Non-Agression Principle

This is a popular idea in America (indeed unheard of outside the country). I believe it was most famously expressed by Ayn Rand.

Non-Agression principle as expressed by Rand is not really a non-aggression principle however. While it says that aggression is wrong, it has the caveat that aggression is not wrong when it is used in self defence. And for this caveat to exist in has a belief in self and property. Indeed the weakness of Ayn Rand is that her whole philosophy is based upon a particular chosen ontology of selves and property. If you don't accept this ontology then you don't accept Rand. But I shaln't pursue that here.

In a nutshell Ayn Rand is expressing the "you started it" principle. In other words I wasn't going to hit you, but since you just hit me I'm going to hit you. Or this is mine and we were friends, but since you won't respect that its mine I'm going to attack you.

The problem with this is that while there are certainly cases where people over step their boundaries, in the vast majority of cases everyone who uses violence is using the Non-Agression Principle.

When your house in burgled you may use a gun to defend yourself, but the thief will use a gun to defend themselves also. You will say "you started it" by breaking into my property. And the thief will say you have an easy life you have a lot, I have a hard life I am defending my needs and I deserve this more than you. You will say well its still mine, go get your own. And they will say I tried, but I was raised in a poor part of town, was abused as a kid, I've got a drug probem, and I was never taught the skills or the education needed to succeed in this country. You have and that isn't fair. And you say, tough, pull yourself together and make a man of yourself. But the thief only sees the hidden aggression, exclusion and injustice that lies behind the aggression principle and pulls the trigger. He may be wrong but it saved no one.

The problem with aggression is that everyone can see aggression and need for defence in anything. You step in front of someone in a queue, it might be accidental. The person behind you sees a violation of their space and rights, and steps shouting and aggressively pushes you out of the way. You think they completely over reacted since it was just a mistake and you hit them. Then they thinking you're really are out to insult then pull a gun and the whole things explodes. Yet everyone was using the non-aggresion principle. Obviously in reality things escalate more slowly, but I've seen people come to fight for a lot less!

Non-aggression is a joke it really is!

I saw a wonderful example on the tube recently. A clearly mentally unstable person ran onto the tube throwing their sports bag in first. They then got very paranoid that everyone was looking at them, and started to shout that we were all laughing at him just because he went to the gym. He then started on an Indian guy who was near me, accusing him of laughing. Now I stepped in and said there's no probem here, relax we're not laughing, we think you're an okay chap, have a seat. But the Indian guy thought it  was a racist attack and started to defend himself. So you then have two people defending themselves. The gym guy thinking people are laughing at him, and the Indian thinking he's being racially abused. They were as bad as each other cos none of it was true. It was all just their own perception. I had to get off at the next stop so I left then exercising the Non-Aggression Principle at each other.

Its not a joke when whole countries get involved. Using the Non Aggression Principle the USA invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 because they had been attacked, and perceived a threat. But of course Iraq and Afghanistan must have been thinking we should have attacked USA much more massively at the start to defend orselves from all this. Clearly USA was a threat (with such a massive army and with bases all round the world - they are clearly on the offensive). 9/11 was conducted by people who perceived USA as a threat and enemy. I don't know their specific grievencies but you can be sure that somewhere in theorist heads they think they are attacking an aggressive enemy and not a harmless collection of good blameless sheep. Indeed every country is in a position to attack the USA by the Non-Aggression Principle becuase it poses such a huge military threat to the world (spending more on armaments than the rest of the world combined! That is a threat!) Imagine your neighbour stock piling weapons on heir property no matter how nice they are - at some point in the future you may end up disagreeing with them and then where do you stand. Time to invade now before it gets too out of hand. They may not be threatening us right now, but lets attack them defensively first to ensure that day never comes. "Pre-emptive Attack" the Pentagon calls it and it is Non-Aggression Principle and yet still reason to have a war right now.

Of course Christians know well what the Real Non-Aggression Principle is. Indeed some Indian sects do as well. It is called Ahimsa.

Jesus died on a cross not to show us he was powerful, but quite the opposite to suffer as man. He could (if you believe this stuff) have summond an army of angels to crush the Romans, but he did nothing and died in his own stinking blood, urine and faeces. All he did was forgive his persecutors. Now if you believe the story, he more than anyone on earth was innocent of sin, and yet he died a criminals death without trying to blame or wishing punishment, revenge or defence. This is the message to Christians who wish to follow him. And for those who wish to defend he said "let those who live by the sword die by the sword." In other words the sword achieves nothing but inevitable death anyway.

