To be alive is to be violent.
No way around it. Being alive means you are fighting a war with other living beings that will destroy you unless you destroy them first.
The human body, each and every day, destroys untold numbers of bacteria, microbes and microorganisms that are wholly animals. The act of driving a
vehicle kills insects and often bigger and more complex animals.
We shall not get into the habitat destruction and animals that died and die in order to create space for human infrastructure.
Eyeball this.
SOCIETY IS BASED ON VIOLENCE
As the speaker in the
vid says, society's fundament, bedrock, founding principle is violence. Society is a group of people who agree to commit violent acts if their will is not carried out.
No? Prove me wrong.
Even the act of banishment or making someone an outcast is violence. Rejection is violence.
Calling it a "social contract" merely wraps the titanium mail glove in a thin veneer of velvet. Having someone else carry out that violence because you are too much of a coward to do it yourself only puts a pretty bow across the knuckles of the fist that breaks the jaw of the nonconformist.
Yes, I said coward and I meant it.
DEDICATION
Your commitment to anything is directly proportional to your willingness to kill another human being to enforce it and to die to protect it. How strong is your dedication?
Suicide bombers certainly must rank at or near the top of dedication.
Some will inject here that some religions eschew violence. Jainism comes to mind. It falls well short of the
goal it claims to strive for. See above, RE: the act of living incurs violence. See the STUDY IN VIOLENCE bit below to examine the Jainism principles of only eating leaves and nuts. Further, Jainists today, those living in a modern society, commit violence simply by existing in a place where they must drive vehicles, drink treated water and so forth. Further, as Jainism also bespeaks microorganisms, every Janist's body is waging a constant and continual war against the microbes that would end the Jainist's life.
"
Jains accept that keeping a human body alive will necessarily occasion violence to other life-forms on a nearly constant basis, and that the preservation of a complex, conscious life‐form takes precedence over the preservation of a simple one‐sense organism." https://voices.uchicago.edu/religionculture/2017/11/22/attending-to-insects/
Wicca? See above and below as with
Jainism.
From a human perspective, the world's
Great Religions, most of '
em anyway, have violence as the basis for belief. For that matter, every religion I know of includes some forms of violence. Someone will now loudly decry this statement and tell me I do not know what I am talking about.
M'kay - In the Great Religion of Your Choice, what happens to unbelievers? Again, in
most of the Great Religions.
Non-believers and those who reject the Holy Word are sent to that religion's version of hell. Sounds
pretty freekin' violent to me. Having a way out, salvation, good deeds,
etc, does not erase the
violence inherent in the system.
Most Great Religion's saints, even those who will not physically fight back and will die rather than fight back or recant, still guilty of violence against others. They support a system that sends the heretics, pagans and
etc to hell. They support a system that says "Do this or violence."
That which you endorse and support, you are also guilty of. Including a degree of separation, see the Jainism essay above, is a human rationalization designed to excuse an inherent flaw in the logic.
Aside: The problem here is attributing human motives to a divine being which is beyond human comprehension. I admit I ain't got a good handle on this one. A human trying to understand the Divinity is like a dog understanding calculus. It doesn't happen. It could be that under the God code, this something different, something we can't understand. Regardless, I only have human understanding and I am applying that. This may be a mistake. Certainly in some of the Great Religions, that line of thinking is a mistake. This is also a topic for another post another day.
A STUDY IN VIOLENCE
Your very existence right now is a study in violence.
Even vegans cannot get around this. No?
Plants learn.
Plants REALLY learn.
Even PETA admits
plants can feel. Is this
sentience?
Damfino, but I tend toward saying yes.
Tearing apart a live plant to consume it is violence against a living entity.
If not, how do you explain the
communicated defensive reaction of many plants?
Gonna eat only shed, dead leaves? What about the microorganisms of decay within the leaves? Gonna eat only fruits and nuts? I ask the same question.
THE MINIMUM
Violence is necessary. Just do the minimum needed.
The speaker in the opening video says
be true to your tribe and let the rest hang. I'm good with that.
Yes, I am.
My tribe is humanity. My tribe needs that which is necessary for a healthy existence for humanity, Commit the minimum amount of violence to make this happen.
Some people are going to reject my notion of
tribe. That's OK too, as long as they do not inflict what I see as unnecessary violence on my tribe. I reserve the right to respond with superior levels of violence in that case.
Some violence is necessary. I, you, we may not like it, but it is
reality.
Reality will not conform itself to your expectations.
Understand violence is necessary. Then, commit yourself to the very minimum needed.
