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| ▲ | ultimafan 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The interesting (to me) part about such a philosophy is that it seems like it can only really survive and prosper within a society where someone else is willing to pick up the burden of doing the killing for you. It seems like in nature or on its own such a mindset would be akin to being in a death cult- you're just going to get rolled over by someone else and your "tribe" won't be around long enough to have this belief "reproduce" and be passed on. But if you live in the midst of a society full of other people who are willing to kill or be killed to protect those in it beliefs like that can grow and gain followers without any risk of external challenge putting their faith to the test. Reading my comment I realize it may sound a little bit inflammatory or perhaps bloodthirsty- that's not my intention, I don't know how to word it better. Just a passing thought on this topic | | |
| ▲ | castillar76 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Note that Quakers never rejected the possibility of being killed for their beliefs, just the choice of killing others for them. Pacifism does not equate to passivism, after all: it simply means that they reject the notion of visiting violence on others. It's also important to note that pacifism has been a divisive issue for Quakers from very early times. The play 'Sword of Peace' that's performed throughout the year in Snow Camp, NC, is about Meetings in the US struggling with the question of pacifism vs. the desire to aid their nascent country during the American Revolution. It was a debate for Friends during the US Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and onwards – one of the tenets of Quakerism is the need to wrestle with those issues by listening to the 'still small voice within' rather than blindly accepting the dictates of others. For many Friends, the threat posed by British colonial rule, the Confederacy, or Nazi Germany simply outweighed the demands of their conscience not to bear arms. Friends often refer to the anecdote of William Penn asking George Fox (one of the founders of Quakerism) whether Penn should stop wearing his sword because he was now a Quaker. Fox told him, 'wear thy sword as long as thee is able' — meaning he should give it up because his conscience dictated it, not because he was a Quaker. | | |
| ▲ | ultimafan a day ago | parent [-] | | Thanks for the background! I am admittedly not very familiar with Quakers or their history. The clarification in the first part of your post helps with the context, I'll agree it's an entirely different story if it's a moral that is strived for but not strictly enforced (follow this or you're not one of us) |
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| ▲ | nine_k a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Quakerism is still a form of Christian faith. And for a Christian the life on Earth is but a small episode of existence. The point is to obtain the life eternal, the salvation. To suffer and be put to death for the refusal to reject the principles of the faith, aka martyrdom, is a known way to practically guarantee a salvation. Of course, from a game-theoretic perspective, such ideas can only persist if someone else protects the pacifists from being killed, likely by use of lethal force. In this situation the only morally acceptable choice for the pacifists is to not be afraid of death, and not demand somebody to do the dirty work for them. Which is what we see. | |
| ▲ | Barrin92 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >your "tribe" won't be around long enough to have this belief "reproduce" and be passed on. This is an atheistic understanding of the world that a Quaker obviously wouldn't share. Self-sacrifice aren't genes or memes your tribe reproduces, they're divine truths, the logos of the world so to speak that everyone will eventually be drawn into (represented by Christ as a person). You can't destroy self-sacrifice any more than you can kill beauty or empathy or gravity. You can kill every good person, but not goodness ultimately. The entire starting point of the faith is Jesus dying on the cross, which in early Rome he was mocked for[1] according to exactly this logic "what, you worship a guy who just died on a cross, how will that religion continue to exist?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito | | |
| ▲ | ultimafan 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | It is not a comment on the religious/philosophical validity of the belief as I initially understood it. Just that for a specific belief to survive, some number of members need to survive to pass it on to the next generation, which if their beliefs bar them from killing or violence requires them to rely on people who aren't. I don't think this comparison to early/mainline Christianity is entirely fair. It was murder, not "just" killing that was prohibited by their values. | | |
| ▲ | krapp 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | >Just that for a specific belief to survive, some number of members need to survive to pass it on to the next generation, which if their beliefs bar them from killing or violence requires them to rely on people who aren't. Literally every Quaker could die today and their beliefs would still survive because we can do things like write books and publish websites now. The spread of knowledge and culture isn't limited to direct person-to-person transmission, and it doesn't depend on anyone doing violence on anyone else's behalf. | | |
