager to read it. If you have some objection to what I’ve asked, I’d like to know what it is. And I’ll ask you again, what sort of questions were you hoping to address here?
Sorry about skipping over your question-The action of striking another human being is what I am prevented from doing, and I don’t think what you described would somehow lift that block. I don’t think I could hit another person if he giggled like the Pillsbury Dough Boy and multicolored marshmallows popped out of his ears.
What kind of questions would I like? Maybe more talk about pacifism in general, and less about what it would take to get me to hit someone.
I don’t think the OP wanted a discussion on pacifism, just for everyone to acknowledge how special and unique he is. That’s what most of these “ask the” threads are.
What historically significant events do you credit to pacifism that could not or would not be accomplished through active resistance or counter-aggression?
How do pacifists regard the tale of the Moriori people? For those unfamiliar, the Moriori were an indigenous Polynesian people, that settled in the Chatham Islands near New Zealand. They are regarded as either a subset of or closely related to the Maori peoples who inhabited New Zealand and surrounding islands. According to their oral history, fierce tribal warfare following their settlement of the islands in the 1500s led to a tribal leader, Nunuku-whenua, establishing a strict code of pacifism that forbade killing for any reason and substituted limited forms of ritual combat for interpersonal violence. In the 1800s, they were invaded by Maori warriors from New Zealand.
The Moriori who survived the massacre were enslaved, and by 1862, only 101 remained.
Do they represent a failure of pacifism or do pacifists today believe that the Moriori were correct in their decision to let the invaders slaughter them? Was this in fact a “moral imperative”? Does it matter that today, the larger Maori warrior culture is celebrated, while the Moriori are remembered mostly as an example that is seen to discredit pacifism?
