I have to admit that I’m very unfamiliar with even the basics of Quaker theology, beyond “very pacifist Christians”. Perhaps I’m thinking wrongly by thinking that the kind of salvation you’re talking about here is the kind of typical heavenly eternal good stuff for the groups you’re talking about. But if I’m getting the general gist… honestly, I don’t see how salvation could be no great motivation factor. Or, at least, I can’t see how salvation as a motivation could possibly be a lesser motivation than seemingly anything else.
Apologies to the OP if this is too much a tangent, but…
There’s just very little discussion of salvation. Many quakers don’t even consider themselves christians, or don’t agree that Jesus died for their sins. Again, it varies wildly. The motivation behind the beliefs and actions, IME, is “this is right” not “this will allow me to go to heaven.”
I guess it just seems odd to me. As someone who doesn’t believe in any kind of afterlife, the closest I can come to trying to put myself in that kind of position is to imagine if what I did in the next five minutes determined whether or not I got to have an excellent rest of my life. Those five minutes might well matter to me, but, in comparison, it doesn’t seem like much. But then I’m approaching this from the outside, so I’m probably not getting into the right mindset.
To drag it back to the OP; a terrible rest of your life under occupation, or even an incredibly short rest of your life spent in torture and pain, could still not counterbalance the promise of a lovely afterlife, and so increase the risk of behaving in a way that might rob you of it.
Depends on who is doing the invading. I’m sure that if the US had invaded, I’d be more likely to just rough it out, and await their departure, as they seem mission specific rather than annexation, to date.
North Korea, I’d expect a more old school approach to the invasion. If you survived the shock troops during the initial assault, you still have to concern your self with the follow on garrison troopers and special security brigades.
Their intentions don’t have to be genocidal (don’t like this term, too broad brush), but that you are now supplicants to the new regime for what ever reasons.
Fighting back against the invaders, again it would depend. For all the insurgency did in Iraq, its not like the USAF visited entire villages with the concept of an arc light strike with B-52’s in reprisal, other countries, its possible that your little display of defiance would get your family killed as well as your neighbors, thats how they police you. Its your neighbors that rat you out, so they can live.
Declan
My point is that lying down and submitting is exactly what the Tibetans did and basically the Chinese are going to wipe them out, culturally, destroy their language and have killed a hell of a lot of them. No, I don’t think that resistance would or has helped them at all, even the more passive types of resistance they have tried. What would help would have been the international community banding together to stop China from seizing the country in the first place, or, conversely, insisting that the Chinese stop doing what they are doing, or if they are going to do it that someone in the international community do something…anything…about that. Perhaps not buying their crap or some other measure.
But it seems that this is all water under the bridge, so China is going to be left to do as they like…well, until they hit the wall and fly apart on their own I guess. Based on them doing similar shit to other provinces they have acquired, as well as their actions in Hong Kong, I think that it’s only a matter of time. Of course, that’s likely to be cold comfort to the Tibetans, but you can’t have everything.