I was thinking “Conscientious objector”. It’s not precise, but neither is “Pacifist”. (Ref: Ravenman)
Frankly, given that we live in the West, I can’t see a problem with your stance. After all, you are willing to restrain the bad guys, just not hit them. Maybe there would be a problem if you lived 30 minutes from the nearest cop.
I’m guessing you did not have an older brother. Am I correct?
I think a few years of martial arts training might unblock that.
Personally, I don’t see the point. I do recommend physical fitness. Martial arts keeps it interesting, so there’s that.
Most of us have workarounds. For the purposes of improving our game, please share if you have any good ones.
For myself, although I am willing to commit violence against another in the right circumstances, I am likely to interpret it as a case of personal failure. De-escalation is better. I don’t anticipate needing to use violence for the remainder of my life. Women and those under 18 operate in a different realm and have more need for self defense training IMHO. There are other groups with heightened risks as well: those in the legal and enforcement professions come to mind as do members of the GLBT community.
FWIW, regarding dicey situations, I’d prefer to have Czarcasm along rather than Yosemite Sam. Especially in a crowd scene where pacifist skills are rarer.
As you can see from which of your questions he cherry picked to reply, he doesn’t particularly seem interested in any kind of philosophical discussion.
Sorry about the erratic answers-real life(and a severe migraine) intrudes. Workarounds? Learn to shut up until you know the lay of the land-find out what sets people off, what interests they have, which conversations to have and which to avoid. If you must walk about a strange area, look like you belong there. Develop a sense of humor that works at more than one level, laugh with and not at. Be someone people can depend on and like.
edited to add: Be able to see situations where a defense is exactly what a possible opponent is looking for-someone to hit back, and thus claim that what they are doing is also self defense. That’s the time to ignore the attack, no matter what name calling might ensue.
Some Aikido dojos profess peace, love and conflict resolution.[1] Other Aikido dojos can be highly martial though: in Japan their SWAT teams undertake a rigorous year-long Aikido training regime.
Wikipedia: Today aikido is found all over the world in a number of styles, with broad ranges of interpretation and emphasis. However, they all share techniques learned from Ueshiba and most have concern for the well-being of the attacker.
No worries, but I disagree with these sentiments. He’s not a philosophical pacifist as commonly understood, …but he is what he is, right? His POV is in contrast with a lot hot-headed stuff that I personally regard as thinly-veiled homicidal or near-homicidal fantasy. I’ve practiced martial arts for a few years now (fitness!) and still detest violence.
ETA: Not a bad set of workarounds.
[1] Accuracy, high respect but also irony intended.
Because it has been ruled the law of the land by the Supreme Court of the United States, and that any attempts to bypass their ruling might result in even more violence.
Measure for Measure, can you give me an example of the parts of the thread that you find to be fantasy? I know a lot of martial arts types have some special clarity on violent situations, but most humans in general have some idea how they will act in certain situations, and we often see those situations played out in life. The mama bear cliche is actually something that I have witnessed with my own eyes…there wasn’t any internet tough guy stuff going on there. Just mothers who were willing to do whatever to protect their kid, with no thought of their own safety. So, please expound. I may be way off track by what you mean by “thinly-veiled…homicidal fantasy…”
Here are some questions that I hope might get this thread back on track: [ETA: The thread seems to have verged back on track while I was thinking and typing, but hopefully these will further that along.]
Suppose you woke up tomorrow and found that you no longer had a special aversion or inability when it comes to violence. Not that you had any anger or desire to commit violence, but that you felt fully capable of acting violently if you believed it was morally justified. How woud you feel about this? Are there any situations in which you could imagine yourself then deciding to act violently (such as to save a child) or would you choose to act in the same non-violent manner?
What is your overall moral philosophy? Are you a deontologist or a consequentialist? What deontological obligations do you believe we have, or what calculus should we use to evaluate consequences, and why?
If the US were being invaded and there were a plebiscite on whether to use military force to defend the country, how would you vote and what things would influence your decision?
How do you feel about the US involvement in WWII? If you had been alive then, would you have supported the US entering the war?
No-I think that if the Supreme Court had ruled the other way even more violence would have ensued. Many years ago I started a poll as to how gun owners on the SDMB would react if the Supreme Court did rule the other way. The following conversations were not pleasant.
