I’ve been watching this old show from my childhood called Alien Nation and it presented a scenario where I actually would support violence or even genocide. It got me thinking about my sense of pacifism and how in many ways it’s more about attitude and language than actual literal non-violence.
I was obsessed with this show as a kid, at one point even more than Star Trek The Next Generation, which was running at the same time. It only made it one season. Looking back, it had fantastic ideas, original plots, an amazing overall story idea and a powerful message about equality and acceptance. Problem was it was very poorly executed in the details, with gaping plot holes and inconsistencies and occasional dialogue that felt like it was written by a seventh grader.
Story background: an alien spaceship crash lands in the desert outside of Las Angeles. On board are 250,000 alien slaves and a few thousand overseer/slave masters. Upon crashing the slaves all escape or are freed and soon must assimilate into American culture. The overseers hide their identities and blend into the crowd. The former slaves are super bitter because these overseers were quite cruel and some actively want to exterminate all the overseers.
So it occurred to me that if I was really in this situation, whether I was an alien or a human, I think that I would agree with these bitter former slaves and in this extreme situation, I would want to simply exterminate all of the overseers. But see, this is an extreme situation. There was one episode where there are overseers trying to send messages out to their people, trying to get another slave ship to return to pick them up and even enslave the human race.
I guess now that I write this out, it doesn’t sound extreme at all, like saying I’d fight against Nazis if I was in World War 2 or something, like of course I would.
But I’m a pacifist and believe in non-violence, and while non-violence is like my ultimate goal and value in life, that doesn’t mean I’m an absolutist about it. It just means that in all situations, we should be moving toward peace, that we need to be the ones to de-escalate and we’ve got to be the ones to make the first move toward peace, which means putting down your weapons and accepting your own vulnerability. That takes true courage, a lot more real courage than it takes to fight.
In this scenario I would want to exterminate the slave masters, but I would also do it as respectfully and compassionately as possible, speaking of it as a deeply regretful action, something we are doing out of desperation, not because we think we’re the “good guys” and entitled to it. I would not be okay with people celebrating these deaths. I’d want to respect their customs and give them proper burials and be as compassionate toward them as reasonably possible.
I think maybe those are the two things that I want to get across 1) always be de-escalating. True courage means being the person with fewer weapons than anyone else, being the person who takes the first terrifying step toward peace. and 2) when we must commit violence, when it’s absolutely necessary for my survival, I believe in a compassionate attitude as much as possible. The death of the enemy is not something to be celebrated. It’s a tragedy, even if we had no choice but to do it. Even if you’re putting a bullet through the head of a Hitler type character, we are all still going to be far better off if we treat them with as much respect and dignity as possible.
It’s about seeing people as God’s children, as our own family, a piece of our larger consciousness, even if we’re forced to do awful things to them. The police and CIA actually understand this quite well, believe it or not, at least in the short term. I watch a lot of YouTube self help videos by people like Andrew Bustamante, who was a CIA operative or Jocko Willink who was a Navy Seal. These types of folks often have really valuable insights into human behavior and achievement. They often have really refined and effective systems of teamwork, positivity and interpersonal support that the rest of us could really learn from.
The problem is they don’t take those concepts far enough.
If you ever watch murder interrogations by police, you’ll notice the interrogator never gets all judgmental. Their body language and tone of voice bring about a feeling of teamwork, of compassion, of this idea that we’re in this together. This I totally support.
But the problem is, the moment the criminal confesses, suddenly they’re done with the teamwork mentality and instantly slip back into an us-vs-them mentality. “good riddance. Go rot in prison” is our attitude toward people who did awful things and that kindness that police show in the beginning is revealed to be an elaborate lie. Police often feel disgusted with themselves when they show compassion toward violent sociopaths, but why? Why would showing kindness toward anyone make us disgusted with ourselves? Showing kindness toward a criminal does not in any way mean that you are putting your stamp of approval on their crimes. Seeing things from their perspective is not the same as putting your stamp of approval on their crimes no matter how many angry memes insist otherwise. In fact, having empathy toward them is one of the best ways to figure out why they are like this and to move toward actual solutions. Instead, our whole system of law enforcement is based on us-vs-them, condemn the criminal and make him suffer, then a couple years later just release him back into the population as though nothing happened and then do the whole thing over again.
But what if the police continued the compassion and kindness act all the way through to the end? Criminals would still go to prison, but the attitudes would be different. It would be more about rehabilitation instead of revenge. What if they talked to the criminal like “Look, you committed a violent/anti-social act so the community just doesn’t feel safe with you running around, so we need to lock you up until we can come up with a solution. So let’s work together, talk about this and figure out a way to change your behaviors such that we can safely let you go again.”
Instead, the attitude is like “fuck you criminal, go rot in prison. Good riddance.” And we know deep down that treating them like that just increases the original reasons for their bad behavior, making them more likely to recommit, but we do it anyway, out of this deep instinct to see things as us-vs-them. Then we make up elaborate stories to justify our own counter-productive behavior, insisting that criminals are some other species that doesn’t communicate like humans.
We do the same thing on larger scales with militaries and countries. We even do it on smaller scales as we interact with friends or try to manage our children’s bad behavior.
This instinct to see things as us-vs-them is standing in the way of such an insane amount of joy and progress. It’s like, we have this deep instinctual need to have both teammates and enemies. That’s definitely true for me, but I’ve found the more I push myself away from the idea that I have enemies, away from this lie that having enemies is an inherent and unavoidable part of life, the more I experience lasting personal success and the deeper joy from life.
I don’t have any enemies. I know people who have hurt me deeply, some that I’ve argued with, some who I feel have morally reprehensible viewpoints and a few who have threatened to murder me for my beliefs. But I don’t have any enemies.
My life is nothing but friends and interesting communication challenges. Seeing it this way makes my life so much happier and more successful, even though the literal realities seem on the surface to not be that different.