Why be a pacifist?

"All the others. The others who spend their lives believing that we still believe. It is our task in the world to believe things no one else takes seriously. To abandon such beliefs completely, the human race would die. This is why we are here. A tiny minority. To embody old things, old beliefs. The devil, the angels, heaven, hell. If we did not pretend to believe these things, the world would collapse. [...] We are left to believe. Fools, children. Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes. There must always be believers. Fools, idiots, those who hear voices, those who speak in tongues. We are your lunatics. We surrender our lives to make your nonbelief possible. You are sure that you are right but you don't want everyone to think as you do. There is no truth without fools. We are your fools, your madwomen, rising at dawn to pray, lighting candles, asking statues for good health, long life."

--Don DeLillo, White Noise

Why be a pacifist? When the world dismisses us as naive, ignorant, stupid, immature? Why be a pacifist, when our cry is dismissed, mocked, marginalized, and ignored? Why be a pacifist, when we turn to the liberal writers you've come to read for their insight and find some of them embracing military violence? Why be a pacifist, when there are evil people filling the world with brutality and blood and our beliefs feel utopian and ideals feel sheltered?

Because in this world, there needs to be somebody there to always preach an antiwar message to the others. There needs to be somebody there who will always be skeptical of war's aims, that will always fear war's consequences, that will always remind people of its costs. There needs to be people there to point out the horrors and atrocities of war. Somebody, even a very few, must be there to always reject the rationale for war, no matter how just or humanitarian it seems. There needs to be somebody that will reject war regardless of who calls for it. Somebody must be there to try and find other solutions (for nonviolence is not isolationist, not opposed to intervention but opposed to violent intervention). There must be somebody to claim that violence is always immoral.

If pacifists gain the power of decision making, then you can tell me how hopelessly naive and lost we are, how harmful or wrong-headed our beliefs are. But until then, while you are running things, we need to be here, rejecting violence and demanding peace.

Addendum

See Eric Stoner on "Why war on Libya is wrong" and "Is there no other way in Libya?"

"No life is worth a sandwich I don't need"

At The Atlantic (via Andrew Sullivan), James McWilliams argues why it is wrong to eat animals, no matter how they are raised:

"Say I'm stranded on an island with a pig. And say the island is stocked with an endless supply of fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts—enough to feed us both. Am I justified in killing the pig?

"The application of equal consideration would require me to consider if the suffering I would cause the pig—indeed, taking its life—was worth satisfying my own taste for pork—something that I hardly need. My answer would have to be no. The pig's sentience—its status as a non-object capable of suffering—morally trumps my desire to eat a BLT, no matter how much pleasure it gives. No life is worth a sandwich I don't need."

This is the heart of the argument that I would make against eating meat (though there are others): it is unnecessary. For most people living in a developed society, it is not necessary to eat animals to survive, or even to thrive. There is a mess of traditional, social, personal reasons people do eat meat, but if you try to pull eating meat out of this mess, and turn it into a rational, conscious, ethical decision, you have to address a question:

Is my pleasure more important than an animal's life?

If you wish to get more specific, you might ask:

Why is the pleasure of fulfilling my tastes worth more than the suffering and death of a creature that is capable of thinking, feeling, and suffering?

In my view, the only way to consider these questions and reach the conclusion that it is OK to eat animals, is to reach the conclusion that an animal's life really doesn't matter. Yet most Americans haven't actually reached that conclusion. Anybody arguing for humane treatment of farmed animals has reached the awkward conclusion that an animal is worthy of being treated humanely while it is alive, before being killed and eaten. It is a strange compromise to suggest that an animal has some inherent quality (such as the capacity to suffer) that makes it worthy of humane treatment before slaughter, yet not quite such a quality to make it worthy of not being unnecessarily slaughtered in the first place.

And many other Americans think mistreatment of certain animals is wrong, but evidently not mistreatment of other animals. I might direct your attention to public reaction to Michael Vick's involvement in dogfighting, and to Jonathan Safran Foer's argument "The Case for Eating Dogs" in Eating Animals. Most people with pets would seemingly balk at the conclusion that the suffering of a dog, or a cat, or a horse, doesn't matter, yet evidently don't much care about the suffering of cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, or fish.

