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It Was a Slap

It was a Slap

Come on people; it was a slap. We get worked up when an actor loses his temper momentarily and slaps a comedian in response to a cruel joke aimed at the actor’s wife –due to the look of her hair, a condition caused by a disease. Critics from all corners insist “there is no place for violence” on an award show even though those accepting the awards often receive them for behavior glorifying violence.

It was a slap. It’s not as if Will Smith stabbed or shot Chris Rock. We live in a world with thousands of people being killed, millions forced to be refuges and the news and talk shows are obsessed with a slap? We live in a country where those making up our government cannot bring themselves to limit sales of automatic weapons, a country where hundreds of people are killed every day, where mass shootings of innocent bystanders have become common but our concern about violence is focused on a slap?

Let’s put this incident in context. Let’s think about priorities. Let’s think about the frequency of violence in our world and country. It was a slap!

White Rage

We know what caused the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Yes, the President encouraged the protesters he gathered to support his effort to upend the election results, to “take back America,” to “fight, fight, fight.” President Trump urged domestic terrorism, but he didn’t cause it. The real cause of the violent storming of the Capitol, threatening Vice President Pence and members of Congress, was white rage. Anyone who thinks about it knows that.

First, note that roughly one one one-hundreth of one per cent of Trump’s 74,000,000 voters were among those breaking into the Capitol, probably fewer (I’m guessing that some insurrectionists did not vote at all). The overwhelming number of citizens casting their ballots for Donald Trump supported him for reasons other than those of the white supremacy-driven mob. Most of Trump’s voters preferred him to President Biden because they thought he would be better for the economy, would support the military more strongly, is a political outsider (the Presidency was his first and only attempt at elective office), he speaks his mind and so on. Nearly all of Trump’s voters condemn the violence of January 6 though they may not blame it on Trump.

Why do I say white rage caused the riotous violence? American citizens come in various colors along a spectrum from very dark brown, called “Black,” to very light beige, called “White.” None of us chose the color of our skin, but the color we have has huge implications for how our lives go. Those toward the white end of the skin-color spectrum tend to benefit from being light or white. Benefits decrease gradually as one’s skin gets darker. Those benefitting least are nearly black. White rage arises in various degrees as well, for the most part depending on one’s relative “success” as each of us defines it.

Often, in our consumer society, money is taken to be the measure of success, though relative power, recognition, even personal fulfillment and other measures also come into play. Complicating various measures of success are efforts to level the playing field to make opportunities for success more equal for all, regardless of skin color, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity and other prompts of discrimination. Some individuals resent Affirmative Action and other efforts to foster equal opportunities, again by degrees along a continuum, getting angry with people of color, women and others, as well as with those devising and implementing equal opportunity mechanisms. Sometimes “reverse discrimination” is alleged.

Given that none of us are responsible for our skin color –it’s a genetic product of activities of our parents— where we fall on the benefit scale is arbitrary. The spectrum and resulting advantages and disadvantages are functions of society, not individuals. Racism is real even if there are no racists. Complicating all of this is that in a decade or two people of color will outnumber whites in the US. If there’s truth to what I’m claiming above, none of this bodes well for the racial divide. I think the police homicide of George Floyd, with its huge anti-racism demonstrations world-wide, set the context for the White supremacy backlash at the Capitol on January 6th.

What can be done to soften such collisions? I think most of white America realize that the color of their skin gives them advantages over people of color, especially over Blacks. If Whites could choose the color of their skin I believe it’s unlikely they would choose darker skin and least likely they would choose to be Blacks. This is due to an unexpressed understanding of the relative advantages of being Whites.

Acknowledging skin-color advantage –admitting it to our self– is a good first-step in easing tensions between Whites and people of color, even if that acknowledgement is unspoken. It will help Whites to be more understanding of racial tensions, and such understanding will turn down the heat stoking the racial divide. And it will reduce White rage. Having leaders who do not encourage White supremacy will help too.

Remembering Nancy J. Holland

Dr. Nancy Holland, Professor of Philosophy Emerita at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, was born on September 3, 1947, and died peacefully January 25, 2020, two years after her cancer diagnosis. She said she was not in pain through her months of treatment. She kept reading, enjoyed time with her family and friends, and worked to outline two fantasy novels she didn’t live to finish. Nancy is survived by her husband Jeffery Koon, daughter Gwendolyn Koon, and son Justus Koon.