| ▲ | ultimafan 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | How often do you see people trying to recreate the lifestyles or belief systems of extinct cultures / societies for themselves to live by in a genuine day to day manner, and not in a academic or archeological capacity? The content of their belief system might be known and recorded in that scenario but the teaching of it as a genuine belief/truth to live by and to be passed on from generation to generation probably wouldn't be. | | |
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| ▲ | krapp 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >The interesting (to me) part about such a philosophy is that it seems like it can only really survive and prosper within a society where someone else is willing to pick up the burden of doing the killing for you. This seems to assume the "the burden of killing" is not only necessary but unavoidable, as if violence were a constant which should be equitably distributed amongst everyone. If so, I would presume the Quakers would disagree, and would be perfectly satisfied if no one bothered killing at all. And historically speaking not a lot of people have been willing to kill to protect pacifists like the Quakers who have little capital, social clout or political power. So it isn't much of a burden to begin with. | | |
| ▲ | ultimafan 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It's not a condemnation of the morals within their belief system, and not a demand that everyone should participate equally in (potential) violence that comes along with protecting a community/country. Just an observation that at any given point in human history such a philosophy could only survive long enough to be passed generation to generation if its members offloaded the burden of having to make that moral choice onto someone else ie police or military. I don't think such a belief could have ever developed and survived in a vacuum. Every group of humans with surviving beliefs in known history have had some subgroup of (or been a subgroup of) other humans willing to resort to violence to protect the whole. | | |
| ▲ | krapp 2 days ago | parent [-] | | >Just an observation that at any given point in human history such a philosophy could only survive long enough to be passed generation to generation if its members offloaded the burden of having to make that moral choice onto someone else ie police or military. People have no choice but to offload the "burden" onto the police and military, that's the entire premise of civil society and the state's monopoly on violence. Your ability to commit violence within society is already legally proscribed, and except in the case of military conscription, has never been required. >I don't think such a belief could have ever developed and survived in a vacuum. No, because it is explicitly an expression of opposition to the violence of secular society. In the absence of such violence, such a belief wouldn't be necessary. >Every group of humans with surviving beliefs in known history have had some subgroup of (or been a subgroup of) other humans willing to resort to violence to protect the whole. We're going to have to agree to disagree that the purpose of the police and military, or most equivalent groups throughout history, has ever been to "protect the whole." | | |
| ▲ | ultimafan 2 days ago | parent [-] | | You do have a choice, because the state/police/military aren't an opaque non-human monolith. They are made up of people who DID make the choice to take up that burden, for any given reason, it doesn't have to be an act of selflessness or duty or love for people or country. It just requires some subset of your population being morally at ease with that. Being able to endorse extreme pacifism long enough to have your belief turn into a large group with many followers is a privilege of being a subgroup in a society where someone else isn't bound by that particular moral outlook. That's all I meant by offloading the burden. You can oppose the violence of secular society, as you put it, while also accepting that that opposition would only ever have worked at any point in history if only a part of your population agreed with you. |
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| ▲ | teaearlgraycold 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I was raised Quaker myself. As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten a more nuanced opinion on this. I think we should have humility in a “kill or be killed” scenario. Is it so much more important that you live? But also in a theoretical scenario that tests my utilitarian side - should I kill to save the lives of many people? If so I think it’s important to acknowledge the wrongness in the killing even if it’s the lesser of two evils. Far too often people discuss lethal self defense or war with pride. If it’s something you absolutely must do you should not anticipate happiness from the action. Some Quakers actually joined the American civil war because they felt fighting slavery was more important than not killing others. So there’s a wide range of feelings on pacifism within Quakerism. | | |