Is there a willed blindness or willed rationalization in this? I think so, but it is not only on the individual justifying his/her pleasure and taste. We are socially formed, and there are cultural and traditional reasons people eat meat. Eating meat is built into many people's daily living, personal lifestyles, social customs, and family relationships (Foer addresses the role of food in family and socializing in Eating Animals). It is something held dear. If meat eaters are defensive, that defensiveness is for bigger reasons than their own pleasure.

That's why the questions I posed above aren't really that effective or convincing. It's also why the logical ethical argument McWilliams makes is necessary, but so too is the novelist's gaze at what deeper role eating has for the meaning we make in our lives.

They know the score: W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden's poem "Musee des Beaux Arts" explores, among other things, the way that suffering occurs

"While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along"

And

"That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree."

And

"how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;

[...]

and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

How do we juxtapose horrors with the everyday? How do we ourselves ignore, or hide, or diminish, or show indifference to suffering on a grand scale? The United States currently occupies two foreign countries...and how many TV shows, and movies, and video games, and sporting events, and concerts, do we have to stop us from thinking about it? When historians look back and see the United States at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for a decade or more, and see that Americans amused themselves watching celebrities compete in a dance competition, what will they think? What will they say about us? Will it be a scandal? Will they wonder how we played while we kept electing leaders that kept it all going? That could even joke about it? That it seems it will never end, that it escalates, that the horrors and the violence continue on and on and on, but we've got American Idol and Tiger Woods to think about?

Don't we, too, turn away from the boy falling from the sky, keeping our eyes on the plough? Aren't we on a ship with places to go, while on our periphery, a splash?

But I don't know. I want most of all to watch my beautiful children be beautiful. I also want to follow the Minnesota Vikings. I want to watch funny television shows, I want to read good novels, and I want reflect on God. I want to teach students how to write and I want to teach students about a poem by W.H. Auden. I want to eat hummus and I want to go for walks on spring days. I want, in short, the small and large joys that can come from a life of peace. Can I enjoy that peaceful life, when others so obviously cannot?* Is that a sin? Should I be thankful for my life of peace, while praying and striving for peace to be spread? Or is it not enough?

In short, is the insight of Auden and "the Old Masters" a judgment, or simply an observation?

They know the score: David Henry Hwang

In M. Butterfly:

"The West thinks of itself as masculine--big guns, big industry, big money--so the East is feminine--weak, delicate, poor...but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom--the feminine mystique.

Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated--because a woman can't think for herself."

I saw Hwang's M. Butterfly at the Guthrie Theater tonight: it was a superb production, and the central actors took to demanding roles with vigor. The play is one of my favorites--it's stylistically and thematically complicated and fascinating. One of the things the play explores is how a sense of (masculine) power and strength in personal affairs gets wrapped up in perception of power and strength at an international, geopolitical level.

Science and Values

On a topic relevant to an ethic of nonviolence

My first instinct on these matters is to say "Read your Dostoevsky, people." On the question of whether scientific knowledge can lead us to moral truth, start with Notes from the Underground, then try The Brothers Karamazov (along the way, you might find insights in Demons, The Adolescent, Crime and Punishment, and The Idiot). Dostoevsky was on it.

My second thought is to remember why I finally stopped eating animals. My wife forwarded me some articles regarding the mental, emotional, and social lives of animals. These articles were based on scientific research, providing scientific knowledge about animals. It was these facts about animals that finally led me to stop eating meat.

But then I remember that many people are aware of scientific facts about the mental and emotional capacity of animals, but still find little dilemma at all about eating meat. At best, science can inform our moral values (and it certainly can). Over the long movement of history, this informing of moral values might (usually in hindsight) resemble the source of moral values. But on that, I'm skeptical. There are still all sorts of irrational* sources of human values. Even when we are informed by scientific fact, we still use those irrational values to interpret how we are actually supposed to live in light of that fact.

*I don't use the word entirely negatively.

Happily, our age now has a firm grip on all truth, and our values are perfect in every way.

