A question inspired by another post:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If we presume that a social good and a social evil can be defined enough that violence v. non-violence is a valid question, I'd like to propose a simple question:

Who is the arbiter of good and evil? Is it religion, ethics, utilitarianism, ideology, might makes right or what?

Effectively....given the amount of diversity in opinion in this community, which includes paranoid conspiracy theorists like Sophia_Sadek and Hunterkirk, communists like Gillen, ultra-reactionaries like yours truly, and a bevy of more "regular" political Left-Right viewpoints, who among Men is best-qualified to judge all? Or is Hobbes right?

How can one be objective enough to decide this on the scale of a modern-day state, even the anarchistic messes that are most of Africa, let alone the Second or First Worlds?

Post referenced linked here: http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/182264.html

Comments

A future of (non) violence

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I think a generally sound arbiter would be violence itself. Anyone who seeks to impose their will upon another through violence — is (acting as if) evil. In other words, except in self-defence, might makes wrong.

How can one be objective enough to decide this on the scale of a modern-day state, even the anarchistic messes that are most of Africa, let alone the Second or First Worlds?

That's not really the question. Since there is no power (country, corporation, gang of scantily-clad superheroes, whatever) that I would trust to actually solve those problems without first making them worse, let's take the option off the table.

Let he or she who does not initiate violence cast the second stone.

Re: A future of (non) violence

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except there's not a country in the world didn't get where it is today by violence. The USA is one example, but even if we take states like China into account, the modern Chinese states were born of war. There really is no state that has risen to power in the absence of violence, which in my view does appear to state that in this treacherous world 'tis might with a right all its own.

Re: A future of (non) violence

[dwer.livejournal.com]

what about that group of artists with the commune on that Island that one guy keeps telling us about, even though we told him to take a hike? :P

Re: A future of (non) violence

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So long as no squid appears in New York, those islanders won't matter...;P

Re: A future of (non) violence

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Nice.

Re: A future of (non) violence

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Essentially you're saying, "If it was good enough for my daddy, and it was good enough for his daddy before him, it's good enough for me!"

Arguments like that have also been used to defend such traditional ways of life as slavery, the subjugation of women and the denial of the right to vote to any but property-holding white males — to name only a very few traditions we've decided are (a) wrong and (b) don't make sense any more.

Re: A future of (non) violence

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, I'm saying no such thing. That violence is an effective way does not make it the best way, even at its best violence scars the world in ways other ways do more insidiously. Half the world adheres to two mutations of the tribal religion of the Israelites because the two mutations, Christianity and Islam, were very efficient at spreading by the sword. We live in an Abrahamic world because the sons of Abraham chose to ape his wars with Chedorlaomer and not his pleas for the Sodomites.

A world where might makes right does not offer comfort, but it is the world of human beings of history. Non-violence would be preferable, but look at the chimpanzees. They are different from us by one of our chromosomes being formed from two of theirs....and they are among the most cruel and violent of all the animals. If the chimps of Africa cannot create non-violence when all they have is spears of wood and fangs and hands and feet, how are we to erase 6,000 years of memetic cultural evolution shaped by the aftereffects of conquest and violence overnight?