Regarder wrote:Zephyr wrote:paints pacifism as genuinely idiotic.
Sometimes it is, though. I'd argue more often than not it is. Pacifism applies to more than just outright war. If the police were pacifistic with criminals, they'd never be able to overpower and apprehend them. We have to guard against unjustified brutality on one end of the scale, but pacifism is on the other, and going to the extreme of completely 100% removing force from the table is only appropriate in a narrow bunch of circumstances. Martin Luther King was a good enough speaker to convince people without having to use force personally, but ultimately the state (rightly) used force to combat the force of segregation, and so the national guard allowed little black girls to attend desegregated schools against crowds of protestors. Gandhi came at the right time, when the British Empire was already weakened by World War II and receeding the world over; non-violent protests would have previously been put down by force at the height of the Empire.
So really, real world pacifism is even more impractical than pacifism in fiction. At least in a fictional story, you might only have to convince one guy who holds immense power, whereas in the real world systems of power depend on many many people who can't all be convinced. In the examples people always go back to in civil rights or anti-colonial protests in India, the pacifistic approach worked inside a narrow context where it convinced the people wielding the force of law to either start wielding it in a more righteous way (civil rights), or to rescind it (Britain leaving India in '47). Of course, pacifism can't work on Cell because he's an evil monster, but in the real world, pacifism only works inside of an artificial context to begin with. Sometimes pacifism works, but most of the time it doesn't, unless you decontextualize "peaceful" to apply to things that inherently require enforcement, for good or bad.
I think you're misunderstanding how pacifism works, and what counts as "work" in the first place. Firstly, pacifism, and non-violence in general (specifically as Gandhi and King utilized it), was long term, rather than short term. It's about gradually breaking cyclical violence. It's not a guaranteed magic wand "stop this instance of violence". It's "make this instance of violence less likely to blowback and perpetuate".
Secondly, it's not strictly about using reason to convince others. It's about self-sacrifice, it's about talking to someone in a way that makes them identify with you, it can entail treating someone belligerently violent with respect and like a person where nobody else will (because they are belligerently violent). Things that will be more likely to cause the violent person to feel guilt and remorse, to empathize with their potential or actual victims. This is why painting it as "passive" and "doing nothing" is utter nonsense, because actually going through with it requires putting oneself in harm's way. No, there's no guarantee that you yourself in any individual instance of pacifism, of non-violent resistance, will walk away unharmed, or even alive. One has to have the courage to stand up, and willingly and knowingly put oneself in harm's way to protect others, to treat their killer like a human being, with respect. It necessitates a willingness to suffer and die, all while treating the one causing the suffering and death with respect and dignity. Doing so will render it more likely that they feel remorse and guilt for their action, and not repeat what they did.
As I understand it, this is what Gandhi described as "Satyagraha", or "Soul Force". It is essentially the awakening of empathy within the violent perpetrator, forcing them to identify with their victims. Anticipating the obvious "it wouldn't have worked on X person or group" reply, it's all a matter of degree. The more a group of person dehumanizes another and masks what they're doing (to both themselves and others) with euphemism, the more detached, alienated, and abstract their victims' suffering is, the more "soul force" is necessary to break in there and cause them to identify with their victims. Goebbels knew exactly what he was doing, when he methodically worked to create a situation where more and more "soul force" would be required to stop what they were doing (obviously, he wasn't likely thinking of this in Gandhian terms, but the same rules apply). I said above that the aim is primarily at the long term, but if enough "soul force" is applied, logically, non-violence can work in the short term and immediate as well.
This is not something that's trivial to do. To be able to temper and control one's impulsive violent reactions to something (a defensive reaction to a threat) requires a great amount of education and discipline. There is technique involved, it requires knowledge of different social ques and quirks depending on the social group that a would-be violent assailant is a part of. The aim is to foster long-term solidarity, in a way that violence absolutely does not, because violence is cyclical, and
always begets revenge. It's not easy, it's not quick, and it's not simple, but it's far more sustainable in the long run, and far more ethically justifiable.
This is getting
mega off topic, though (apologies to
Kaiser Neko and the moderation team). I'm down to continue talking about this stuff via PM if anyone is actually interested.