"Violence doesn't solve anything!", Or does it?

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I think I may have to disagree with this. I think almost every great freedom came after a fight with the person/group that was trying to prevent it.

 

India's independence & Gandhi, Martin Luther King & The African American Civil Rights Movement.

But hey, just call them gutless pansies

 

Violence is not a solution to non-violent conflicts, but sometimes you have to use violence to defend yourself from violence. Sometimes you can actually avoid violence and put an end to it without using violent means, but it's not like pacifism should be used to justify absurd ideas of submission to numerically inferior attackers or something like that.

 

Whatever happend to "Two wrongs don't make a right?"

 

Whatever happens to the guy charging you with a knife if you hold a gun?

 

Hmm... good point.

 

Violence, in certain situations, can well be the only option you have.

I remember a situation when I was 6 years old and there were Hindu-Muslim communal riots in Hyderabad, India (which is where I lived then). At one point of time, there was this mob of a few dozen people at our gates who wanted to burn our house down because they knew we were a very prominent Muslim family in a predominantly Hindu neighbourhood.

My dad had a rifle in the house. He got up on the roof, fired a shot in the air as a warning, told them he'd shoot anyone who came in past the gate. They left. If they had persisted, I very well believe that he would have shot the person. They were VERY volatile circumstances, and the horrors that took place in our city during those riots I don't even care to enumerate. Rape, looting, burning people alive, maiming, killing...well, it was all going on.

So yeah, it doesn't pay to be high and mighty about anything. When required, violence is often the most effective way of dealing with things. I shudder to think what would have happened if my dad was a pacifist who tried to reason and negotiate with the mob carrying broken glass bottles and petrol cans.

 

That wouldn't be pacifism. It isn't true that pacifists don't believe in self defense. Sometimes, pacifists will even support war if there is truly no other option.

 

Drew's right, in a way, for example Gandhi was waging war, his methods were just unconventional. Ideas and ideologies are more powerful than anything. It is not fists, muscle, steel, or guns that move this world. It is the intent and the will behind those guns, and to be able to sway the minds of other people is the best and the most terrifying weapon there is. There lies the ultimate futility of violence in politics, it eventually creates a resistance of equal force, but with nothing more than a will and a word you can create a movement that is unstoppable. A single stare is able to break the will of the aggressor, the aggressor will lose his balance if you do not answer with an opposing force.

@Faraaz: It wasn't violence that your father used when he fired a shot in the air. Shooting at the people would have been an act of violence. Your father kept your house safe by invoking fear of death into the mind of every individual in the mob. This was done by not injuring anyone. Had he shot at the mob, they would have answered as one and with aggression. Your father is a wise man.

 

A gun is only a tool. A tool that enforces the will of the wielder. In the right hands, it will enable freedom, but it doesn't create it.

So if a rogue Muslim state were to threaten terrorist attacks against the US, then King George would then be with his rights/mandate to topple the regime by force?

And it only escalates. The more violence escalates, the less freedom there really is until one side is subdued. Setting up a situation where only one side can have freedom is a sure way to promote conflict...

The threat of violence being just as effective as the violence itself? But doesn't that require a show of force in the first place? Like reminding What's his name in Iran what happenned to the Taliban or Saddam Hussein if he gets out of line?

 

@Iku-Turso & Drew: I realise what you mean, but honestly...like Gnarff said, don't you think the threat of violence is as bad as violence itself??

 

I just thought of a HUGE problem with this argument. Most of our countries are built around the threat of violance (by police or army) to inforce their laws. And most of moden Europe is the way it is today through war. So where does that leave us?

 

But there is the difference. And it is this nuance we are talking about. Violence is per definition use of force whith the intent of causing harm to another person or to an inanimate object. But it is not use of force that would be bad in itself. The aggressive intent to break makes the act violent. War is politics, it can be waged in many ways of which violence is only one. If you wage war by blowing up people, but the intent would be good, like democracy, then it is plain clumsiness for little good comes out of it.

You mean most of the modern Europe has a bloody history? This is true. Most of the history is full of blood and strife. Does it make it good now that we are better off? Were the World Wars the beating of sense into a child's head that if you cannot solve your problems peacefully then all hell breaks loose? This wasn't something you couldn't have learned without the beating, but some people are bullheaded. Even still, does it make ethnic cleansings a good thing? What kind of people need proof that war and greed for power are terrible? Those who live their lives with a shroud pulled over their eyes? There is more than enough of them, and has always been, that some think beating them to their senses from time to time would be the best thing. My opinion is that they should be educated, and beating is a poor schooling method for it does not make you love your teacher, nor the subject that is taught.

 

@Faraaz: Yes, I do. In an earlier post, I specifically put violence and the threat of violence in the same category and on the same level. Control maintained through force or the threat of force is always tenuous.

My point about the man defending his home was actually that being a pacifist doesn't mean letting people beat you up or burn your house down without resisting. It means avoiding violence whenever possible and using the least force necessary when avoiding violence isn't possible. In other words, a pacifist who is forced to defend himself against an attacker is still a pacifist. Pacifism isn't a straight jacket. That would be conscientious objection.

 

My opinion is that sometimes violence is necessary, which is a shame, but it's a fact of life. Some people cannot learn lessons through talk, and it takes violence to show them the error of their ways.

 

Just because you win doesn't mean you've shown them the error of their ways. Once, when I was in fifth grade, an older kid was bullying a lot of the younger kids at the sledding hill. He was pushing them off their sleds and even shoving their faces in the snow and not letting them get up. I tried to stop him, and since he wouldn't be reasoned with, I ended up having to fight him in order to protect one of the younger kids to whom he was being particularly cruel. He kicked my ass. Now, losing this fight didn't teach me that bullying kids was OK and winning the fight most assuredly didn't teach him anything, either. My point is that violence effects power and control. It does not change the loser's ideology. Beating (or bombing) the **** out of someone merely forces the loser to do what the winner wants. It doesn't change the loser's mind or show him the "error of his ways". It only shows the loser that he isn't strong or powerful enough to get his way.

 

You can't teach everybody, some people never learn. In my younger days, when I was a lot more immature, I had an incident with the police, I gave them much verbal abuse in a drunken stupor, and they kicked the **** of me for it. It wasn't nice at the time, but did I learn my lesson? You bet! That night taught me many things, and I look back positively on that damn good beating they gave me.

 

Sarevok, you make a dangerous assumption about violence.....that the winner will be the one who is right. That just isn't true. Not only that, but losers don't just turn over a new leaf when they are. Sure, getting your ass kicked may have taught you something, but so would a 3 day jail term and a really hefty fine. Verbal abuse is not grounds for a beating. If that's all you did, you were the victim of police brutality...not a lesson.