I met Nancy Holland during her interview at a Boston meeting of the American Philosophical Association in1980. She was one of nine candidates being interviewed for a position in the Philosophy Department at Hamline University. I was Chair of the department at that time and consequently chaired the hiring committee of two: my senior colleague, Joseph Uemura, and myself. The two of us constituted the department from 1976 through 1980 and were pleased to be authorized to hire a third philosopher, and for a tenure track position.

Our search process was for each of us to read half of the applicant dossiers, that is, we each read 151 files (we had 302 candidates in the fall of 1980, three-fourths of them fully qualified). We each kept a list of those we would like to interview at the upcoming APA meeting. We then swapped files and each of us read the other 151 dossiers. We compared lists. I think Joe came up with fifteen; I had twelve. We had nine candidates in common, so we interviewed them. With her BA from Stanford and PhD from UC Berkeley –her dissertation with Bert Dreyfus and involving John Searle—Nancy’s application quickly rose to the top. After interviews we invited our top three candidates for two-day campus visits. We offered the position to Dr. Holland. To our good fortune, she accepted our offer…and she stayed for thirty-six years.

Joe Uemura was an Aristotelian with interests in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy. My interests were Plato, ethics and aesthetics. We were looking to diversify the department. Nancy brought phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction and feminism. Who could ask for more?

As it turns out, Nancy brought something else, something badly needed not only in the philosophy department but across the College of Liberal Arts as well. She brought a presumption that every academic anywhere must do serious scholarship, that is, present work at professional conferences, publish in refereed journals, work on books, all while teaching, advising, serving on committees, and, oh yes, raising a family. Her expectation of serious scholarship –for herself and every colleague on campus—may have been her greatest gift to the institution. She set the bar high. Her modeling of professional work beyond the campus supported, encouraged, and inspired so many of us that conference presentations, research, and published material of the college faculty grew quickly in quality and quantity.

Professor Holland’s major works include Heidegger and the Problem of Consciousness (2018), Ontological Humility: Lord Voldemort and the Philosophers (2013), Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger (2001), The Madwoman’s Reason: The Concept of the Appropriate in Ethical Thought (1998), and Is Women’s Philosophy Possible (1990).

I could recite items from Nancy’s personnel file: her awards for teaching excellence and for scholarship, her service on faculty committees, often as Chair, her role in creating our women’s studies program and the importance of her leadership in developing our social justice major. And then there’s her professional leadership off campus with the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP), the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), and the American Philosophical Association. Of course there’s more.

Rather than go further with professional accolades, let me say that Nancy was a superb colleague. She did whatever was needed in the department, and she did so at high quality, on time, and without complaint. Sure, Nancy was criticized along the way. Several faculty members rolled their eyes when she took the floor at faculty meetings to correct, and make more precise, minutes from previous meetings. In fact more than one faculty colleague took me aside asking me to counsel her to cease and desist on précising minutes; such behavior might impact a tenure committee negatively. That was in her early years. She soon learned that no one took minutes of faculty meetings very seriously.

I will close on a more personal note. Nancy was a good friend, one that could be trusted. She kept confidential matters to herself, tried to damp-down gossip, and she avoided the inevitable campus cliques. She was always frank, a rare trait among academics in my experience, and Nancy had principles by which she lived and worked, another trait seldom encountered…anywhere. Her sparkling but very dry sense of humor would demand that I quit now, before I gush. Thanks Nancy. You are missed and will be for many years

Duane L. Cady
Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
Hamline University

Reparations Considered

Reparations Considered

Now that reparations have entered the 2020 presidential campaign, it’s time to have a serious look at who, what, and why. What about when and where? When has been put off for hundreds of years already, so don’t hold your breath. Where? Here, in the US.

The notion of reparations has been cycling politically since the Emancipation Proclamation and before. What might reparations look like for descendents of slaves and descendents of American Indians? (I follow AIM with the latter name.)

The United Nations has a protocol for redressing human rights abuses against groups by governments or individuals. It calls for meeting five conditions to achieve full reparations:

  1. The abusing party must acknowledge the abuse and restore victims to their pre-abuse situation;
  2. Compensation must be offered to abuse victims. This may take the form of increased opportunities, goods, services, financial transaction, etc.;
  3. Abusers must provide rehabilitation for the abused;
  4. Those abused must express their satisfaction that the above conditions have been met; and
  5. Abusers must offer a guarantee of non-repetition of the abuse.

