Not to be cranky, sailor, but you’re not a pacifist in any way, and I haven’t the faintest idea why you’re in this thread at all. A pacifist simply will not kill people, even in self-defense (though I’m not sure where people got the idea that they won’t flee, or use non-lethal defense, for that matter. Weird.) Such a belief does make soldiering problematic – particularly since, as noted earlier and promptly ignored/sidetracked, a soldier has no way of knowing predicting whether the conflicts in which they will engage will in any way be just.
No? Just over a few centuries ago it was acceptable to burn people alive for their religious beliefs. Public disembowelment was an option of the State even in the most developed countries of the time. While I suppose you could make the argument it still is, it just isn’t done. Remember Joan of Arc. How would she have fared under modern law? Would she have been burned alive?
We’ve grown past that. There’s a saying that democracies don’t go to war with each other, I’m sure there’s historical examples to the contrary but it’s true for the most part. As concepts of human rights and democratic control spread around the global and more and more governments recognize them (even through bloody revolt) the less brutal the world will be over all.
Put another way how would the government system of the Sweden have fared if transported back through the years and forced to deal with marauding, raping war lords, jealous Kings wanting Sweden’s land. Royals trying to seize power. None of the information, and communications systems we take for granted. Oh and the black death randomly killing large cities. Plus superstition and a massively followed church that believed in witches that were in league with the devil and actively trying to burn people alive. Random famine when crops fail which the church blames on witches. No concepts of our modern science. Hell no ability to mass produce books. They’re all hand written. Doesn’t matter cause most people can’t read.
Would Sweden be able to maintain it’s social safety nets? Would it be able to have fair trials? Would it be steam rolled by more brutal countries?
Face it. Times are getting better. Blood shed is a fact of life for now, but things change. War may be a memory some day just as burning people alive is.
Well, the word “pacifist” is one of those words which have more than one definition. You might say it is only an absolute pacifist, one that will never use violence, even in self defense. I think pacifist is a person who is pro-peace in a real way (not “let’s make peace by anihilating those people over there”), a person who puts the value of peace above other considerations like the price of oil, a person who abhorrs violence and war as a means of resolving problems and who will not support the initiation of violence. That does not mean one is not allowed self-defense. But, in any case, those definitions do not matter. Whether I am a pacifist or not is a semantic question of no consequence. The reason I came into this thread was to counter the notion that soldiers bear no personal responsibility. The thing is that it is pretty easy to argue that no one except Bush (or Hitler) has any responsibility in what happened. I do not believe so. I believe we are all responsible to a greater or lesser degree, even those of us who opposed the damn fool war from the very beginning even if only for not opposing it strongly enough. Soldiers, officers, government higher-ups, the President, the legislative representatives of the American people, the press and media, the people who re-elected the clown, the people who continued to support him, the people who pay taxes, we all bear some responsibility. The soldier who chooses to follow orders to invade a country which has done nothing to deserve being attacked certainly bears a substantial responsibility in my book.
Thinking that fighting is bad in some kind of generalized way ≠ pacifist. More or less everybody dislikes violence – the distinction between you and the people you’re arguing with is where you think there should be exceptions to that generalized rule. Incidentally, you haven’t addressed individual responsibility in several posts. Since people bitching about Iraq already have several hundred threats to participate in, the hijack in this thread is kind of stupid.
Who are these comments addressed to?
Sorry – to sailor (the post directly above.) As you may be able to tell, I get a bit pissy about certain cough schools of thought that have a couple vocal advocates around here. Obviously it’s a bit dangerous to show that in the Pit, though. I’ll end my participation in the hijack, at least.
BTW, Boyo, I see you lost your “Best of the Worst” status. That’s sad –it wasn’t as fun as the whole “ASSHAT” thing, but the variation was nice. (Sorry, hijacking over, I swear!)
While I do agree with you that things are better now than they were in the past, I’m afraid I don’t share your optimism that war will ever become a relic.
Our existence here is finite and based on scarce resources. Every person occupies a unique geographical position. Everyone understands the world and their neighbors through their own idiosyncratic mentality. One particular aspect of said mentality is the morality of when the use of force to procure or maintain access to resources is appropriate. This “threshold of violence”, if you will, occurs on a continuum from those who would never use force to those who would use it at any time without prior justification.
Given the above, I fail to see any situation in which humans will not have to at least prepare for war, if not actively wage it.
You use the example of Sweden, but you could just have easily referred to the entire EU. True enough, the idea of the RAF pounding the cities of Germany into dust or the Spanish landing a light armored division in Amsterdam is ludicrous in 2008. However, these countries do all still maintain modern military forces (nuclear-tipped, in the cases of the UK and France). And don’t forget what happened on the far eastern edge of Europe this past summer.
The example of Europe does give me hope that, perhaps, at some distant point, the idea of any nation going to war against another will be just as ridiculous as the British/French or Spanish/Dutch examples given. However, even then, there will be some element of those societies that are trained and equipped in the use of deadly force. There will never be a truly pacifistic society.
The assumption you’re making is nation-states will last. There may be other political structures in the future. Nation-states may become what American states are under the Federal government in larger continental governments. Europe is already heading that way.
Another assumption you’re making is resources will be as limited as they are now. We may have tech that can mine from places we couldn’t reach before such as the asteroid belt or deep under the surface of the earth. We may develop oceanic aquaculture and expand the sea to be as productive as our farmland. We may have food production stations in space with 24 hour sunlight to grow crops.
Re: my 2 assumptions,
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I agree that nation-states may not last, but I am absolutely confident that whatever government form replaces them will have some element of it that is trained and equiped to use deadly force, and will thus not be a truly pacifistic government. At any rate, we are a looooooong way from transcending the nation-state as the primary organizing priniciple of socities.
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The universe, or at least the part that we can observe, is finite. There is only so much matter/energy to go around. 300 years ago, pertroleum wasn’t a vital resource - today it is. Whenever technology unlocks new resources, those resources will also be scarce. Farming the sea floor? There’s only so much acreage. Food stations in space? Whatever they are manufactured from will be a scarce resource. (Note that I am using scarcity in the economic sense, of being “finite”, not the more common usage of “relatively limitless”.)
There will always be people greedier, more aggressive, and more ruthless than their neighbors. That problem will never go away, no matter how many flying cars, cloning vats, or antimatter reactors we have.
Nonsense. Societies develop and realize that they have more to gain by cooperating than by fighting. First it was the family clan. Then the city-state. Then small states. Then bigger states. Europe has come uner a system of cooperation which was unthinkable a century ago. When societies decide it is better to cooperate then they also develop mechanisms to deal with those who do not cooperate and would rather use force: they are shunned and punished by society. Nations who refuse to cooperate and want to take matters into their own hands are no better than individuals who refuse to live by the rules of society and use violence for their own ends. They are a drag and should be shunned.
I believe the creation of the UN after WWII was a step in the right direction whereas the present unilateral policies of the USA are a step backwards. I believe the future will be one of cooperation and of superseding the nation-state. I believe the nation-state as we know it is already on its way out.
Nonsense yourself.
Really? Are you sure Dubya, Putin, and Chavez got that memo?
No disagreement here.
Actually, I believe those mechanisms are more commonly known as “armed forces”.
Shunning, eh? And what happens when the “shunnee” decides that they don’t particularly care for that kind of treatment?
No disagreement here, either.
And I believe that if the nation-state is indeed on its way out (other than the EU, I see no evidence of this happening currently), it will be due to more tribalism and parochialism, not less. The EU is far from representative of the current state of global international relations.
I am hopeful, however, that on this count I am wrong and you are right. We shall see…