Some Indian sects likewise have an identical message. That in the face of overwhelming threat, danger and risk to life the only response is love and compassion. We are all going to die, but it is better to die with love in our heart, than to live by fear, aggression and defence. After all everyone bearing a sword is protecting something and feels justfied in using that sword. But if we win by using that sword (or gun/missile) we have to spend the rest of our life living with the consequences and the murder that we committed. American media is full of murder, so much so that we are noramlised to it - every US hero kills. But in reality it is something that no-one wants to live with. It is better to die in love than kill in fear

The most ridiculous thing about all this is what we ourselves think when we see a stranger with a sword. Do we feel at peace, or are we automatically suspicious and afraid of this person. Likewise what do we think other people think when they see us a sword. For sword read weapons or even aggressive attitude. If we live our life behind a sword we will be faced with very suspicious and fearful people which is going to set the world against us. Drop the sword! Obviously in many US states everyone carries swords (guns are the US version). So everyone I presume is a bit suspcious of everyone else all the time... is that person over there with the gun going to use it today? And am I a possible target? A lttle thought that most of the world doesn't have to worry about. In UK you have kids with knives, and when I walk past one there is the obvious thought I wonder if they are going to use it today and am I a target? What the kids don't realise is the impact they have on other people is quite the oppsoite of what they want: people feel aggressive to them when all the kid wanted deep down was respect which is really just defence!

Conversely what Ayn Rand and her one-eyed supporters forget is the inpact that the Real Non-Aggression Principle has. I use the RNAP and have first hand experience of what happens. I haven't been burgled at gun point tho this is just an example.

When you are faced with the burgular entering your property you are not afraid, and you do not defend yourself for you are not afraid to die. Everyone will die. At the end of the day property is inanimate and not worth anyone's life. Your concern is why is this chap in such a desperate situation to be entering people's houses with a gun. They must be in a bad place! So you naturally care for them and want to know. You want to, even if you can't, help your assailant. Chances are they have had a hard life, they are probably on drugs these days. As a result you do have a problem because you are faced with someone who has been neglected by the world for a very long time, and there is little you can do in the short window of opportunity. But thinking of defence is the wrong thing to do, because what looks like defence to you, looks like attack to other people and that is the problem: you must not look like attack to a lion else it will attack. Instead you look like the other persons defence in order to survive!!!! Which to you looks like attack. At the end of the day what do people want? They want someone on their side. If there is any chance to ensure to the other person that you are genuinely on their side you have a win. But they probably haven't had anyone on their side for a very long time, possibly ever so you have to dig real deep to play this game. You must be prepared to die for them! That is love. Love is what saves people and the world. Now you probably won't die, but if your love is anywhere near that deep you have saved everyone automatically.

This seriously confuses people (in a good way). A bit like a good Mel Gibson from Lethal Weapon you want to convince the other person that you are less afraid of death and suffering than they are. That their life is worth more than yours. That is love. In a tense situation where people seem the furthest apart, actually they are the closest if you can see the opportunity. But its very important not to be pathetic. If a lion thinks you are an easy kill, it might just kill you anyway. You must stand your ground solidly, like a rock not like a gun, but with compassion and the other persons defence in the your eyes. A flower that will not be budged. So you don't argue about their threats, yes I will die you accept, I'm not going to defend myself, but do ask them how they will benefit when you're dead. You see there is no benefit, except self defence and if you aren't going to attack and are no threat then why kill? Now they may kill for fun but actually there is no fun (or actually its a power trip) in killing someone who fully accepts death already. And if they ever do do this, its important to understand that they will be forever scared and harmed by the experience. It really is not a good idea to kill for fun! (its not entirely certain whether the Romans ever did this in the Colosseum or whether it was more complex) but its not ever a good idea to kill full stop! Nothing good ever came of a death (despite endless amounts of misleading Pentagon (US) and Whitehall (UK) propaganda.) an a million books and stories going back to the Bronze Age and the Battle of Troy and even the Bhagavad Gita (essentially the indian version of Homer).