(reposted and revised from August 6, 2009)

In "Anachronistic Arrogance" in Religion Dispatches, Peter Laarman is critical of a tendency to dismiss the positive ideas, accomplishments, or art of historical figures because their social politics are not up to our progressive standards. I think of John Fowles in The French Lieutentant's Woman, speaking to his ages' sense of superiority over the Victorians:

"So much the better for us? Perhaps. But we are not the ones who will finally judge."

Happily, Laarman explicitly addressed the thought I had while reading his article (and often have when considering this problem of "anachronistic arrogance," as Laarman puts it):

"A little generosity and humility are called for here. I predict that the rap on this generation, and on even the most progressive among us, will end up being homo sapiens “species-ism.” And how will we feel when our good works and thoughts are dismissed because we disdained the sensibilities of whales and dolphins and horses and frogs and (yes) even that little piglet who contributed to yesterday’s breakfast?"

A further point is that those who have the greater knowledge, who should know better, have greater moral responsibility. Jonathan Safran Foer writes in Eating Animals:

"We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?"

"The Outer Limits" and Authority

Watching The Outer Limits, one frequently finds themes of fear and distrust of the government, as well as the corruption and insidiousness of authority (and those in authority). But these themes often focus on the negative power of the military, the dangers of an oppressive security state, and the potential tyranny of a secretive government.

But today's conservatives that rail against big government and government takeovers don't seem to have concerns about these issues. There is also a trend among many conservatives to trust government officials implicitly on all sorts of matters. They trust the government to know who should be tortured. They trust the government to know who should be detained indefinitely. On matters such as this, they certainly trust the government to keep them safe, and are happy to give government officials power. And do some of these same conservatives that distrust the government continue to support the government's military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan? Where was the distrust of the government when the Bush administration was selling the Iraq war?

This is not to exempt a Democratic administration from criticism on these issues: see this, this, remember this, of course we still have this, and there's this, and this. But what is striking me (while watching The Outer Limits) is the ideological disconnect in a conservative distrust of government in general with a conservative faith in the government on military and security matters.

They know the score: Robert Bolt

Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons:

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down--and you're just the man to do it--d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

I wonder: will there come a time when the Devil turns round on John Yoo? Will he turn around on Dick Cheney? Where will they hide then?

They know the score: Philip Roth

Philip Roth, "The Conversion of the Jews:"

"Mamma, don't you see--you shouldn't hit me. He shouldn't hit me. You shouldn't hit me about God, Mamma. You should never hit anybody about God--"
"Ozzie, please come down now."
"Promise me, promise me you'll never hit anybody about God."
He had asked only his mother, but for some reason everyone kneeling in the street promised he would never hit anybody about God.
Once again there was silence.

It is indeed a promise we should all make. Let us never hit anybody about God.

They already knew

Not long ago, I asked a friend what commentators of contemporary events he reads. His response: "Kafka." I begin to see his point. The only contemporary commentators worth reading today are those that point out the complete absurdity and utter insanity of it all. When a former vice president is able to boast on national television of the war crimes he's responsible for because he knows that the current administration (despite condemning torture) nor any other American body will ever, ever try to punish him for it, we probably need Kafka. When a movement develops to supplement a major political party in decrying government spending and debts, but few words from this side are spoken against the expensive wars and massive military budgets that make up a giant part of the spending and debts, we need Kafka. When an election is held which whittles all ideas down to two candidates, and the least warmongering candidate is the one that escalates one major war (and uses the Nobel Peace Prize lecture to defend the use of violent force), we need Kafka. But in all this we also need Orwell and Aristophanes, Homer and Shaw, Wilfred Owen and David Henry Hwang. They already knew the score.

