What would it take to get a pacifist to pick up a gun? I guess
before we try to answer that question I should begin by saying what I
think a pacifist is.
According to
CollinsDictionary, pacifism is: (1) the belief that violence of any kind
is unjustifiable and that one should not participate in war, and (2)
the belief that international disputes can be settled by arbitration
rather than war.
The second definition seems rather narrow to me, so I'm
going to stick with the first one. I'm also going to limit this to
violence between people. Violence towards animals is a whole subject
of its own, and I'm not going there today.
Some of my readers might think of themselves as pacifists, and
others might be nothing of the sort, so hopefully that will bring a
whole spectrum of views to the table.
So what we're talking about here is this. If someone believes that
violence of any kind towards other people is unjustified, what would
it take to make them pick up a gun and use it against somebody else?
That's a tough question to answer, so I'm going to begin by posing
a different question. If the life of somebody you love were
threatened, how far would you go to defend them? This is the question
faced by Dominic in
An Accident of Birth, when Baron Craig Drake deliberately threatens
Francesca with a fate worse than death. What should Dominic, a
dyed-in-the-wool pacifist, do? Dominic is many things, but he is not
a coward, yet he firmly believes he should not resort to violence.
So what should a pacifist do in that situation? Obviously they
would seek out every non-violent means at their disposal to save
their loved one, but how about if I pose a more specific problem, and
we'll see what we can do with it.
Suppose you're asleep in the depths of night, and you're woken by
the sound of an intruder. Your loved one is right there, vulnerable
to whoever has just broken in, and there's no way out without going
past where the intruder is.
There are several things you don't know about the intruder. Are
they armed? Are they willing to kill? Will they kill without
hesitation, or would they negotiate? Will they find you in the next
ten seconds or ten minutes? You simply don't know. Will you leave it
to chance, and hope they won't respond to your presence by killing
you and your loved one? Or will you act first, quickly, and take
chance out of the equation? Hit before they know you're there? Kill
first?
Plenty of people would say that of course you should kill first
and not give the intruder the benefit of the doubt. But for some
others it's a dilemma. Even though the stakes are high, it's still
tempting to try to find another way out of the situation. But if
you've only got seconds to think about it, perhaps a more visceral
response might be inevitable. Is there a real alternative?
Perhaps then the dyed-in-the-wool pacifist might respond with
violence?