A friend and I just talked on the telephone. She is a strong pacifist: I think her actions help bad guys.
Over the past 5000 years certainly, and most likely for much longer, many people have had a choice of
It is not good people who force this choice; it is bad people. To think of oneself — whom I am going to suppose is good — is arrogant. It is realistic to think of distant others.
My friend says that she can only control what she herself does; and that any action to hurt others is wrong.
I pointed out that over the 60 years, my civilian relatives have been attacked by the Germans, the British, the Americans, and the Iraqis. They personally were never targets; they were bystanders.
Because of their experiences, I much prefer that bad guys use accurate weapons rather than weapons that, as a side effect, kill bystanders entirely accidentally. If I remember rightly, in World War II, half of all allied bombs missed their targets by 1500 meters (5000 feet). Axis bombs also tended to miss. Consequently, both sides decided that bombing cities and killing civilians was acceptable, because that was all that was possible.
In 1948, various American admirals argued against the United States Navy gaining the ability to kill many civilians while also destroying military targets. (This is called the `revolt of the admirals'.) The Truman administration removed these admirals from power, arguing that nothing else was feasible. Over the next couple of decades, the US Navy adopted civilian killing weapons in submarines. (My sister's husband sailed in such `boats'.)
War is, above all, a practical matter. The laws or `guidelines' for war are based, at least in part, on what is considered reasonably possible.
My friend's argument is that she can only affect what she herself does. She cannot guarantee any effect on others. Hence, what she herself does is what counts.
On the other hand, I remembered the less of 1940, which is that Germans, in a dictatorship, were able to stop the killing of World War I German veterans who were in hospitals. The killings were too much for enough people. (Of course, they did not mind whether people defined as their enemies were killed, such as Gypsies, Jews, and the like; and genocide took place. My point is that enough people were concerned about those for whom they cared and prevented their killing.)
Moreover, I remember my shock at learning that slavery 1 was more widespread than I had thought. Slavery occurs when bad guys win a war, kill those who they fear might continue to fight them, and enslave those willing to live rather than die. (The slave holders gain stronger control when they put their living victims through a `social death' and force them to become `reborn' in the clan of the holders.)
So I thought to myself: from the point of view of a `good' society, someone who does not help defend it is, in a zero-sum situation, helping those who would defeat it. Now, obviously, zero-sum situations are bad and best avoided. Likewise, it is dangerous to allow those who have considerable power to define a situation as `black and white' since people like to think within a `container' metaphor. One of the four ways people tend to perceive and think is whether you belong to one or other category. It is most simple.
Nonetheless, that mode became commonplace because zero-sum situations occur often enough. If there were no other people whose actions reduce your available choices, then that mode of thinking would be superseded. (People who live and thrivein civilized societies generally do not suffer such limitations. That is a value of civilization.)
As far as I can see, my friend is not thinking enough of her community. It is hard to say this — she has helped it a great deal by the kind of life she has lived as a nurse — but I do think the more general situation, which this is, is also necessary, even if it is much more dubious, complex, and doubtful.
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