Lit and War: "As if [...] Man had not hellish foes enow besides"

on peace

From John Milton's Paradise Lost:

O shame to men! Devil with devil damn'd
Firm concord holds, men only disagree
of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace: and, God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,
Wasting the earth, each other to destroy:
As if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes enow besides,
That day and night, for his destruction wait. (II. 496-505)

As if man had not hellish foes enough besides. As if enough Americans don't have health insurance, America can still spend over seven hundred billion dollars to wage wars. As if there is no poverty, there is no hunger, there is no pestilence, humans work on killing each other. As if no children suffer. As if there are no earthquakes or hurricanes to wreck havoc on communities. As if we don't each face a death no matter what. As if nature itself offers no challenge, as if there would not be enough human suffering to alleviate, as if there are no other problems to occupy our resources, our energy, our souls. As if there is nothing else to do, we have (as Thomas Hardy has it in "Channel Firing"),

All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder.

Blind to our own evil

on peace (reposted and revised from November 14, 2007)

In the last season of The Sopranos, Bobby Baccala talks about why his grandfather could not get into America through Ellis Island, and instead snuck in through Montreal. His grandfather had a police record in the old country. He was involved in anti-government activities.

After telling this story, Bobby and Carmela Soprano each agree that they should build a wall to protect the border now. Presumably to keep out immigrants and terrorists.

Bobby Baccala is a captain in a crime syndicate. His father was a hit man. His anti-government agitator grandfather snuck into America. But now they should build a wall? Now immigration is a threat? Immigration was good in the past when an anti-government agitator could sneak in and father a murderer who would father another criminal, but new immigrants must be kept out?

This is the sort of theme that we see repeatedly in The Sopranos: characters blind to their own evil. There are many, many examples of characters who not only justify their own evil deeds, but occasionally appear entirely blind to the very evil of their deeds.

It is a common affliction, of course. This blindness appears when we justify acts of violence from "our" side that we would never tolerate from another (would American advocates of torture advise other nation's to adopt policies of torture when they deem it necessary for security, or is America exceptional here?).

J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger's short story "For Esme--with Love and Squalor" is clever and haunting. The first part of the story is a rather charming encounter between a soldier and a girl, though we learn the girl has experienced the loss of war, and there are suggestions the soldier may have already experienced some of the trauma of war. The second part of the story shows the soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder, obviously debilitated by his experience of war, but saved, perhaps, by the possibility of innocent human connection.

Literature and War

At The Guardian, Charlotte Higgins discusses the resonance of The Iliad in how we understand war.

Lit and War: Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man"

on peace

The theme of Realism against Romanticism is common in Western literature, typically with Realism trumping Romanticism. Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man continues the tradition, but hardly predictably. If Shaw were a mediocre playwright, this would be a play where realists like Bluntschli and Louka confront, mock, and expose romantics like Raina and Sergius. But Shaw is a world-class playwright, so things aren't so simple.

Raina is a romantic, but from the beginning she has her doubts:

"It proves that all our ideas were real after all. [...] Our ideas of what Sergius would do. Our patriotism. Our heroic ideals. I sometimes used to doubt whether they were anything but dreams. [...] it came into my head just as he was holding me in his arms and looking into my eyes, that perhaps we only had our heroic ideas because we are so fond of reading Byron and Pushkin [...] Real life is seldom like that! [...] I doubted him: I wondered whether all his heroic qualities and his soldiership might not prove mere imagination when he went into a real battle."

Raina is encouraged by the story of Sergius' heroism because she needs to reinforce her faith against her strong doubts. She's a romantic (she wants to believe), but she's already questioning. And yes, Bluntschli does seem to set her straight, to shatter her illusions and tell her the truth about war. And yet it is precisely Raina's romanticism which largely inspires her to save Bluntschli in the first place. Bluntschli and Raina's confrontation is much more than just a Realist setting a Romantic straight.

Sergius, too, has his romantic, heroic ideals. Bluntchli the realist laughs at Sergius' cavalry charge ("We did laugh [...] Of all the fools ever let loose on a field of battle, that man must be the very maddest") and mocks his challenge to a duel ("Oh, thank you: thats a cavalry man's proposal. I'm in the artillery; and I have the choice of weapons. If I go, I shall take a machine gun."). But when we first meet him on stage, Sergius has already been disillusioned by the military establishment's reaction to his charge. Furthermore, Sergius' romantic life suggests a man that has always been in conflict with himself and his ideals. Sergius is a cad: he's engaged to Raina and uses the highest Romantic language with her, but he's also trying to seduce Louka (Raina and Sergius each put on an act for each other: I rather think if they were authentic with each other, they might actually hit it off). Sergius's seduction of Louka is hilarious: he steps back and forth from rakishly seducing of the maid and aristocratically defending the honor of the mistress. He's not a cynical hypocrite: I think he partly believes the romantic ideal even as it chafes at him and he abandons it.

