>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.

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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.

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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.