| ▲ | DFHippie 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I was raised Quaker as well and still consider myself culturally Quaker, though I'm atheist and attend Meeting mostly only at weddings or funerals at this point. What I value most about Quakerism is the emphasis on absolute honesty. My father took time off college to protest the war -- which war, I'm not certain. He found himself questioning whether pacifism was truly his belief or something he was brought up with. So he enlisted to try out the other side. He didn't actually fight, but was trained as an artillery surveyor. When his superiors suggested he go to officer training school he asked for some time off to think about it, then came back three days later having decided he wanted to finish college and become a psychiatrist. He met my mom at his Quaker college, went back to Meeting, and some years later became a psychiatrist (and died shortly thereafter, not from the psychiatry). I've always thought it was cool that he tested his beliefs like that. His wider family was a bit uneasy with his choices but respected his process. | | |
| ▲ | teaearlgraycold 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yeah I’d be borderline disowned by my family if I joined anything even military adjacent. The honesty is really the most onerous aspect. I absolutely need to be honest with myself or I end up miserable. For example, if I work a job that requires me to shoulder the burden of my employers cognitive dissonance I’ll become depressed and force myself to quit. |
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| ▲ | laurent_du 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | What if they are going to kill your child? I have zero respect for this kind of conviction. | | |
| ▲ | specproc 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I have to say I'm fortunate enough never to have found myself in that situation. Is this something that happens regularly in America? I would comfortably say I completely share this conviction. I would not like to find myself in a position where that conviction was tested -- such as that you describe -- but not killing is almost universally understood to be a fundamental law of civilised society. One can defend oneself and others in a myriad of ways that do not involve murder. | | |
| ▲ | roarcher 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > One can defend oneself and others in a myriad of ways that do not involve murder. As we used to say in the military, "the enemy gets a vote, too". You may find that your non-lethal methods of self defense come up short when the enemy is equipped with a knife or gun. Or at the state level, perhaps a ballistic missile. There have been plenty of victims of those in the media recently. What non-lethal methods would you recommend they use to protect themselves? If you want your society (and by extension your belief system) to survive, there must be a segment of that society that is at least willing to engage in lethal violence, if only as a last resort. You do not get to hide behind others who are willing to do your moral dirty work and declare yourself morally superior to them. That's like a meat eater looking down on slaughterhouse workers because he bought his meat at the store (I say this as a meat eater myself). | | |
| ▲ | specproc 2 days ago | parent [-] | | My society neither shares my belief system, nor uses violence as a last resort. | | |
| ▲ | 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | akoboldfrying a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is it violence to imprison a person against their will? | | |
| ▲ | specproc a day ago | parent [-] | | Sorry, for clarity. Nor does it use violence _only_ as a last resort. It is an aggressive, violent state and this is a huge problem I have with my government. |
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| ▲ | lurk2 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > One can defend oneself and others in a myriad of ways What methods are you referring to? Pepper spray? Aiming for the leg? > that do not involve murder. By definition if one is defending oneself, one is not committing murder. | | |
| ▲ | qualeed 2 days ago | parent [-] | | >By definition if one is defending oneself, one is not committing murder. Despite the fact that I think you understood what they were saying perfectly fine, you can substitute "killing someone" (or "taking another life", etc.) for "murder" in their above sentence if it helps you. | | |
| ▲ | Den_VR 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | There’s a long standing theological distinction between murder and killing in the Bible. One I’m learning Quakers possibly disagree with. | |
| ▲ | SailorJerry 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think I see your point. However, if the original poster didn't intend to substitute the defense motive with assault, then they could have made the substitution for us. | | |