Arms and the Man is not an anti-war play. Bluntschli is the hero, and he's a veteran mercenary soldier (in the artillery) that is good at and enjoys war. What the play does, however, is attempt to shatter patriotic, idealistic illusions about war. Sergius' aristocratic view of war is treated as a farce (particularly in the form of his cavalry charge of an artillery, thinking he was heroic but succeeding through luck). Bluntschli, the "chocolate cream soldier," doesn't really care who wins or loses the war. he's a "professional soldier," and while brave, he also will avoid a fight if he can, and talks about the soldier's primary desire and efforts to keep himself alive. He treats war realistically, without ideals of honor or courage or patriotism. Bluntschli tells the story of a soldier shot and burned alive rather in a matter-of-fact fashion (it is Sergius who responds "And how ridiculous! Oh, war! war! The dream of patriots and heroes! A fraud, Bluntschli. A hollow sham, like love").

In this play, Shaw does not reject a particular war or war in general. I'm not even sure he really challenges militarism or military values. But Shaw does mock ideals about heroism and warfare. Shaw won't let you leave the theater without challenging any ideas about heroism, honor, courage, or patriotism as unassailable virtues undergirding the institution of war.

Violence and Entertainment

on peace

Paul Waldman at TAPPED:

"On film, guns are plentiful, evil is pure, and violence is nearly always the answer to any problem."

Indeed: popular entertainment provides us many images of moral violence and effective violence. There is of course a great deal of art that challenges the ethics and efficacy of violence, but popular entertainment generally shows us good guys prevailing over bad guys in a fight. We in the audience, no matter how peace-loving we may be, are asked to see particular violent acts as righteous, to see particular violent acts as effective, and to root for the heroes when they perform violent acts.

I've never been convinced that violent entertainment causes individuals to commit violent acts (see Richard Rhodes' "Hollow Claims About Fantasy Violence"). But I've become more and more convinced that our popular entertainment reinforces a militaristic culture that accepts and promotes warfare as a moral, effective solution to problems.

Irrationality

on animals

"Everything is permitted"

"he solemnly announced in the discussion that there is decidedly nothing in the whole world that would make men love their fellow men; that there exists no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that if there is and has been any love on earth up to now, it has come not from natural law but solely from people's belief in their immortality. Ivan Fyodorovich added parenthetically that that is what all natural law consists of, so that were mankind's belief in its immortality to be destroyed, not only love but also any living power to continue the life of the world would at once dry up in it. Not only that, but then nothing would be immoral any longer, everything would be permitted, even anthropophagy. And even that is not all: he ended with the assertion that for every separate person, like ourselves for instance, who believes neither in God nor in his own immortality, the moral law of nature ought to change immediately into the exact opposite of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to the point of evildoing, should not only be permitted to man but should be acknowledged as the necessary, the most reasonable, and all but the noblest result of this situation."

--Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (tr. Pevear and Volokhonsky)

If I used reason alone, I would reach much the same conclusion that Ivan Karamazov reaches. If the earth is livable due to a random combination of the right matter and space, if human existence occurs because of random mutations over the course of evolution's work, then reason tells me that there is no such thing as morality. If human existence has no inherent meaning, but only the meaning we apply to it, than any morality we try to affix to human existence is arbitrary, malleable, and fleeting. Random processes that allow human existence could also destroy human existence, and there is no meaning in any of it. With no reasonable grounding for any morality, we can do whatever we want without any concern for the consequences. We can act morally, but we don't have to, and if our actions undo all earthy existence even, well, it was all random and meaningless anyway.

