From: Camp, Christopher (CCamp@omm.com)
Date: Sat Mar 22 2003 - 04:26:04 MST
While my sigfile specifically singles out pacifists, I would say that
anybody who isn't taking personal action to fight tyranny is aiding and
abetting it by doing nothing. Pacifism is more than just an opinion or
an attitude, it is also a lack of action. In a spiritual sense, it is a
sin of omission.
====Mike, from your statements above and below, I feel that your mind is a
sin of omission. Seriously you need to give me some more evidence before I
can side with you on this one. From my view you've made a few statements
about pacifism that don't match my own definition or what I would take as
the standard definition. If you are creating a specialized definition then
that should be noted with some sort of asterisk in your "sigfile" and all
other places where you make reference to the concept.
How is pacifism a lack of action? It seems rather easy, at first glance, to
find numerous and reliable contradictions of the statement - "Pacifism is
equivalent to in-action" Is making a decision a form of in-action? Or more
broadly, can anything in existence be said to exist in a complete state of
inactivity? and on a human level could anyone say that another human mind
(except for your own:)) be absolutely and totally inactive?
Ghandi is widely seen to be a "pacifist". Would you claim that he was not a
pacifist? (Maybe he exhibited some form of passive-aggressiveness that moved
him from the pacifist camp to the instigator of violence camp?) If you do
agree that he was a pacifist would you then claim that he was in-active?
That Ghandi was aiding in tyranny?
Maybe you mean some special sort of inaction... in that case you would want
to make special note of it. In this case the asterisk would again serve you
well to explain your own special definition of the concept "action".
It may be fun to play with words but sometimes this play leads to war.
Please let me know what your line of reasoning is here. I'm, afraid of, but
curious to know the workings of a mind like yours.
Chris Camp
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Mar 22 2003 - 04:38:22 MST