Savage I do believe Rouzbeh directed all of that to me, not you. I made the comparisions and implications that he objected to. Intellectualism does not stop aggression it just changes patterns of aggression. An intellect will force change based on what they believe is for the good just as hard as some ignorant person would. One uses more violence, the other will manipulate through words or technology. Education creates competition competition is aggression. It divides. If one’s way of life is destroyed does it matter wether they live or die? Not really, existance only without spirit of enjoyment or happiness is just a living death. The soul can die when change is forced.
Physical violence is not really that much different than intellectual manipulation. Both are destructive tools. Both are anything but pacifistic. One cannot judge the Kahn by today’s standards. He did what was accepted back then. His ways were not abnormal. His ways stopped alot of bloodshed and united people that were divided before. Pretty tough job considering what he had to work with. Wars today are not much different although,at least back then they did not do carpet bombings. Ghenghis with today’s techology at his disposal, I wonder what the world would be like.
Rouzbeh, I was bushhogging when a thought struck me that might make it more clear to you.
Education is geared to promote the individual not to promote society. If it was geared the other way around you would be right and we would be wrong.
I agree with everything you have explained as from an observers view. I think you’re discounting your own spot in reality/existence. It seems to me you have judged pacifism against all areas of nature except the one and only it pertains to: humanity.
What sustains evolution are many revolutions. Man is the current revolution.
In concept pacifism may be infinitely more beneficial than non-pacifism. But pacifism requires much more than non-pacifism to be sustained. It requires constituents to become aware of the whole, therefore acting as a system.
Think of pacifism as a software that has much higher system requirements than the software that would be non-pacifism. It is true that you must have higher end hardware to run it, but it comes at a great gain in functionality. And so we have progress. This is the pattern I was referring to: although effort is required, we always tend to push forward (existence/life always seems to push forward); meaning that non-pacifism that has brought life this far is in the process of giving birth to pacifism in the human race. One thing I can say with certainty is that pacifism has definitely been gaining ground and based on my beliefs it will continue to do so until it matures, at which point pacifism will give rise to a whole new revolution.
You and I are the higher end hardware that support and sustain pacifism. The root has spread, now we have only to nourish it, for when we do, the gain is abundant and manifold.
Rouzbeh was “savagely” destroyed early on in this argument but instead of surrendering when his argument was clearly bested, he instead chose to stand his ground and fight back, following his own survival instincts.
The instincts behind debate and physical combat are not so different as some may think, i might add. i love the irony of this discussion.
Ah, but you confuse pacifism with passivity. There’s a big difference.
one’s inability to act - helplessness / passivity.
refusal to act violently - pacifism.
From Gandhi’s near bloodless campaign to free India, to numerous peaceful revolutions in the 80’s culminating in the toppling of governments, I don’t think pacifism can be considered ‘the inability to defend onesself or to act aggressively in one’s own interests,’ when it’s a historical fact that it can be used to defend oneself, and to advance one’s interests greatly.
The desire to assert oneself violently all the time is, in fact, a weakness. A human being is not ‘strong’ or effective because of his physical strength. I’m sure you know that he is strong because of his mental powers.
And pacifism, viewed from this perspective, only becomes a mental stance to be assumed in the right context.
the will to nothingness, the false ideal, works because it gets inside the strongholds of the powerful and breaks them open, by denying them expression of their nature; this is will to nothingness in the service of intellectualism (and vice versa). a symboitic relationship, the will to nothingness using intellectualism as a trojan horse against the strong, intellectualism using the will to nothingness as further justification of its feminine passivity and oversocialization. each needs the other. its a relationship of mutual disguist, hate and fear.
the false ideal will never achieve its vision of success, because it itself is in the service of the will to power, of reality itself. however, in the short term it will surely destroy most of the political power structures of the strong before it gets the chance to decay into its own self-destruction. “pacifism” is just a nice friendly euphemism for the false ideal, the will to nothingness behind all so-called “political nonviolence movements” and pacifist “revolutions”.
the strong are taken over because their mind is ineffecuated; products of their societies, they have no understanding of the forces that are arrayed against them, and no understanding of how to fight back. they give in, give up before they even know theres an enemy. and by the time the enemy rears his sneering hypocritical head, its far too late.
relatively unrefined/ignorant/inefficient expressions of strength/power, destroyed by “passive” wills to nothingness in collaboration with forces of oversocialization; oversocialization itself will be the next victim, society itself, without the pillars of strength upon which it has been standing. see how the weak herd loves their crumbling world of decadence and death once modern social structures collapse, once the “revolutionary” collectivist poison, wanting for a new victim once the strong and powerful are all but gone, begins to etch and burn away at social institutions, values and ideals themselves; their beloved oversocialized liberalism will collapse, and they will love it… they will tear it to pieces…
As I see things, human actions are not rooted in some Nietzschean will-to-power schema, but in a simple ‘it works’/‘doesn’t work’ dynamic. It’s not so much platonism and Thus Spake Zarathustra as it is about realpolitik. If you bring a battle to an enemy on grounds where he is strong, you will lose. Hit him on another plane where he isn’t, and you win. (The Vietnam war’s media-induced perception of American loss)
There are some situations where pacifism will not work (against an immediate and determined occupying force, for example, Iraq and conversely, Tibet), and there are some situations where it will (as per Machiavelli, ‘old principalities’)
You also mention in the end some sort of moral-decay scenario, where the strong have somehow forgotten how to be strong, and the weak have taken over… but in this case, haven’t the tables only been turned, weakness turned into strength, strength into weakness? This has happened once before - revolutionary France. The old ‘strong,’ the divinely-blessed monarchs, has been replaced by the commonly assumed ‘weak,’ the peasantry - but in truth, they have only switched places on the table.
If a thing works, it does. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Forcing a thing to work when it doesn’t is merely like a child forcing a star peg on a circular hole. Using violent aggression when it doesn’t work is ineffective.
I honestly believe we are realizing/beginning to see aggression (non-pacifism) looses effectiveness exponentially relative to the size of population. This knowledge lessens aggression, therefor knowledge is mightier.
Hey, great times, I think I understand what you are saying? I think you view will as the opposite of non-pacifism and life as will.
Savage I do believe Rouzbeh directed all of that to me, not you. I made the comparisions and implications that he objected to. Intellectualism does not stop aggression it just changes patterns of aggression. An intellect will force change based on what they believe is for the good just as hard as some ignorant person would. One uses more violence, the other will manipulate through words or technology. Education creates competition competition is aggression. It divides. If one’s way of life is destroyed does it matter wether they live or die? Not really, existance only without spirit of enjoyment or happiness is just a living death. The soul can die when change is forced.