Well I agree about human wiring, and I was referring to male modes of thought.
Put it this way. The ancestral environment had levels of violence many times that which is faced by 1st world humans. Heck murder rates in 1850 were substantially higher than they are today. Most of us won’t be killed off in a Mad Max hail of bullets: hardened arteries or cancer are by far the greater threat. So while we are wired to fear violence, this typically reflects poor risk assessment.
The 2nd point is that males and females conceive of violence differently. Females face a real risk of sexual assault in my view. The biggest threat to guys are honor fights - ones that frankly are pretty simple to back down from, albeit at a potentially high psychological cost. The trick as I see it is to lower that cost without stooping to violence.
I hear talk of self-defense by males and frankly a lot of it is bullshit IMHO. Look. I’ve been mugged and I’ve had a knife held to my throat. I managed each experience without violence and I believe that in both cases a violent response would have been counterproductive. That said, I’ve been fortunate enough never to be exposed to extreme violence, so I’m not dispensing advice here, certainly not universals. Anyway, if I’m mugged, I’m going to hand over my goddamn wallet: it’s really not hard.
I haven’t posted in this thread until now, and Czarcasm: I feel exactly as frustrated and confused with your answers in this thread as Peter Morris, Tokyo Bayer and others.
You started a thread inviting people to ask you about your pacifism. You got quite a few thoughtful questions, which you answered in extremely short, superficial replies. And you seem convinced people are trying to “gotcha ya”. Dude: when multiple people are “acting” like they don’t understand… Maybe they aren’t acting?
I don’t think your answers line up with pacifism, either, and for the same reasons others have brought up. But instead of actually answering their follow up questions, you’re arguing over their sincerity. Not cool.
I really don’t know how I would feel about it, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be like flicking a switch. 55 years of being unable to hit someone coupled with a pacifistic nature developed over a period of about 35 years would be hard to overcome…and I’m not sure that I would want to.
I think that, through necessity my ethics were more pragmatic than anything else, but slowly evolved to include just a bit of consequentialism. I don’t think I am of the deontological mindset, because I think that any duties can only be placed on ourselves by ourselves.
I wouldn’t vote, because there is no way the common citizen has enough insight or information to overrule those who do. I know this sounds like a dodge, but it’s the only answer I can come up with at this time.
Same answer as the previous question, I’m afraid. I probably wouldn’t have supported the war, but such non-support would have been a combination of my nature and my ignorance. Not a good combination, I think.
Then you’re not a pacifist. A pacifist would want not to overcome it. The most you can say is that you might be a pacifist, but you’re not sure.
Pacifism is a typically a deontological philosophy, since it asserts an absolute duty to avoiding military violence. You can be a consequentialist pacifist, if you believe that force always leads to morally bad consequences, but you also have to be fairly blinkered to believe that. I don’t think there is any form of pacifism consistant with ethical pragmatism.
It’s not a dodge because it clearly communicates that you are not a pacifist. A pacifist would necessarily oppose military action regardless of the circumstances.
Then you are not a pacifist, because a pacifist would oppose war regardless of the circumstances.
Look, I know I said that I wasn’t going to debate whether you’re a pacifist or not, but these answers don’t leave any room for ambiguity. You are not a pacifist as the word is typically used.
Plus, I still don’t know what you wanted to talk about in this thread. You haven’t offered up anything for discussion. You haven’t made any moral or philosophical assertions. You haven’t even told us much about yourself except obliquely and tersely. What kind of questions did you hope we would ask? What did you want to tell us?
In the first place, these lasses were raised in a devoutly religious environment and were probably certain that being shot to death would be a fast track to the three-legged stool right next to the throne of god-almighty. IOW, death would amount to eternal glory, and it is not entirely obvious that they would have had a clear understanding of what dying meant in the first place.
As for being off-topic, it is really not, in an odd way. To invite violence upon oneself, even in the hope that it might save others, is still promoting violence, so self-sacrifice is rather the opposite of pacifism. A pacifist objects to all violence.
I mean, I am almost certain I could not be the person who steps forward to die so that others could live, what those girls did was unimaginable to me, but putting it into its context changes the tone just a wee bit.