Many Americans believe reparations consist only of cash payments, and they reject such governmental action saying, “I didn’t own slaves” and “I didn’t steal Indians’ land.” “I wasn’t even born when those abuses took place and neither were the descendents of slaves nor the descendents of displaced American Indians.” “Since I didn’t abuse them, nor has our current government, why would anything be owed to them?”

Many of us forget that all Americans have benefitted from abuse of slaves and Indians. For example, the US Capitol, other federal and state buildings, roads, bridges, and more were built by slaves. The benefits to all citizens continue to this day. Regarding the case of American Indians, land acquired by homesteaders wasn’t the government’s to give away, yet it provided stability to families whose descendents continue to benefit.

President George Washington, “the father of our country,” and President Thomas Jefferson, author of several founding documents of our country, owned and abused slaves. Jefferson had frequent sexual relations with slaves yet provided for his white offspring very differently than for his children born of women he owned.

American Indians were not bought and sold as property in the same ways as were African American slaves, but their displacement and abuse is well known. As descendents of ancestors pushed to poorer and poorer land, they continue to be left out of American equality and prosperity.

We Americans need to acknowledge the history of our own country and better understand our nation’s role in exploitation and abuse in ways that constitute human Rights violations. And we need to accept responsibility as a nation for redressing human rights violations committed against African-American slaves and American Indians. We need to acknowledge abuse and accept responsibility not only for victims but for our own sake, to begin healing from moral injury, the hurt brought on ourselves by being complicit with wrongdoing.

Rather than react to suggestions of reparations with anger born of ignorance, all of us will be well served by understanding what constitutes reparations, and by reflecting on how our ancestors and we have benefitted from historic abuse of African-American slaves and American Indians.

Remembering Mulford Q. Sibley

I met Mulford Q. Sibley in the fall of 1972. A colleague and I were working to start a new chapter of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, one near our college in rural Minnesota, so we invited Professor Sibley of the Political Science Department at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. He was kind enough to come, spoke on civil liberties to a packed hall, and helped us raise awareness and money to get the Minnesota Valley Chapter of the MCLU underway.

I crossed paths again with Dr. Sibley in the summer of 1984 when I was a participant in his National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar on Utopian Literature. I got to know Mulford well in this setting. My research project for the seminar was a paper arguing that Plato’s Republic was a dystopia, not a utopia. While Mulford disagreed, he appreciated my work and suggested that I send it to a journal for consideration. His encouragement led to my first publication on Plato.

Mulford Q. Sibley was already notorious when I met him. He was an outspoken opponent of the US war in Vietnam, often speaking on the campus green, bullhorn in hand, at U. of M. anti-war rallies. Mulford, a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), was a life-long pacifist-activist who had spoken against WW II as well. Born in 1912, he earned his PhD in1939 and taught at Stanford before moving to the University of Minnesota in 1948.

Having been a socialist from his youth, Sibley was often accused of being a communist, especially during the McCarthy era –when Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin led a public witch-hunt for communists on behalf of the House Un-American Activities Committee. While Sibley never was a communist, the frequent accusations led him to begin wearing red ties, just to keep everyone guessing. The red tie became his signature attire. He once told me that if he was expected to wear a tie in academic circles (as academics were in those days), then it might as well be red, and it always was.

Sibley was a prolific writer and speaker on pacifism, civil disobedience, and utopianism. His many publications include articles and books on these topics. My favorite is his highly respected The Quiet Battle: Writings on the Theory and Practice of Nonviolent Resistance, an anthology of major –as well as less well-known—sources on pacifism and nonviolence, meticulously edited, with rich and insightful Introduction and Concluding Reflections by Professor Sibley.

There are many tales to be told of Sibley’s adventures as a pacifist in the academy from the early 1940s to the late 1980s. One particularly telling episode is sufficient to describe the character of this man.∗

Among the most popular teachers at the University, Sibley openly advocated leftist, pacifist, freethinking causes. As an outspoken critic of the US war in Vietnam, Sibley was the faculty advisor of the Student Peace Union, a campus club. This small role led to controversy in the summer of 1963 when a legionnaire attending the annual state American Legion Convention in Minneapolis introduced a resolution demanding that the Minnesota state legislature investigate the Student Peace Union for possible communist influences. The Minneapolis Tribune reported “a roar of aye votes.” The resolution was sent not only to the state legislature but also to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Neither rushed to investigate.

