Musings

Pacifism: A Brief Return



I've been feeling bad today about the infantile violence at the heart of my rant about Ann Coulter. Yes, she's a stupid, ignorant, freakish-looking bitch. She is. But that's no reason for me to go calling for resolute kicks-to-asses now, is it?

I am a self-professed pacifist.
I am a wannabe Buddhist--by which I mean I like what I know about Buddhism, I subscribe to the right magazines, and I sometimes try to meditate but still can't bring myself to give up sushi.
In any case, I shouldn't be advocating violence of any kind.

Often, when I tell students that I'm a pacifist, the more conservative factions often try to bait me into that "necessary violence" line of thinking. "Oh sure, Professor Whining Stranger," they announce. "We're for non-violence too, but what if somebody attacks us, then it's necessary, and then we have to fight back harder, to prevent chaos... [insert various crude rhetorical moves here] ...and so that's why the American military must command the insanely huge budget it does, even though that money could go to public education and health care."

But does the military budget need to be so grotesquely big?
Do we need guns at all?

Indulge an idealist for a second, will you?

Most people I meet, if posed with this question, "Do you think you ever want to bash someone in the face? For real. Just wind up and punch them in the face?" would respond with an aghast, you've-challenged-my-status-as-a-rational-being, "Of course not!" I'm sure that if I took a survey of most adults in the world and said, "Do you ever feel the need to take out a gun and shoot someone and watch them bleed?" the percentage of respondents who reply in the negative would be in the high-90s. Those that answer in the affirmative, of course, are either just fucking with me or in need of a serious time-out.

So.
Since most rational people don't really want to do physical harm to others, why don't we all just make a pact?

I know I can sign a document--and have it notarized!--that announces that I will never commit an act of physical violence on another human being. So why don't we all do that? If each of us were to focus on pledging non-violence and channeled all our determination toward that goal then we could start channeling public funds back into health care and education, couldn't we?

Now, I can already hear the cynical snorting from here. My opponents' likely response: "Oh sure, I'll agree to do that and then some guy will punch me and steal my wallet and so [insert crude rhetorical moves here] that's why the American military budget needs to be so high." Well, I'm not asking you to worry about other guys. I'm asking you only to worry about and to control yourself, since that's the only person you ever really have any dominion over anyway.

And really, much of what passes for acceptable behavior in North America turns on leaps of faith anyway, right? Or is it rational to believe that some guy who lived 2000 years ago was a) the son of God; b) got nailed to a stick just to save your sinful self; and c) rose from the dead to seal the deal at the end of one wild weekend? Is it really reasonable to think that you have any tangible affinity, living as you do in Nebraska, with some other bloke out in West Virginia, merely because you both have homes within a geography bounded by an invisible national border?

And, finally, is it really so crazy to ask adults to sign a pact calling for non-violence, given that the Right (my perennial enemies) seem to find it perfectly reasonable to ask teenagers to sign pacts as the only true way to combat STDs and unwanted pregnancies? Hrm.

Anyway, in the quiet of this night, with the face of a fallen terrorist spread triumphantly all over every news report I see, a world of self-conscious people who commit themselves to peaceful activity and a personally willed cessation of violence is certainly pretty to think about.