I must state that the collective well being of TS-TG people is not my Christian duty. I can’t painstakingly craft everything I write to ward off any conceivable stereotype or cruel assumption. If someone wishes to project my behavior or personality onto all people associated with gender variance, then that is their stupidity at work. Nonetheless, I do wish to know if I am harming any of my LGBT friends posting on here.
]]>If I am just bringing you all down, then I’d rather have it said to my face. I am not accusing anyone of anything. I’d just rather not impede the functioning of a small tight knit political movement.
Charles is a very generous and hospitable soul. I am glad for the kindness he’s shown me, but I’d rather contribute to the quality of the blog rather than detract from it.
]]>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecdsv0dOp50&feature=related
SO beautiful ( :
]]>It’s clear I’ve carelessly distorted your position again. I must offer a second apology and do better next time. I do still believe I’ve been adept at bringing up some unresolved philosophic issues within ALL lately. I am curious to see what conversations continue to develop therefrom. I still need to address Gary, Soviet, and you on several issues. Unfortunately, my mind is a bit hazy right now. I will have to eat something and rest to freshen myself up. Until then, I’d like to post something in keeping with our discussion of war and innocents:
I would suggest that any person of individualist convictions concerned with the future of the world take serious interest in RAWA. Afghanistan is a political hotspot where forces claiming to represent liberal civilization are waging a cynical irrational geopolitical game. I don’t wish to emulate the fearmongering of a Bush, but the country has served as a safe place to spread Islamist ideas. The facts of reality do not allow me to pretend RAWA is on the verge of triumphing. Nonetheless, there are many individuals on here willing to intellectually fight for liberalism in solidarity with others. If you wish to be a fighter, then I recommend RAWA. They have organizationally survived under the worst conditions imaginable. I was surprised to see myself recently followed by them on Twitter, until recalling I’d exchanged a few emails with their office in Pakistan.
P.S.
The footage in that video is NOT for the faint of heart. There are displaced Afghani children going barefoot in the cold and literally dying for lack of basic amenities. Some of them eat grass.
]]>Well, that’s fine, but my point is just that my philosophical position is neither Gandhian nor Tolstoyan. Both were opposed to any use of physical force intended to harm the target, whether the force was aggressive or defensive. I’m not.
I defended Gandhi on one particular count (the extent to which his strategies called on people to die) because I thought the criticism was unfair. Not because I agree with all of his views on the use of force.
Like I said, my own view is that force can legitimately be used in genuine self-defense, either at an individual level or as a cooperative enterpise, subject to constraints of proportionality and least-necessary-force. And subject to the constraint that the defensive
force does not dispossess, maim, or kill innocent third parties. (What about human shield cases? Well, I think in genuine human shield cases it’s not the defender but rather the aggressor is the one morally culpable for dispossessing, maiming, or killing the shield. But the conditions needed for that transfer of responsibility to be plausible are very limited, subject to especially strict constraints of proportionality, and more or less never satisfied in the kind of warfare-State collateral murder that the shield cases are so often invoked to defend. For much the same reasons that Roderick discusses in “Thinking Our Anger.”)
For what it’s worth, in cases where one armed faction (call them the Invaders) aggresses and another armed faction (call them the Retaliators) retaliates against the Invaders, if the Invaders retaliation involves collateral murder against some innocent Bystanders, then either the Bystanders themselves, or anyone who the Bystanders consent to have defend them, can legitimately shoot back at the Retaliators. (Again, supposing that the shooting back does not itself endanger innocent, um, fourth parties.) And the Retaliators, as aggressors against the Bystanders, have no right to try to defend themselves against the Bystander’s counter-attacks, any more than a burglar or a rapist has a right to try and defend himself against his would-be victim. Of course, the Retaliators have a right to defend themselves against the Invaders, but they have no right to do so in a way that massacres a bunch of people who have nothing to do with the Invaders’ crimes, and, as often as not, are among the Invaders’ primary victims. (Things may get more complicated when the people that the Bystanders consent to have defend them are in fact the original Invaders, as sometimes happens, but it doesn’t complicate things in any way for the moral illegitimacy of the Retaliators’ violence against the Bystanders.)
]]>I was just recalling the exchange you had with Aster about Ghandi’s Tolstoyian approach. You’re right to remind me of the distinction between a governmental framework and a non-governmental one. Nonetheless, I was pondering the general idea of a scenario where unrelated third parties may be killed ~ presumably this could arise in a future minarchy or anarchy. There seems to be a split in the community on how to approach a situation of collective defense. I identified what I thought were the three philosophic opinions voiced. Marja’s mention of her Christianity triggered these thoughts on my part.
]]>I’m not sure what you mean by my Gandhi posturing.
I’m not a Gandhian pacifist. I’m a pacifist
if that means being opposed categorically to all government wars; not if it means (as it did for Gandhi) being opposed to any use of physical force (or force-intended-to-harm) at all, even in individual self-defense.
I do think that Gandhi’s recommendations for nonviolent community defense are morally preferable to any form of government war, because Gandhi’s recommendations don’t involve massacreing a lot of innocent people, whereas government war always does. And I’m not impressed by complaints that Gandhi’s methods would have resulted in a lot of people dying in the defense, given that the suggested alternative killed over 160,000,000 people in the course of the 20th century.
And I also think that, while Gandhian methods are not morally obligatory, as a matter of strategy or tactics, they have often been dismissed in favor of violence without any serious consideration or any objective demonstration that violence would actually be more effectual. In general, the efficacy of violent resistance is constantly overestimated, and the efficacy of nonviolent resistance constantly underestimated, in discussions of conflict. Which I think has something to do with the romance for violence in a re-barbarizing culture and the cultural association between violence and masculine power. Both by the armed factions with the bomber planes, and by the armed factions with the body-bombs.
However, if it is actually the most effectual method of self-defense in a given situation and if it can be carried out without slaughtering a bunch of innocent third parties, then I have no problem with either individual or co-operative uses of force in defense of one’s own, or others’, person and property. The question is whether those two if‘s are actually satisfied by reality; I think government wars never have, will, or can satisfy the second if; and I think that large-scale uses of genuinely defensive force far more often fails to satisfy the first if than insurrectos and their supporters typically realize.
]]>I would refuse to participate in war – except to avoid or deescalate violence.
The direct harm is, in my opinion, much more important than the dehumanization. I’m not, for example, opposed to insults, and not consistently opposed to shoving which causes neither severe pain nor injury.
For the record, I saw this in secular terms before seeing this in religious terms. The religious expressions are beautiful and close to my heart but they skip the arguments and slip over the ambiguities.