pacifism is a nice idea, but it'll get you killed
Having been raised in a culture that taught me over and over again as a kid that if you use violence in a situation the consequences will be much worse, it's no surprise that non violence is my natural response to most situations unless I overide it. Keep in mind this is a time in my life in which consequences was actually a scary word.
This hapens to us all to varying degrees, and it's all the public education system because my family, in one of the only useful things they ever did for me, sure as hell didn't advocate non violence. Now before you get your panties all twisted, I'm not about to advocate abuse or torture for sadistic pleasure or any such thing, I am merely going to say that life does require violence and some situations merit it. The idea behind apcifism is a nice one and a lofty goal, but I'm realistic about the fact that we aren't higher beings.
Every form of life requires a form of death to keep that life sustained, and I don't want to hear it from you vegitarians, you're just kingdom biased. Every form of death required to sustain life requires violence. Not brutal abusive kinda violence, just the intention to kill, because you need to eat.
I know how far removed we are that we let others do our killing for us, so we like to feel alittle high and mighty about that and make up arbitrary rules about how we shouldn't hurt each other, but it's all a delusion. there's a diference between violence and abuse, for those who aren't aware. Violence is the simple act of causing harm or damage, with no further conotation, abuse caries the distinction that the intention is purely to harm, or perhaps it isn't intentional, but that is the product behind it.
I'll side with you that you shouldn't abuse one another, or anything if yu can avoid it, but I don't think humans are any more sacred then anything else and if we can accept that we have to cause harm to survive, and we do, then sometimes we have to harm one another. Not for no reason, but no being competes for the same resources we in particular need to survive on the same level as other humans, so chances are you're going to have to hurt somebody someday.
Our big problem with this fact seems to be fear. We're afraid of violence because we're afraid of death. this may sound sort of strange, but what is wrong with death? Why do we surround it with such a feeling of dread and hatred, why not dignity? Why is the ending of life not seen as another aprt of that life, because really it is, and the nutrients of the dead body won't go to waste, they'll decompose somehow, even if it's burned, and the nutrients will enrich the earth and bring life from death again, so what's wrong with that? I know no one wants to die, but if we're really mature we can accept the things we cannot change can't we?
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