Pacifism
June 10, 2022•363 words
Pacifism, like my stance on virtue signalling, depends on one's philosophical system. If one believes that every person has enough intellect to control themself and their emotions like anger, as an optimist would, then it is reasonable to conclude that pacifism is a viable dream. However, the pessimist will believe that mankind still resorts to many primal instincts and prioritizes emotion. Hence intellectual discourse and compromise would be an option. Seeing as my philosophy posits that there is varying intellect vis-à-vis free-will [1] and there are so many humans, I find it likely that there is enough variation that pacifism won't be viable enough of a belief in our current state. However, I do believe that pacifism can eventually be mostly achieved (assuming we don't die out first) as mankind is capable of growth [1] but the full ideal, never (see Nirvana fallacy).
The idea of pacifism relies on the elimination of conflict, which is clearly impossible due to varying free-will [1], or the arrival at a peaceful resolution. Since there is only the latter case, it must be so that the other side is willing to agree to a resolution. This requires intelligence (physically attacking is an easy choice because it is the physical choice while evaluating the resolution's proposition and context demands intelligence). Admittedly, this ability to do pacifism could be on a spectrum, therefore implying that it is impossible to achieve full pacifism as it would demand full intelligence. Hence "mostly"¹.
I believe the current best solution is to attempt peace, but when they simply won't agree to any reasonable conditions, then I believe it is justified to engage in violence to stop them. Furthermore, the principle of operant conditioning being physical in nature means that as intelligence decreases, the more effective it will be. Thus physical conflict could be justified in that it engages the attacker in operant conditioning with a positive punishment to decrease physically-conflictive behavior, helping enact pacifism.
¹I actually began this post believing full pacifism to be possible, but in making this I realized that I used bad logic and didn't realize a spectrum could exist. Another example of a benefit to blogging ig.