That fall The Minnesota Dailey, the student paper, editorialized about the hunt for communists on campus. The editorial argued that while there may be a communist or two in the group, the Student Peace Union was not “a communist front organization.” Professor Sibley was annoyed by the apologetic tone of the editorial defending the SPU. To Sibley, the point was academic freedom, period. He wrote to the Dailey, “I would like to see one or two communist professors on the faculty, plus a Student Communist Club, the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, a Society for the Promotion of Free Love, a League for the Overthrow of Government by Jeffersonian Violence, an Anti-Automation League, and, perhaps, a Nudist Club. “We need students who challenge orthodoxies. Planting seeds of doubt and subversion help create moral and intellectual progress.”

To many, the list was an obvious tweak at the narrow mindedness behind the resolution, but to others it was proof of subversion by a faculty member of the University. Sibley’s remarks were reprinted widely in Minnesota papers generating predictable outrage. One of Sibley’s neighbors, a member of the St. Paul City Council, wrote the state legislature demanding that Sibley be fired. On campus Sibley’s popularity grew. Students wore “Nudist Club” pins and invited the councilman to debate Sibley on campus. Twelve hundred students attended the televised debate, students hooting at the councilman and cheering Sibley. Public sentiment urged the legislature to act.

The Minnesota Education Committee held hearings. The Lt. Governor reminded everyone that Regents governed the university gaining national attention. William F. Buckley weighed in titling his column “The Professor in Left Field” asking, ‘why not add a couple of Nazi’s advocating genocide to the campus?’ By spring of ’64 the House Un-American Activities Committee decided to hold hearings on “the growing threat.” In June seventeen administrators from the U of M including President Wilson and Regent’s Chair Dr. Charles Mayo went to the state capitol to testify on university policies for hiring, promotion and firing faculty. The Lt. Governor again reminded everyone that Regents governed the U of M.

Professor Sibley never apologized and went on teaching popular classes. The issue had pretty well blown-over by the spring of 1965 when he was invited to speak on the war in Vietnam in Winnipeg, Canada. Canadian immigration denied him entry because he advocated the establishment of campus clubs promoting communism, atheism, free love and nudity. Publicity led to the involvement of Minnesota US Senator Eugene McCarthy and Vice President Hubert Humphrey as well as outrage in Canada. Eventually reason prevailed and Sibley was invited to return to speak in Winnipeg.

When Professor Sibley turned 70 he was faced with mandatory retirement from the U of M. Lucky for me, he was hired to teach jurisprudence by the Law School at Hamline University where I was teaching in the College of Liberal Arts. This allowed for weekly luncheon-discussions about pacifism, my then-current writing project. Mulford disagreed with my ‘backing into pacifism by degree’ –for him pacifism was the result of a conversion experience and then radiated outward from the individual into the world—but, once again, he encouraged me to seek publication for what became my first book.

In 1987 Mulford traveled to India to teach Gandhi’s politics. Unfortunately he became ill while there and had to return home before finishing the academic year. He was increasingly frail, but I was thrilled to get an advance copy of my book on pacifism to him, and to have a discussion about it, a few months before his death in 1989. At his funeral I was one of a dozen out of a hundred attendees wearing a red tie, including Mulford’s son Martin.

Duane L. Cady
Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
Hamline University

The United Methodist Church Decision on GLBT Policy: An Open Letter

I have written the pastor of my United Methodist Church in Hayward, Wisconsin resigning my sixty-year membership in the United Methodist Church (UMC). I have sent this letter to my pastor, to two area Bishops, and to the President of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, with copies to thirty-five pastor friends. This is not an easy decision for me, but I see no other option. Put simply, I cannot in good conscience be a member of any organization that endorses unlawful discrimination by policy.

In extending the 1972 UMC exclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from full participation in the United Methodist Church, by reiterating the Church declaration that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, by excluding GLBT individuals from ordination to ministry, and by making sanctions against UMC pastors celebrating GLBT marriage more punitive, the United Methodist Church has made it impossible for me to remain a member. I am not abandoning the Church; rather, the Church has abandoned all GLBT persons and their allies, of which I am one.

Through the General Conference decision the UMC has become a church endorsing discrimination and abuse rather than one providing sanctuary to victims of oppression and discrimination. The Methodist Church of my youth was at the forefront of progressive social change. The UMC of today lags behind progressive social change. In fact, the UMC of today seems determined to reject the same-sex marriage laws of many states, laws that have been enforced by a very conservative US Supreme Court, even in states not having legalized same-sex marriage.