Rights
Using reason alone, can you explain to me why anybody--humans or animals--has any inherent "right" to anything? Intellectual and cultural traditions have given us the concept of "rights," but human traditions are often irrational (in Western tradition, it was supposedly reason that brought about belief in "unalienable" rights, but I cannot see this belief as entirely rational). Institutions grant individuals rights, but you also cannot cite these: these are legal rights, granted by an authority, and subject to change.

You also cannot cite any metaphysical concept, such as "inherent value," "intrinsic value," "dignity," or "soul." These are qualities we believe individuals may hold, but they are not based on reason. Empirical study and rational argument will, I think, fail to show convincing evidence of the "inherent value" of any living human or animal.

I do not believe that the ideas of "human rights" or "animal rights" are based strictly on reason.

Rational Consequences
I don't believe that "everything is permitted." I also believe humans and animals are imbued with inherent value. But I recognize that these beliefs are not based on reason alone (in fact my beliefs have been informed by religion). Using my rational faculties, however, I could reach the conclusion that everything is permitted, and I would struggle to find a convincing rational argument for inherent rights. I do not, then, believe that any morality, including non-violence for humans and animals, is based strictly on reason. I don't think animal advocates can be confident they've reached a position based on reason alone.

I do not write this to deny the validity of animal rights (exploitation of animals is hardly based on solid reason, either). But I do deny that reason alone will guide anybody to an animal rights position. I don't think anybody can rely on the hope that eventually most people will rationally accept that eating animals is wrong. However, reason combined with other human values may lead one to accept the animal rights position.

I think animal rights may be based on "rational consequences." The rational consequence of animal sentience is that some of our existing human values (the concept of "rights," the prohibition against physically harming the innocent or vulnerable, etc.) would be applied to animals, also. When we learn more about animals' experience (their intellect, emotions, social lives, capacity to suffer, etc.), we might reach the conclusion that those same ethical considerations we offer to other humans would justly be offered to animals.

Reason alone did not lead me to an ethic of non-violence. However, the rational consequence of my knowledge of animals means that I must apply this ethic of non-violence to animals as well.

Revenge and Violence

on peace

In the New York Times, Stanley Fish discusses revenge fantasy film:

"The formula’s popularity stems from the permission it gives viewers to experience the rush violence provides without feeling guilty about it. [...] Once the atrocity has occurred, the hero acquires an unquestioned justification for whatever he or she then does; and as the hero’s proxy, the audience enjoys the same justification for vicariously participating in murder, mayhem and mutilation."

Revenge fantasies do not just provide images of moral violence for audiences. They also provide images of effective violence. Again and again in film, we see violence working to solve problems; in film, violence often works to save the day, to eliminate evil. But that's our fiction. In reality, violence begets violence, and rarely offers a clean story of good overcoming evil. We don't have an end of the film--the consequences of violent acts, however justified they appear in the short-term to the party carrying them out, usually linger on for a long, long time.

Two notes on the subject (unrelated to each other). First, the belief that Christianity forbids any sort of violence is a minority position within Christianity, but that Christ forbids revenge is, I think, orthodox and uncontroversial Christian belief. When Jesus preaches forgiveness of enemies, revenge is not an option. Second, William Shakespeare's Hamlet may be the most revered work of literature in the English speaking world, and this play can easily be read as a deconstruction of the revenge fantasy. To the very end, the play makes ambiguous the justice and efficacy of revenge.

Evil and Violence

on peace

"...social evil cannot be resolved by violence. Whatever our theory of evil we know that in practice it lies in the heart of man. It is not something external to him which can be struck and smashed or carted away, or which can be destroyed by an atom bomb. The waging of war only aggravates and spreads the trouble, and the Christian must turn from this to the far more difficult and unpopular task of attacking evil at its root. The only way to end war is to cease to fight, for the devil cannot be driven out by Beelzebub."

-- from "Peace is the Will of God," by Historic Peace Churches and International Fellowship of Reconciliation Committee, Geneva, Switzerland, October 1953.