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| ▲ | andrewl 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | laurent_du: What if they are going to kill your child? I have zero respect for this kind of conviction. specproc: I have to say I'm fortunate enough never to have found myself in that situation. Is this something that happens regularly in America? We all know it's not common in any industrialized society for a parent to have to kill to protect their child's life. And asking laurent_du about the American experience may not be productive as he or she may never have been to America. Regardless, the frequency of a situation is not relevant to a discussion of what a person would or should do in that situation. | | |
| ▲ | specproc 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The American comment was admittedly flippant, but the point remains that you cannot construct morality on edge cases. Violence is abhorrent. Frequency is relevant because one can base one's life and actions on principles of nonviolence, and deal with such extreme situations in the unlikely event they ever come up. It's a dumb playground question, like would I cheat on my wife if $FAMOUS_HOTTIE came on to me. One can live one's life by not being violent, by not working in violent industries, by not owning weapons, by seeking and promoting solutions that do not involve violence in one's community and national politics. This is a morally correct life. Sure, one day, someone might try and kill my child. I hope it never happens, and I hope that situation could be resolved without anyone dying. But say, somewhere in this long tail, I killed to defend, I don't believe that would invalidate how I've lived the rest of my life. Only extremists create their principles from extreme cases. |
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| ▲ | 9x39 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Is this something that happens regularly in America? Murder and manslaughter occurs in every country. Violence is hyperlocal and can be entirely stochastic. There are simply broken humans everywhere. >One can defend oneself and others in a myriad of ways that do not involve murder. Too much fiction, not enough fighting experience. There are myriad ways in which you cannot effectively defend yourself and cannot flee in these lose-lose scenarios. There largely wouldn't be victims, if this were true. | | |
| ▲ | specproc 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The last two times I've been in a fight went exactly the same way. Dumb drunk guy swung at my face, I took it, a bunch of bystanders jumped on him and hauled him off. Pretty much end of story. I've plenty of fighting experience, the ones that have ended badly for me have been the ones where I've fought back. Obviously not the trolley problem-esque situation from the context, but my core point is that one cannot construct morality from extreme hypotheticals. | | |
| ▲ | 9x39 a day ago | parent [-] | | > my core point is that one cannot construct morality from extreme hypotheticals. Isn’t that what happens when we codify limits of behavior, which are often extreme, into laws or religious texts which then govern a population? Even if you don’t consider law as de facto defining morality, moral lessons from literature to oral tradition are often handed down as metaphor through stories of finding balance between extreme outcomes. | | |
| ▲ | specproc a day ago | parent [-] | | Yes, we take extreme behaviour, that is harmful to others, and prohibit it as a society. Where we run into trouble is where we say, well here is an example of a case where this extreme behaviour may be countenanced. There may well be such cases! If I had a gun (I don't) and someone was attacking a loved one (fortunately rarely if ever happened) with intent and ability to kill (definitely never) and the only way I could stop them because of the specific situation was to kill them (waaay down the tail now)... perhaps, I don't know how I would react in that situation. Here's where ethics becomes like programming. I could sit down and come up with a list of cases in which I felt it appropriate to kill, and code all the edge cases. This is inefficient and sorta silly, and I guess how I chose to interpret the comment that started this thread. I could come also up with a clever algorithm which balances harm done and harm prevented (or good caused) based on a range of parameters. I think this is more what GP was pointing to, a teleological ethics. But what model? What parameters? What loss function? Which libraries? My position here, at least on violence is deontological. If everyone can write their own crufty (and inevitably closed-source) solution to the problem, then bad actors can (and do) code it so they get the results they want when they need them. The result is a violent world. The cleaner, more elegant, and more ethical code simply prohibits harmful outcomes altogether. I suspect derivations from this initial simplicity in religious texts and interpretations are malicious code added in later updates. |
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| ▲ | lurk2 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The line of reasoning really only works if you are talking about yourself. If we assume all lives are of equal value (which is a big assumption but not without precedent), then killing your would-be murderer is a wash, but it does raise the question; why should you be the one to live? And the justification seems like it must be based on either 1) a belief that the transgression of attempted murder justifies self-defence, or 2) that the Self is simply more important than the Other. When a third party becomes involved you only need to rely on option 1. You are still probably acting out of “selfish” reasons in this case, however; I’d rather save my child than preserve the life of a murderer, but that is simply because my child’s life is more important to me than that of a murderer, regardless of moral justification. The questions about self-centeredness get more interesting in life boat scenarios, where you have to choose between equally innocent parties. | |