Like most mainstream Protestant denominations, the United Methodist Church has lost nearly a third of its membership over the past forty years. Part of this loss is due to the proportionately small numbers of young people joining UMC churches. Many young people today easily accept GLBT individuals and wonder what their parents and grandparents are worked up about. I say this based on a great deal of experience with young people. I taught at a United Methodist University (Hamline in St. Paul, Minnesota) for forty-one years, took my Ethics of International Development classes to Jamaica through the MN UMC ‘s Operation Classroom (four times, each hosted by Jamaican Methodist churches), and I received the national Teaching Award from The United Methodist Foundation for Higher Education. It seems to me that UMC exclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons may be a significant factor in explaining the small number of young people joining UMC churches.

While the UMC in America is shrinking, UMC membership in Africa is growing. The UMC of Africa is not sympathetic with GLBC concerns yet they made up nearly a third of delegates voting at the General Conference, and they were courted by conservative American UMC delegates. The coalition of African and conservative American delegates defeated the progressive delegates. In order to avoid an international schism, UMC leadership invited an American schism. Ironically, a divided and thus weaker American UMC means fewer resources to aid developing UMC churches in Africa. So, the conservative coalition “won” the vote on GLBT policy yet will ultimately lose support for African churches.

The decision of the General Conference amounts to a self-inflicted wound to United Methodism, a wound that may be fatal. As one pastor friend put it, “The Church has ripped out its own heart.” I see little prospect for the Church to retain the “United” part of its name, the coming Judicial Review notwithstanding. If the Review overturns the vote, the African Church will separate. If the Review confirms the vote, the American UMC will fragment. I believe that, eventually, the United Methodist Church will accept gay, lesban, bisexual and transgender persons to full and equal status. Until such time the UMC is on the wrong side of history, against the moral curve that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed to bend toward justice.

My home church of twenty-five years became a reconciling congregation in 1989 in hopes of urging the denomination to eliminate exclusion of GLBT people. Now, thirty years later, the UMC has gone the other way. I have spent half of my life-long membership as part of the struggle for progressive change. I don’t have another thirty years to continue. I doubt that many GLBT UMC members can hold out hope for equality within the denomination. On what basis would they?

I expect to continue attending and pledging at the church from which I just resigned my UMC membership, at least for now. It is a welcoming congregation where “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors” is not merely a slogan, a church where “all” means all, despite the official view of the denomination. At the same time I will explore other communities of faith, those with values closer to my own.

I have written only to explain why I have resigned my membership. I am not trying to persuade anyone else to make this decision. Each of us must follow our own heart, soul, and mind, remembering the central message of Christianity: to love one another –all others– as we are loved, to love our neighbors as ourselves –including our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender neighbors– and to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

Eradicating Warism, Our Most Dangerous Disease

Eradicating Warism: Our Most Dangerous Disease*
by Duane L. Cady

Preface
“Ki mai koe a au, he ahate mea nui o te, He tangata! He tangata! He tangata!”
(“If you ask what is the most important thing in the world, it is the people! The People! The People!”)
–Maori saying

Given the many problems in the world, given the violent track record of the United States of America since World War II, and given the current reckless leadership in the U.S., you may be wondering ‘why have an American speak at a conference on pacifism and public policy, much less give a keynote address?’ After all, the U.S. has more military personnel on foreign soil than any other nation, the U.S. leads all nations in international arms sales (making dangerous people ever more dangerous), and the U.S spends more of its resources for weapons and war than any other nation…by a factor of four.  (Wikipedia)

Mine is a violent country domestically as well. Americans love chanting “we’re number one,” “we’re number one,” “we’re number one.” Well…we are number one in domestic gun deaths year after year, and this by powers of ten.

The rate of gun deaths in the US is five times that of Canada, ten times that of New Zealand, and more than forty times that of the United Kingdom. Our national motto was “E pluribus unum” – out of many, one – for more than 150 years; it was changed to “In God we trust” in the 1950s when the Cold War was on the rise. Were our national motto to be descriptively accurate it would be “in violence we trust.” As Martin Luther King Jr. put it in 1967, “America is the most violent country on earth.” There is little doubt but that he would reiterate this observation were he still with us today. How, then, can an American, of all people, say anything helpful about pacifism?