In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo, I believe, identifies the dual strains of Christianity. There is Javert, who believes in the essentialism of criminality. Once a person reveals himself/herself to be a criminal, then he/she is always a criminal, and so the focus is on sin, judgment, and punishment. And then there is Valjean, who shows a story of change, redemption, and human dignity. Javert's worldview is Manichean: there are the pure good and the pure evil, and it is the duty of the pure good to find and punish the pure evil. Valjean's story reflects more orthodox Christian belief: all humans beings are imbued with inherent dignity, are capable of spiritual redemption, and are worthy of forgiveness.

So when in "Obama's Christian Realism," David Brooks muses on the nature of evil in all humanity, I reach different conclusions than he does. I don't reach the conclusion that evil is out there in the world, making war "necessary." I reflect instead on the potential goodness of an enemy, and that war with the evil in a nation inevitably becomes a war against the goodness in that nation, too (civilian casualties, for example). I reflect on our own side's capacity for evil (something Brooks acknowledges without reaching the same conclusions), which makes me question our side's motives for war, our side's ability to wage it "justly," and our side's abilities to achieve the supposedly noble ends that undergird support for the war.

In the same column, Brooks simplifies, distorts, and straw-mans the views of liberal war opponents:

"But after Vietnam, most liberals moved on. It became unfashionable to talk about evil. Some liberals came to believe in the inherent goodness of man and the limitless possibilities of negotiation."

Far from trumpeting the "inherent goodness of man," many anti-war liberals cite our own side's capacity for evil, and reflect on the ethical and practical problem of using evil means to achieve what might otherwise be a noble end. And I know very few liberals who believe the possibilities of negotiation are "limitless;" rather, war opponents often believe the constructive possibilities and potential effectiveness of negotiation to be far preferable to the costly, destructive, deadly possibilities of war. This is a typical gloss/smear: the war proponent labels the war opponent as the naive idealist. I cite again John Howard Yoder, who in Nevertheless criticizes the "irrational leap of faith" required for the rhetoric that "by supporting a puppet government, we are enabling democracy to grow." Yoder goes on:

"There is no more utopian institution than an idealistic war. [...] War is utopian both in the promises it makes for the future and in the black-and-white way of thinking about the enemy, which it assumes."

Inherent to the argument of evil as a justification for American wars is this: America is good and the evil is out there, so America is justified in fighting the wars America chooses to fight. Evil exists, but America can never be evil, and so America may wage wars against that which America deems evil.

The very fact that "evil" exists is not itself justification for invading a country, for occupying a country, or for bombing a country. Given the death, destruction, and waste of war, including horrors inflicted on the innocent, I would say that war itself is evil.

Reading and Ethics

on peace and on animals (adapted and expanded from material posted May 20, 2008, and February 8, 2009)

The power of literature is largely in imagination. Reading allows me to escape myself, to experience the world for someone, somewhere, somewhen else. The stories we read are largely imagined by the authors, and re-imagined by the readers. Reading takes us away from our own narrow experiences and into another experience.

But when I read, I do not set myself aside. When I read depictions of violence, I become hyper-aware: what is happening, why it is happening, how it is being represented, etc. I am still a pacifist while I read a book like Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and so the violence of his book reaches me in a particular way. My encounter with the book (what I bring to the book and what I take from the book) is greatly affected by my pre-existing pacifism.

In The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri describes the food characters prepare and eat quite frequently and in specific detail. No matter what I do, I cannot read such descriptions of food without thinking as a vegetarian. In my daily life, I must be consciously aware of all the food I ever eat, and this heightened awareness of food is hard to set aside when I turn to a book. When fictional, non-existent characters in a book eat meat, or kill animals, I become self-conscious, and I bring something different to the reading than a meat-eater does.

Embracing ethics of pacifism and vegetarianism are transformative. For me, they change not only the way I behave but the way I think. And these ethics also tranform my encounters with art. An anti-war poem must speak to me in a slightly different way than it speaks to a non-pacifist, and perhaps a painting of an animal speaks something different to me than to a meat-eater. This is not to say I approach art in an overly moralistic way, or that every encounter with art demands ethical reflection from me. I am merely saying that I am still me when I read, and that the ideas that change the way I live and think also change the way I read (if just slightly).