Does the Pacifist embrace a contradiction?

Question

The pacificist rationale is that the evil of violence and tyranny are best resisted by the abdonment of reactionary force. This premise relies on the recognition of self-immolation as a contradiction, and follows that the tyrant or whatever social institutions which allow him to remain in power will crumble out of their empathy for the self-immolator. Does it seem a perverse contradiction that anyone would seek in another man's pity the motive to cease his self destruction? When a man surrenders his reason as the source of his life and replaces as its source the pity of tyrants and thugs he has committed moral treason. The pacifist contradiction is that he committs this moral treason while insisting he practices the highest moral virtue.

Answer 1

You are painting pacifism with FAR too broad a brush. All we can say about pacifists for sure is that they try not to engage in acts of violence. This does not necessarily mean that they are passive, or that they accept suffering (happily or otherwise), or that they expect any kind of cooperation from oppressors.

Consider, for example, non-violent resistance advocated by Mohandas Ghandi and others.

Those who advocate this kind of a movement sometimes deny the efficacy of violence precisely because it is violence that most oppressors are MOST capable of resisting. An unarmed man may or may not evoke pity from a tank crew, but he is not likely to prevent them from doing what they want in any other way. Acting violent may even play well into the justifications of an oppressor... whether or not he pities you before you are violent, he will probably have little enough for you afterward (few Americans pitied downtrodden members of the Middle East before 9/11, but for years afterward even the appearance of sympathy was cause for public castigation).

Nor do they simply hope for results... an oppressor oppresses for a REASON. Enough resistors can make it almost impossible to accomplish any action. A tank can level a city, but no amount of tanks can grow a field of crops. Countries that conquer don't want dirt and corpses. These things have no value. Instead they want production and cooperation. Non-violent resistance is ECONOMIC. It seeks to make oppression so costly that it is not worthwhile.

It could even be argued that Ayn Rand was all for this kind of this kind of pacifism - it essentially forms the plot of 'Atlas Shrugged' (which was originally titled, 'The Strike'). In that wise, is it not completely accurate to describe just about every boycott and every strike as a pacifistic apolitical effort to bring about change?

That is just ONE example if a pacifistic philosophy that has no interest in pity or self destruction (they seem to hope to inspire fear and frustration instead!). Depending on which group of pacifists you hook up with, you will get any number of answers to the question of how they hope for violence and strife to end if they are not participating in it themselves. Some do, as you say, hope that by destroying themselves they will stay the hands of their abusers. Most, however, have too much self-interest (or too little idealism) to put up with that kind of thing.

Peace.

Answer 2

Pacifists seldom practice self-immolations, seeing that as another form of violence. Even when they do, as the Vietnamese Buddhist monks did in the 60's it is not done to garner sympathy for themselves, but to express empathy with others suffering the degradation of war. This is not moral treason because the monks realize that all mortals die, and there is an end to suffering. They accept the course of life and reach for the higher goal of an end to strife. Rather than expect the tyrant to crumble they expect by their act to better him and all mankind. This is the same road Socrates took in ancient Athens.

Answer 3

I think your premise is correct. Here is the reason why I think these two people succeeded.

It appears to me that in a religious civilization this works. The British had to deal with Mahatma Ghandi in India. His peaceful non violent resistance brought about India's independence. And America had to deal with Martin Luther King whose peaceful nonviolent resistance allowed American Blacks to be equal partners in the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursiut of happiness.

These two succeeded because the moral fabric, and history of the ruling society was based on a religious precept that all men are created equal in God's sight.

If these men had tried to do it in a nonChristian society I think they would have been nameless.

That's just my opinion.

Answer 4

Pacifism is the philosophical acceptance of slavery. It holds that there is nothing in this world that is worth violence, even his own freedom and values are secondary causes to peace.

In a more barbaric world, the only alternative to slavery for a pacifist is suicide. Luckily for them, this is civilization, an organization of people built around the respect of individual rights.

In our modern society, pacifism can flourish, because we have a system of rights, but more importantly, those rights are defended by our police and our army, who are ready to use force against any who would initiate coercion.

In the words of John Stuart Mill:

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

Refusal to defend your own rights is betraying your own soul. When faced with the prospect of defending his rights, a true pacifist's only choice is physical suicide or spiritual suicide.

Answer 5

The wisest of people are able to hold 2 conradictory thoughts at the same time.

Plato