Non-Violence
This posting deals with my uncertainties, over many years, about pacifism. Pacifism was a pressing issue during the Vietnam-War era, for me and many of my friends (although I was a Canadian citizen, I was living in the US from 1964, and subject to the draft from 1968). If I could have demonstrated that I had a spiritual, religious commitment to non-violence, I might have been deferred from the draft. I wasn’t sure I could make that claim. As it happened, I was deferred for a different reason, a technicality really, so I never had to resolve the question. But the question has remained important to me, even after all these decades. This essay is an attempt to bring it to a conclusion. I should be clear what I think the pacifist position means. It does not mean passivity. I have seen articles claiming that pacifists simply refuse to engage in violence and are therefore willing to let evil, oppressive regimes dominate. Apparently they think that whatever evil those regimes would impose...