Testing Non-Violence

OK remembered the ultimate test of non-violence from Tour of Duty series. The pacifist doctor is faced with the classic situation where he has a chance to shoot an enemy soldier before that soldier takes his comrades life. He stumles and his friend is killed. The enemy solder is then shot anyway... what did his pacifism achieve?

A biger example just to leave no doubt of the problem. Imagine that the enemy soldier had been heading toward a village of known innocent women and children to commit a massacre. After the masacre he was going to die anyway would we shoot him to save all those lives?

Traditional wisdom is actually a bit more complex, it runs like this: those women and children have more reason to live than the solider heading toward the massacre. Why people would ask should he live given that he is going to commit such a terrible action. After the massacre that turns into the argument he has no right to live given that all those good people just died at his hands. Leaving him alive feels like an insult to all those who died. They have lost their lives while he still has his - it is basically unfair and unjust. Probably simpler in terms of property: if someone takes money from everyone it seems that he has lost his right not to have it stolen off him. We steal it back Robin Hood style and feel justified. So in convential wisdom it is not just a matter of stopping him in his tracks, it is also a second layer where his desire to commit massacre means that he forfits his right to life himself. Both these end with him being "justly" shot.

A true pacifist has a hard problem here. However now I'm a bit clearer on this idea the solution is simple.

We lay down our weapon (if we are even carrying one). This is the 1st absolute imperative of Peace. We then have no choice but to approach the gunman, unarmed with hands above head and intervene. Now chances are we will be blown away and just add another body to the body count of the massacre. The reason however that this is not a problem is that the second argument above is invalid. The women and children do not have more right to live than the gunman! It sounds odd. The point is that the gunman is wrong to be bearing arms. In some ways the pacifist is being cruel in not shooting the gunman because he is allowing him to commit an action that will ultimately hurt the gunman far more. Dying is easy it won't take more than a day at most from mortal wounds. Trying to balance a mind that has commit an atrocity is virtually impossible. How can we know happiness in a mind that has experienced the hatred of violence? It is impossible. Such a person enshrines themselves inside a dungeon of unhappiness for a very, very long time with no way out! When the pacifist takes action it is to stop this type of suffering, not the death of the women and children: after all we struggle through to keep them alive and come back in a 100years and they are all gone anyway.

What is also worth bearing in mind is that the assmption that the pacifist will be blown away is important to assume, but it probably won't happen. The reason is that sacrifice is a very, very powerful weapon. The reason is where is the point in shooting someone who has evidently accepted death and who poses no threat? We shoot because we are either afraid or we are takng revenge for another death. There is no fear in someone who has submitted their life to you, and there is no debt for death when you see that someone can give their life away so cheaply. Sacrifice destroys violence. It uttely cuts the tree down. I have seen this to some extent myself when faced with dangerous people I offer my life - it wakes them up out of their hatred.

Now Tibet seems to challenge this argument. I thought even the Dalai Lama was questioing non-violence these days. I would say his weakness (if I should be so bold as to suggest he has one) was that his first premise was "Tibet". I don't know the history of Tibet but I assume that it arose like China from conflict. The Dalai Lama has been reborn to wield the hidden swords in his nation state. This is what has fuelled the hatred from China (which also has its hidden swords) and so there is violence without end. Tibet should submit to 'China' as Hero argues, exactly as China should submit to the U.S. - it is their argument ;-) Ah we see another weakness of the Hero (Violence) argument that it is great to submit to Chin (when you are Chinese) but not for the Chinese t submit to U.S. I should have put this in the last blog for it supports my suspicion that the Hero argument only really works retrospectivel after Chin made China not before.

This is another version of sacrifice. The Chinese (if they were really without violence) should submit to the U.S. and become Americans. Why would the Americans (converted Chinese) possible be annoyed at being American? Violence is all absurd when you look at it from a few angles.

So sadly the pacifist has to reconcile the massacre of the village in his world view. Pacifists have to accept that the world is a really bad place and that violence is truly horrific and that people will do obscene things to one another in the name of hatred. This is the way of the culture of violence. We cannot take up arms to stop it, only sacrifice on the cross of non-violence along side all the other innocents and know at least that we lived and rest in Peace and didn't live and rest in Violence.