TIANANMEN SQUARES, DADDY-O (pt. 2)

lola hiroshima writes:

"[...] any group willing to use armed force has demonstrated itself to be based on an illegitimate kind of power and is not deserving of respect or consideration. Force is coercion, and coercion implies a lack of agreement. And where there is no agreement there is no equality... Any society which professes to be based on equality and nevertheless uses force has betrayed its foundational principles."

Violence is bad.

Anybody'll tell ya that.

And it does make the Other into an inferior or a mere "it" upon whom to discharge force.

But still... sometimes...

I reject the idea that human equality is either the true or even the claimed foundation of civilized societies. It is only an easy one to talk about. The true virtues upon whose shoulders we stand are much more slippery and elusive. General equality before the Law is a hallmark of democratic states but this represents only one partial way in which we try construct the best social system. And which kind is best? Those which functionally deliver the maxim freedom, safety, happiness, meaningful, health, fairness, creativity, love, and intentional self-cultivation (or 'development').

The entrenched force of simplistically corrupted social systems is enormous and it demands different actions from us at different times in intelligent response. When the effect of not acting violence will be a greater violence, then it is entirely justified -- even demanded morally. The rest of the time, however, we must exercise other options.

Violence is an emergency response which is qualified both by the legitimacy with which it comprehends actual danger, distinct from the merely upsetting, and the degree to which it deploys with intelligence, comprehensive coordination & sublime sensitivity.

The fact is that almost all political violence has yet not earned the right to call itself "political." It is too often merely terrorism, vengeance or delinquency. Therefore we must become responsible political agents by ROUTING our intense reaction to the horrors of violence INTO our clear thinking on the subject of what action must be taken at any given moment.

Violence must be smarter than it has hitherto been, and that is most commonly the decision to "not act" but rather to learn, communicate and ignore unjust laws with a good conscience. A smart violence must sanely weighs its effects against the specific structures or people it attacks. It must know well and suffer the repercussions and backlash of its deeds. It must, must, must strive passionately to avoid inflicting injury and humiliation upon the innocent AND it must include, in the category "innocent," even those who have not perpetrated anything more than emotional and intellectual upset.

And it must actively work against the temptation to provide the temporary sadistic outbursts of otherwise "good and obedient folk."

The ethical imperative requires us to place the decisions of harm into the most understanding and sympathetic hands. Such hands will naturally resist this weight but they must be made to bear it.

When the decisions of destruction are not made by the best among us -- they will still be made & so the Best shall bear the guilt of deeds acclaimed by the Worst.

Our bodhisattvas and saints fail us when they turn over the most dangerous forms of resistance into the hands of those lacking intellectual and moral refine, lacking grace of character, lacking nuanced understanding or basic human sympathy, or slaved incomprehendingly to a diabolical and murderous interpretation of some ancient book.

Those with the greatest circle of compassion must become willing to be generals as well as prophets, disobeyers, renunciates & disseminators.validation principle which can be intersubjectively assessed relative to the options for action.

Violence or non-violence for what?

Obedience or disobedience for what?

The shared articulation of Core Virtues, upon which our ethical systems rest and towrads which our creative social action must orient itself, knowledge of core virtue, toward which ethics is trending, upon which social activities must be assessed, is our primary tool. In the urgent battle against corrupt systems everywhere we must share clarity upon the principles which validate, or do not validate, our efforts toward the Free and the Good world that may yet come to pass.