For everyone who says something like that, i try to remind them of this little things called WWII
I’m not against violence as a solution. It just shouldn’t be the first solution you come up with, or the second… Or the third.
Violence as a solution is a last resort.
Can’t discuss a fascist away, but you can get rid of him by violent means. Violence is sometimes morally acceptable if not outright required even.
Who has the moral authority to decide when or when not to use violence?
Usually whoever has the most accumulated violence. History is written…
How about this:
Violence is never a good solution but a necessary one and one any functioning government will prevent its populous from using against themselves or else they would no longer function as a a government so the best we can ask for is a government that does the least harm and considering we have had a longer span of peace than any preceding civilisation then we can conclude a violent uprising would cause more harm than good so we should except the status quo given it’s net benefit to the collective, however there will inevitably be those who society is less beneficial too so much so that a revolution would be beneficial but the individual cannot rule the collective because that would be a dictator and no stable society could exist when one man has grievances against it can dismantle it so we must always weigh the the against the benefits heavily before considering any sort of rebellion while simultaneously keeping in mind the overwhelming likelihood that it will outright fail given the powerful by definition have more power than the weak and include the resulting loss in our calculation.
What do you think? To wordy or will it catch on?
I found some of these on the floor, I think you dropped them: ,.,.,.,.,.,.,
The equalizer is Collective Power of all the people uniting in-person and online
A government is a collection of people working together to maintain power.
It does not include everyone because they simply do not need everyone, given the trillions of dollars they have they could easily afford to pay for as many people as they need if that was the most efficient use of their money, given they can increase to the size of the population under one unified cause we can assume a fragmented group of people with there own agendas would be a less effective force than the majority of stable government’s
I’m gonna need this in meme form with no more than 15 words
WAR BAD.
We failed to make Russia bend the knee with soft power.
Rearming Europe, after decades of trying without, is necessary because there’s an ongoing war in Europe.
We overestimated our influence without an army, and that’s even with the army of turkey and USA on our side in case we’d get attacked.
Violence is necessary, just unwanted. If someone hits my wife then I’m not going to use my words to solve the situation.
It’s complicated because if you give everyone a gun, then there’s a shooting happening every day. Give nobody a gun, then we don’t know how to defend our countries.
Pros and cons to be outweighed, depending on the larger context.
violence is never the solution, but it works in a pinch for sure : )
Of course the solution to peace is not having war, but if someone attacks you, don’t just stand there and do nothing.
The threat of violence is always there.
Yep. Violence isn’t the solution, it’s the last resort.
There’s a reason why we’re taught about MLK instead of Malcolm X.
They’re well aware of how little nonviolent protest accomplishes in the end.
A very good example of an exception, no doubt. Shall we tally up the number of times it took violence to drive out the British, though?
Complete the following sentence:
“Live by the sword, ___ __ ___ _____.”
fish on my couch
shit on my chest
Anyone who thinks violence has never solved anything should open a history book
The credible threat of violence is often much more powerful than violence itself. See unions, the civil rights movement, mutually assured destruction.
Society is very often an implicit contract of “do what we want or else.” Without the “or else”, the powerful have no reason to listen.
violence doesn’t “solve”, it is about eliminating the problem.
It’s their failure to solve or even recognize and formulate the problem that pushes some people to use violence.
Honestly, yes. Dunno why you were sittin’ at a healthy karmic 0 because that is literally what violence is for. It doesn’t solve a problem, it staunches it for the current government. Violence isn’t a solution even when people think it is; it’s a fascist band-aid
A more accurate morality would be “Violence should never be the first course of action”.
Violence should never be employed
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against someone who is not harming you or infringing on your rights
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against a party genuinely willing to negotiate
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when your use of violence will seem excessive to onlookers such that they will turn against you
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Violence is often the solution, but it shouldn’t be the first solution we try.
It’s stupid to assert that law enforcement should be completely unarmed. There’s absolutely legitimate situations where it’s in the public’s best interest. Now, the situations that do require it aren’t super common, but they exist.
In the US at least, law enforcement is overarmed. We’d cut back on a lot of unnecessary violence if, say, officers kept their guns in the trunk rather than on their hip.
Or you could do what Finland does, and make an independent investigation every time the police shoots someone.