However a caveat. It is possibly that we face someone who is not really conscious. Someone so badly damaged by drugs or psychosis that they are not really a person - more a zombie. What is the best thing for them? If we try and engage them meaningfuly we are wasting both their time and ours. If we do nothing then it is possible that they will commit crimes. So yes it is possible to be in a situation where "violence" is necessary but it must be very well understood what this means. It is violence that benefits the other person only!

The only time you can use harm against someone is in their own interests!

This is like an attacker cutting you with a knife, versus a surgeon cutting you during an operation. The harm lies not in what was done but why it was done. But this is complex as someone wakes up in a hospital with a leg shattered by a police gun shot, and then its discovered that actually the person they wrestled to the ground was a terrorist who then escaped and went on to blow themselves up and kill many people. Once we engage in any form of "harm" we enter a very complex and mirky world that may well result in real harm being done if we are not very careful indeed.

The only real test of our actions is that we did them with love. So in this way there is no such thing as violence actually. If what we did was done with kindness, compassion and love and it turns out that the result was harm then it was still the right thing to do. However if what we did we did with fear, anger, hatred and prejuduce then whatever we did was wrong. This is the only true law.

A common form of unexpected harm is people who are untrained trying to help. We see an injured animal and we try to help and it dies. We then look up how to look after it and discover we didn't treat it right. Our intention was good, but we were untrained. If our motives are good we will have learned that we need to be better prepared in future and next time we will research how to look after animals better... if not get training pre-emptively and perhaps even join an animal care centre. So what started off as harm, because our intentions were good has now grown into something very positive. However if we took the pet home to show off to our friends, and it died then we might be ashamed and be more worried about defending our reputation than actually doing anything good for animals. So it died in vain.

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Violence Thought Experiments.

The classic is the Nazi prison camp. A line of prisoners is formed and we are given a gun and told to shoot one otherwise the officer will shoot 3. We can shoot the officer, a prisoner, ourselves or do nothing and 3 will die. If we shoot the officer then at least 5 will die as he will die, I will die, and probably at least 3 prisoners will die. Shooting myself is an interesting option. It means that I will not play his games, and it means that shooting prisoners after I'm dead doesn't mean much. Plus if I'm in such a camp, its probably the easiest way out. I tend to side with this option. But I have expressed violence however. If I am a Nazi guard myself and the officer is testing my loyalty it is actually more difficult. I do have the option of killing a prisoner but being so sickened by the whole thing that I dedicate the rest of my life to becoming a Schindler. This in fact might be the right thing to do, I have to carry the weight and will be haunted always by killing an innocent person but can work to lesson that weight through fulfilling other good intentions. But I have played the game of the officer, and supported his world of violence which was not a good thing at all. The other option is just to do nothing and not play his games. He will kill 3 but in such a world life is cheap and I don't think anyone would blame you for an easy release. This last option has the beauty of involving no violence. Some would perceive it the cowards way. The real truth is we probably don't know what we would do until faced with such an unnatural situation.

Another situation was in the Tour of Duty TV series. A pacifist with a standard issue rifle was faced with a Viet Kong who was going to shoot someone. The pacifist did nothing and the Viet Kong killed an innocent woman. Was the pacifist a coward and to blame for not saving the woman? The problem with this scenario is that it is people taking sides and killing who they think is guilty which causes the whole problem of war. No one kills the "good" side in a war, everyone is killing the "evil" side. But because people's perceptions are different like this gym guy and the Indian on the tube we often end up thinking each other is evil and attacking each other. If the Pacifist had picked up a gun yet it would have been one less Viet Kong and the woman would have survived, but this is only the US point of view. From a Vietnamese perspective the Imperialists just killed one more and in a tiny way the murder just adds to the sea of revenge and hatred. The poor woman on the other hand clearly made the mistake of siding with the US and then getting caught by a Viet Kong. If she had sided with the Vietnamese then he would have protected her. So actually its not so simple an answer and depends upon your perspective entirely. When things depend upon perspective then they are no longer correct and we should not act upon them. That's why all killing is wrong, because it alwasy involves taking sides against the victim. Compassion and love have no sides. Really the pacifist did the right thing, altho it was virtually indistinguishable from the wrong thing. Someone was going to die. When we are faced with such sad situations it is because of a global break down in reason and ironically for Ayn Rand the adoption by too many people of the Non-Aggression Principle rather than a profound principle of compassion, love an sacrifice.