Perhaps there is something to be said for observing our violent world from “within the belly of the beast.” After all, it was this context of American violence that produced Martin Luther King, Jr., arguably the most significant contributor to pacifist theory and practice since Gandhi’s death in 1948. Dr. King began his experiments with truth –appropriating Gandhian ahimsa (nonviolence) to the case of lawful racial separation in the United States in the 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama– and extending his use of nonviolent direct action both to oppose the U.S. war in Vietnam and to challenge national policy on poverty, the causes King was consumed with at the time of his murder April 4,1968. In “Ending the Silence,” a major address one year to the day before his death, King identified the “giant triplets” which he regarded as the dominant values in America: racism, materialism, and militarism. He saw these three to be inextricably bound together. Addressing any of the three effectively requires addressing all of them. In his last and most radical book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, King extends his critique beyond the United States to make it global with his metaphor of the “world house.” Our world has shrunk to the point that all human beings are neighbors, better, housemates. If we fail to get along, we will fail to survive. As King himself put it, “we must learn to live together or we will be forced to perish as fools.” In what follows, I see myself as working in the tradition of Gandhi and King, attempting to work out the implications of pacifism as it is applied to domestic and international relations.

* * *

The challenge of this conference is rethinking pacifism. Why? Because it is dismissed by dominant culture, embraced by few individuals, and not as effective as we would like it to be regarding public policy. Again, Why?

My thesis is that three obstacles to pacifism are reflected in conventional wisdom: 1) warism – that is, taking war for granted as normal, natural, morally acceptable, and even morally required; 2) pacifism is stereotyped as a moral extreme, an absolute easily dismissed as unrealistic, naïve idealism; and 3) pacifism is seen to be negative, that is, anti-war but nothing more. My task is to remove these obstacles to taking pacifism seriously.

When warism –taking war for granted as morally acceptable—is recognized to be, like racism and sexism, a prejudice that distorts our better judgment, then we can try to set this bias aside and openly consider varieties of pacifism. Warism is the condition that makes possible the other obstacles to taking pacifism seriously, stereotyping it as extreme and as wholly negative.

“Pacifism” means peacemaking. It should not be mistaken for “passivism,” which means being passive, suffering acceptance, not resisting evil. Because the two words sound alike, people often confuse one for the other. In fact, pacifists rarely are passivists; more often they are activists, working for peace.

Pacifism takes many forms, all of them opposing war and other forms of violence. Beyond this negative position of being against war, pacifism involves various positive strategies for making peace. So, there are two sides of pacifism: the negative, anti-war, anti-violence side, and the positive side, offering peaceful alternatives to violence.

While pacifists are dismissed as naïve by a dominant culture that caricatures pacifism as a moral extreme, in fact pacifism grows out of the predominant values of Western culture. Over the past 1,500 years a just war tradition has been developed by scholars and strategists and is accepted by the vast majority of people. Those believing that just war is possible do not say “all’s fair in war” or “in war, anything goes.” Such a view would be war realism. But those believing in just war have ethical criteria guiding their decisions about war. According to the tradition, moral guidelines are needed to answer two basic questions: when are we justified in going to war? And, what moral restraints are required within a just war?

Regarding the first question, going to war requires meeting six conditions: 1) the war must be made on behalf of a just cause; 2) any decision to go to war must be made by proper authorities; 3) participants in war must have a good intention rather than revenge or greed as goals; 4) peace must be likely to emerge after the war; 5) going to war must be a last resort; and 6) the total amount of evil resulting from making war must be outweighed by the good likely to come of it. Once all six conditions are satisfied we can turn to the second question: what moral restraints make possible fighting a war justly?
There are two principles to meet in order to fight a war justly: discrimination and proportionality. First, a war is fought justly only if those making war discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate targets. Children, the elderly, those hospitalized or in nursing homes, even ordinary citizens not part of the war effort, all are illegitimate targets. Only soldiers and those working to advance war making can be targeted. The second standard, proportionality, requires that the evil of each individual act within war must be offset by the good it brings about. Those supporting just war allow for “spillage,” where bombs may target weapons factories or enemy soldiers but inadvertently injure or kill non-combatants. But, again, such so-called “collateral damage” must be offset by the good accomplished by the war.

For a war to be just, it must meet all the conditions and answer both questions. Meeting just a few of the conditions is not enough. Just wars require moral justification for going to war as well as moral restraint within war once it begins. War would be less problematic if those who believe in just war would understand and satisfy the moral conditions of their own tradition.