Police Union: How could you trample on the sacred rights of the police to escalate any situation into multiple fatalities?
That’s definitely fair
So, a such a situation would require Special Weapons? And maybe Tactics?
SWAT teams exist ostensibly for this reason, but arming everyone works too.
That works a lot better in countries where everyone and their mom doesn’t have a gun. Though good god we don’t train cops enough to justify giving them a gun
Self defense is a thing. I notice most these comics that end up on my front page pretty much suck. Oh a .ml post. I see. Is there a non .ml version of “comics” somewhere?
Violence is almost always the solution. Civilization is an effort to find a better solution. But people who reject the systems we’ve built up seem to forget why we built then.
Civilisation is about pooling resources to make a consistent supply of beer and food. It makes no clear preference between violence and peace. Crops are easier to grow during peace, while war affords more land to grow crops. So the optimum strategy for a civilisation is to alternate between periods of peace and war.
Yeah, to uphold the status quo of the few owning everything and controlling everyone
That’s not why we built them. They got hijacked for that, and they need fixing.
They were built so we had an alternative to killing each other over disputes.
That’s not why we built them
Isn’t it though? The police were created to hunting down escaped slaves. The government was set up to keep the wealthy land owners in charge (only they could vote afterall). Schools were created to meet the needs of growing industry.
I’m struggling to find anything that was built specifically for the people and not the rich.
The USA didn’t invent the concept of police or government.
The first police were appointed to investigate and punish minor crimes commited agains civilians.
Maybe. I’m pretty sure the context is US capitalist society though.
The government gives the working class a way to have their grievances heard and addressed in a way other than starting a rebellion.
Yes, it serves to keep the powerful in power, but that’s irrelevant to my point. It also serves to make sure the little people get taken care of well enough that we don’t kill the ones in power.
For a more specific example, see unions. The alternative to unions is plant managers getting killed.
I think you just made my point. The rich designed a system where they trade complacency for the illusion of control. And they didn’t have to give up any meaningful amount of power.
And you are missing mine.
So help me see it?
Pretty sure feudalism got started because the raiders noticed that if they didn’t steal and burn everything and mostly prevented others from doing that, then they could extract more from the peasants in the long run. Nothing got hijacked, “civilization” structured around the threat of violence was exploitative from the start.
Nothing got hijacked, “civilization” structured around the threat of violence was exploitative from the start.
It’s not a threat of violence, it’s a preferable alternative to violence, for both sides. Revolts aren’t great for those in power, but they are catastrophic for a significant number of those not in power.
Then why are most “uncivilized” societies have more egalitarian and non-violent than “civilized” ones?
And why has every civilization since the dawn of them been about using violence to uphold the status quo?
The institutions aren’t broken. They’re working as designed.
Then why are most “uncivilized” societies have more egalitarian and non-violent than “civilized” ones?
Uncivilized societies engage in violence much more frequently than civilized societies.
That’s the case for individual/personal violence, and also for institutional/mass violence.
Civilized societies are better than uncivilized society in anything they do collectively, be it science, production, or murder.
Since civilized societies are so much better at murdering, the few cases where mass murder does happen are much more significant.
However, such cases remain an exception, as opposed to what is the case for uncivilized societies.
Uncivilized societies may be harmless, but they are certainly not peaceful.
Civilized societies are more powerful, but they yield their power much more carefully.
I’ve done a bit of googling and the evidence I’m seeing doesn’t agree with you on several points.
For example, a war in NZ between Māori tribes killed roughly 10% of the population, while the US civil war only killed 0.5%
And this report from UNESCO agrees with my assertion that organized violence appeared not long after agriculture as a way to reinforce the status quo.
Did you forget your stance was that less complex social structures were supposedly more peaceful? You cited the Maori tribes killing 20x more of their own than one of the largest wars in North America.
Organized violence between groups has been observed in fossil records, such as discussed in THIS PAPER, and it has also been observed in warring tribes of Chimpanzees fighting for territory. The foremost theory about the extinction of the Neanderthals is that Homo Sapiens appeared and wiped them out.