| ▲ | xg15 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I've grown really tired of the term "self defense" in the context of the wars recently. Not because the concept would be wrong or there would be no need for it - of course a state has to be able to defend its population against attacks - but because as soon as there is a situation where it applies in war, both sides seem to stretch it to absolutely unrecognizable lengths and use it to justify essentially everything in warfare. That's why I'm wary if someone makes a theoretical argument about personal self-defense that's tailor-made to justify killing. It feels too much like the same tactics in war propaganda. There are nonlethal ways of defending oneself or others, too, btw. Learn martial arts, knock them out, use a taser if you have too, then grab your kid and run. None of that requires shooting them. | | |
| ▲ | ultimafan 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | >There are nonlethal ways of defending oneself or others, too, btw. Learn martial arts, knock them out, use a taser if you have too, then grab your kid and run. None of that requires shooting them. Agree with the general sentiments of your post. A lot of pro self-defense talks online read like thinly veiled "bad ass" fan fiction where someone salivates over the idea of killing someone in a legal manner that they face no consequences for. But I don't think this last part is very realistic and possibly even very dangerous. Martial arts aren't anywhere near as effective as people make them out to be if you are not highly trained and essentially useless if the other person is armed even with a knife. They are better for training confidence/athleticism than self-defense. Tasers are frequently shrugged off by aggressors (no shortage of videos online showing this) and if you miss you just escalated the situation with no other way out. A gun is really the only thing that puts even the weakest victim on par with the strongest aggressor. But situational awareness for where you are and who is around you is 100x more important. | |
| ▲ | ViscountPenguin 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | For me, the inherent problem is that people have a right to self defence (and I'd argue to self defence by proxy of a states army), but states have no such right. A lot of the more horrific acts of war seem designed not to defend the people who happen to live in a state, but the state apparatus (or the interests of that states stakeholders) itself. | | |
| ▲ | 9x39 2 days ago | parent [-] | | States do have a right to self-defense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-defence_in_international_... What state does not? It's the individual that generally has no right to self defense, if measured by the ability to mount an effective armed self defense. In most countries, the individual is as expendable as a red blood cell is to the overall organism. They are not prevented from fighting back per se, but this natural right is severely and harshly limited. | | |
| ▲ | ViscountPenguin a day ago | parent [-] | | States may have a legal right to self defence, but considering that states are both the primary producers and enforcers of law; it's hardly surprising that they'd give themselves the right. Morally, I'd argue they have none. |
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| ▲ | 9x39 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Many of these ways are promoted by people without any experience fighting, struggling, or even being competent in exercising, in my experience. Were it so simple, police forces would simply act out Hollywood-esque movie moves. But in reality, individual officers must often resort to firearms to stop assailants, or in some countries, mass unarmed officers must swarm a single assailant. In regards to states' self-defense claims, they have every incentive to claim it as a casus belli. It's too powerful and righteous to not try to get it to 'stick', and big lies do sometimes work. That doesn't obviate there being actual cases of self-defense, it's just not something that can be taken for granted, and when information is a battlespace all its own, I guess we shouldn't be surprised. |
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| ▲ | JKCalhoun 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Clearly the one that is going to kill your child is evil and, if you are inclined to believe it, is going to hell and sinning against God. When you kill that person, you have joined them in also sinning against God — irrespective of what your reason was. I'm not taking a side here but just pointing out that Quakers have a very clear directive that goes, more or less, thou shalt not kill. (It's perhaps a bigger surprise that countless other Christian religions have all kinds of addendums that I guess allow for that one.) |
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