If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
When they hit back at you, your defending yourself no matter who starts it. If you start a fight down the pub and some fella hits you, your going to try and defend youself even if it is hitting him back.
But that's not pacifism. pacifism is when some chap is beating the living shit out his girlfriend and you sit back and let it happen, but feel morally superior by telling the people who lay him out that 'violence isn't the way'
And yes, Soldiers are good everyday blokes. And they drink hard, I tell you... and have great parties. :yippe:
Soldiers, at the end of the day, do their job and do it well. Thing is in Iraq... they are trying to do someone ELSES job. That of the Police.
My ex husband was an ex paratrooper and wilfully admits that they were encouraged to go out and have fights, its seen as part and parcel of it. maybe that was just his lot, but i very much doubt it.
OK im sure some of them are nice blokes and are just doing their job guv, but thats not the side I see on a friday night walking through the town.
And soldiers are good blokes on the whole and are not encouraged to go out and cause trouble and disgrace themselves or their fellow soldiers who sign up to defend their nation and protect its citizens.
The rest of your drivel is simply rhetoric. And not very impressive rhetoric at that.
Oh yeah cos you've been in the army ain't ya :rolleyes:
My dad was in the army for 23 years, my uncle has been in it for 20. I think i might know a little something having been brought up amongst them all for like 20 years.
What me?
There is not a single definition for pacifism.
Some pacifists completely oppose any form of violence, they reject any notion of self-defence. Others accept the idea of self-defence but do not believe it extends to a community of people (a country). Then I think there are some people who call themselves biological/nuclear pacifists who oppose biological/nuclear warfare because of its indiscriminate effects. There's been others, particularly in the anti-war movement back during the Vietnam war who called themselves pacifists but had supported US involvement in WWII. Pacifism is a broad term really...
Pacifism doesn't distinguish between good and bad and through failing to stop bad (e.g. Nazis) it's promoting bad...That said a lot of pacifists are Christians who've done a bit of picking and choosing from the Bible to reach a pacifist interpretation, mixed in with a naive belief that humans don't need to fight bad in the world but God will ensure good will somehow prevail. (I guess these people are unfamiliar with what happened in Rwanda and Auschwitz...)
I've always thought really you have to be pretty immature and idealist (as well as historically and politically ignorant...and er out of touch with reality) to call yourself a pacifist. Hmm.
Yes, you.
they make an informed choice and refuse to play your game ...to the point where many people would prefer to be jailed tortured and killed ...before playing this insane game.
some people are imprisoned or killed for killing.
some people end up in the same situation for refusing to kill.
wheres the sanity?
imagine two such men sharing a cell.
Not really.
I just thought she was wrong in what she was saying. No point making sweeping generalisations about a whole group of people just cos a couple of them fight when they're pissed.
So the fact that you come from an army family isn't going to influence your view? I don't think so.
Nah not really. I only objected to her making out that everyone in the army is in it to kill people.
I'm sure there are people that are nutters that join the army, but in my experience not all are like that.
Perhaps, yeah. I have more respect really for a pacifist whose views are influenced by religious beliefs. I can respect that a lot more than someone who holds pacifist views with no real religious pretext because there's not really any secular justification for pacifism.
of course there is, there's a suck thing called ethics and refusing to be involved in violence no matter the consequences, or reufising to support the military wherever possible
I don't see any justification there...
With the exception of religious reasons relevant to some religious people there is imo no justification for say, opposing the Allied fight against Nazi Germany.
many of these women were willing to go ...and many did ...to prison for peace by peacful means.
i like to think they managed to retain their dignity all these years later.
they would rather be a slave than kill another man.
Seems like a perfectly good analogy to me...
And they'd rather than they kept their lily white consciences clean than kill to save another human.
At the end of the day pacifism is not 'I won't kill to save myself', but 'My conscience is more important than the lives of others'. Sorry, I think that is a self-centred view and I have absolutely no respect for pacifists at all, religous or not.
Most of them weren't pacifists either - they were anti-nuclear which is different.
they are obviously becoming an endangered species which i find quite alarming.
I bet they're the same as the boys on the way back from the union on a weds night. They're drunk blokes, they're all the same.
Stop acting like you're better.
Yep, when there's conscription on the cards and the only way to stop the Panzers rolling down the street is to risk getting yourself killed flying a spitfire or driving a Sherman tank the number of pacifists rockets up. Funny that :chin:
*apologies*
But I have to say it... surley it'd be "killed flying a spitfire or driving a Churchill tank"
But a very true statement, either way.