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGERY OF WILDLIFE
Gombe Chimpanzee War
You claimed that modern humans are more successful at killing. Which is true from a sheer numbers perspective. But when two tribes of 50 people lose 10 people total that’s a lot more per capita than the numbers we kill now.
As for the organized violence observed in fossil records, YouTube actually recommended me a video not long after you posted this comment about just that. Turns out it happened after the Neolithic Agricultural revolution, just like the link I posted from UNESCO said. Apparently about 95% of males were killed in a short period of time throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia once they transitioned to sedentary, agricultural lifestyles. Prior to that there was no real violence in the fossil record.
Which also reinforces my position that less organized, less ‘advanced’ societies aren’t as violent.
As for the chimps, they’re starting a war with gorillas now, and scientists think it’s over competition for previously abundant resources. Both species are confined to small parks, and they’re competing for food, and now things are getting tense.
So the conclusion we can gather is that when there are concentrated or restricted resources, apes will become violent. But prior to the invention of agriculture, humans lived in a world of abundance and were less violent. And as we consumed more resources, the other ape species started fighting each other. And since we don’t see mass graves of neanderthals I highly doubt we killed them all.
Also, we are more closely related to bonobos so chimpanzee behavior, especially that of chimpanzees who are forced into small areas due to human encroachment, doesn’t seem a good point of reference.
(Sorry I didn’t reply earlier, I was on mobile and Voyager’s interface is terrible for long replies. I really wish they’d re-work their link formatting.)
(Also based on the language of your responses you’re not going to ever agree with me so I’m not going to bother reading your reply, and I’m just replying for anyone else who reads it so they have a full picture.)
Oh, bullshit.
First panel: I agree with the aspiration to avoid violence but allow for circumstances like self-defense or defense of a vulnerable party.
Second panel: I do agree we shouldn’t give them weapons, at the least not lethal weapons, certainly not military-grade weapons.
Third panel: If you want to be capable of preserving your national sovereignty, having a military is required, therefore justified in that context.
Fourth panel: While the two previous questions logically follow from the position stated in the first panel, the last question makes no sense and is a complete non-sequitur from the stated position. [i.e. “Violence is never a solution” --> “oh, so do you mean it’s a solution in this one case? !? !” <–non-sequitur]
complete non-sequitur
I don’t think I agree? We don’t see a response to the two questions, but it’s implied that the answer to them is no. This then fills out the sequence to get to that point
I understand what the cartoonist is trying to imply–that there are no true pacifists and people who say they’re against violence are hypocrites who actually like violence when it’s used to protect their privileged position. They just didn’t do it right.
First, true pacifists do exist, who would answer “yes” to the first two questions–and which would make the last question ridiculous. So if the cartoonist’s goal was to criticize the hypocrites, they just needed to show the first person answering the first two questions with an unqualified “no” to show they didn’t really mean what they said in the first panel.
I understand what the cartoonist is trying to imply…
I actually don’t think you do. They are a pacifist, as is shown by their desire to demilitarize the world. They clearly think that violence is currently used primarily to maintain the status quo, and they depict that in a negative light quite obviously.
What they were actually implying is that a lot of people claim to be against violence despite, in fact being pro-state-violence
That’s my point and why I say they didn’t do the cartoon right. If they wanted to say what you explained, we’d have to see the first person answering “no”. As it is, the cartoon implies that anyone who says violence isn’t the answer is lying/hypocritical.
the cartoon implies that anyone who says violence isn’t the answer is lying/hypocritical.
No… it doesn’t. By its adversarial nature, it heavily implies the answers “no” to the first two questions.
Like, your main criticism is that the comic doesn’t make any sense if the answer to either question was yes, but that’s the definitive reason I wouldn’t read it that way.
A rhetorical question that you know (or are insisting you “know”) your opponent disagrees with is a very common language trick.
Not a non-sequitur, since she’s suggesting that the second person would believe that police and armies are exceptions to the rule. Given that these are, definitionally, the only parties in most modern states legally allowed to commit violence, and that the primary function of same is to maintain the status quo, be it borders, property, or laws themselves, ths last panel does nearly follow from the previous two. It is certainly a bit of a strawman, though, since he did not actually respond yet. The strawman here, however, is intentional, as a means to suggest to the reader that perhaps violence is justified in more than these two cases.