Pacifism emerges as people take the moral restraints on war ever more seriously. Varieties of pacifism differ by degree. It is helpful to understand various forms of pacifism by thinking of degrees of moral restraint along a continuum between accepting the just war tradition and accepting absolute pacifism.
The weakest form of pacifism, operating alongside versions of just war thinking, is called “pragmatic pacifism.” Here war is not opposed in principle but is opposed in particular cases because violence is not likely to work in the situation at hand; resorting to violence would only make matters worse. Pragmatic pacifists sometimes support and other times oppose war, depending on their judgment concerning the most practical solution to the problem at hand. Pragmatic pacifists will grant that war can be justified in some cases, but hold that, as a matter of practical utility, avoiding war is more likely to be effective in achieving the goals of a given conflict. For example, one might find slavery sufficiently evil to warrant war to free the enslaved, or might think that violence would only give slave owners an excuse to use extreme violence against any freedom movement among slaves.

A somewhat stronger view along the pacifist spectrum is “nuclear pacifism.” Here nuclear war is prohibited because it cannot meet the just war conditions of discrimination and proportionality. There is no way to hit only legitimate targets with nuclear weapons. They are inherently indiscriminate, destroying children, the elderly, hospitals and homes as readily as military installations and weapons factories. And nuclear war is never a pragmatic solution. Nuclear pacifists often reject the nuclear option on moral grounds yet cling to conventional warfare as sometimes justifiable.

This brings us to “technological pacifism,” the view that the technology of modern war has made conventional warfare nearly as indiscriminate as nuclear war, so that the just war requirements are never met now days due to the inevitable impact on innocents. Modern conventional war frequently spills over to harm more innocent bystanders than legitimate military targets. Perhaps war was justified many years ago when volunteers met on remote battlefields with spears, but war as we know it today is simply too big and too difficult to control. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century most casualties of war were military, but by the end of the Twentieth Century most casualties of war were civilian. If we rigorously enforce the just war guidelines, modern war doesn’t qualify as just since modern war inevitably violates the principles both of proportionality and discrimination. Even on the smaller scale of drone warfare, the principle of discrimination is routinely violated as innocent bystanders are injured and killed in numbers well beyond the injuries and deaths of “terrorists” or other allegedly legitimate targets. The nature of modern war has made the idea of just war obsolete.

Increasing awareness of the fragility of our environment has also resulted in “ecological pacifism,” a version of technological pacifism where moral concern goes beyond the impact of war on people and society to focus on the implications of war for our planet, its ecosystems, and the host of species they support, as well as for the sustainability of air and water quality for current and future generations of all living things. Ecological pacifists point out that the largest single threat to the global environment is military, not least because Earth’s military systems are the greatest sources of environmental contamination, including consuming the most fossil fuel. While individuals worry about their personal carbon footprints, their taxes support carbon footprints made by militaries which contribute to environmental damage exponentially beyond the impact of individuals. If preserving or restoring our environment is a concern, then curbing the pollution and consumption by the world’s military organizations must be paramount. Such concern often leads to ecological pacifism.

“Fallibility pacifism” is the view that even if some modern wars could meet the just war conditions in principle, our knowledge is too limited to substantiate their application in fact. Due to the sheer scale of war, we cannot know relevant factors with sufficient confidence to warrant violent actions between nations. Given the subtlety and complexity of issues, the history of tensions, biases of involved parties, propaganda, vested interests, manipulation of news media, and the various inequalities among nations – economic, political, military, geographical – our knowledge cannot be sufficiently secure to justify war, even if war might otherwise seem theoretically justifiable.

“Collectivist pacifism” is the position that violence may be morally justifiable in particular small-scale situations, such as in the execution of a convicted murderer, or fending off a violent attacker by force, but that war cannot be justified due to its sheer magnitude. For instance, although collective pacifists always object to the mass killing that characterizes war, they may allow defensive interpersonal violence when an individual does something so evil that by so doing they thereby forgo any legitimate expectation of the upholding of their human right to be protected from violence themselves. There is no inconsistency in the collectivist pacifist allowing interpersonal violence but rejecting war, since using personal weapons to defend one’s self or one’s family from attack is sufficiently different from participating in war, with its mass violence and enemy anonymity.

Finally as we describe the range of anti-war pacifist positions we approach “absolute pacifism.” On this position it is wrong always, everywhere, for everyone to use violence against another living thing. We can imagine even more absolute pacifisms, where all violence including violence against non-living things is prohibited. Few if any pacifists espouse such an extreme view. Even Gandhi said that if the choice were between violence and cowardice, he would choose violence. The point is that pacifism admits to degrees along a continuum between pragmatic and absolute pacifism, and that most of us find ourselves somewhere between the extremes of the scale.

Having described the range of anti-war pacifism and thus setting aside the accusation that all pacifists hold a single, monolithic, absolute view, we can now turn to the accusation that pacifism is always and only negative. Pacifists do not merely oppose war and violence to varying degrees; they also promote a range of alternatives to violence, a range of practices contributing to positive peace. By “peace” they mean not just the absence of war and violence but the presence of harmonious and cooperative social order. This order arises from among participants rather than being imposed on them from the outside. Positive peace is caricaturized by cooperation within groups. The Cold War was well named: “cold” because overt violence (e.g., bombing and other killing) was avoided; yet “war” because relations were deeply strained, and overt violence seemed to be held at bay only by each side threatening the other with annihilation. The uneasy lack of overt violence in Eastern Europe from the close of world war two until the collapse of the USSR was negative peace at best. By contrast, positive peace involves no threats, no massing of troops or weapons, no coercive force.

Pacifism – literally agreement making (from the Latin pax , peace + facere, building) – happens when a sense of community, shared purpose, and mutual interest all prevail over divisiveness, opposing purposes, and disunity. This is why people of common heritage, shared values, and familiar experiences usually find it easier to be at peace with one another than with those of different traditions, religions, cultures, or ethnicities. Getting along by self-control from within groups comes more naturally when groups are, or seem to be, more alike than foreign. But whether they are as large as nations or as small as nuclear families, when groups or their members are at odds with one another, tension and conflict inevitably arise. For pacifists, the better people understand one another the less likely their conflicts will result in violence. The challenge is to foster a sense of community, of participation, sufficiently strong to overcome divisiveness, differences, and misunderstandings. This harmonious ideal is anchored by a spirit of tolerance and respect, where differences are seen as enhancing possibilities for human experience rather than as threats that must be dominated or destroyed. Pacifists try to internalize practices to foster within themselves –and within their families, neighborhoods, houses of worship, workplaces, states, nations, and so on– the ideal of cooperative community. Such practices are nonviolent because violence always ruptures relationships – the basis of community – and because violence is incompatible with an internally ordered peaceful whole.

All of us succeed at living peacefully to some extent, in any context dependent on cooperative behavior: perhaps with immediate family, close friends, co-workers, team members, neighbors, customers, or even drivers with whom we share the roadways. One of the fascinating features of positive peace, when it happens, is that it rarely occurs to those living peacefully that it is peace they are making; it is simply how they live and interact, habitual and taken for granted. Positive peace is nearly invisible. Unfortunately, there are limits to our peacefulness, and few of us can take cooperation for granted as how we can interact with everyone. Ignorance, fear, impatience, intolerance, all get the upper hand at times, and some individuals are disruptively self-interested, putting themselves above others, or are even bigoted and disrespectful. In the extreme this becomes criminal behavior, and those who rupture the peace must be dealt with. The mark of truly peaceful people is whether their methods of dealing with peace-breakers are consistent with their visions of peace.

Of course the most obvious peaceful method to resolve conflict and achieve agreement is discussion. Where individuals and groups cannot work out agreement by discussion, resolution may be achieved by appeal to an impartial third party. When such arbitration fails, courts may be used to settle disputes. But some conflicts do not get resolution by various legal means.

I cannot delineate all methods of nonviolent peace-building here, but in The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1971), Gene Sharp cites nearly two hundred techniques. All are ways to confront power nonviolently by taking advantage of power’s main vulnerability: that ruling requires the consent of the ruled, a fundamental principle from Gandhi. Beyond discussion, arbitration, and the courts, are political protest and persuasion – acts demonstrating support or opposition. Personal and group letters, lobbying, petitioning, picketing, wearing symbols, marching, singing, and teach-ins, all are examples of this level of nonviolent struggle. Beyond protest and persuasion are methods of noncooperation: strikes, boycotts, slow-downs, withholding funds, reporting in ‘sick,’ walkouts, and embargos. Moving beyond noncooperation are methods of nonviolent intervention: sit-ins, fasting, forming shadow governments, underground newspapers and electronic media, and acts of civil disobedience. All of these methods of nonviolent direct action can be seen as acts along a spectrum expressing increasing degrees of physical confrontation, from cooperative discussion to nonviolent intervention. Just as pacifists may occupy any point along the anti-war continuum, they may inhabit any point on the positive peace-building spectrum. The next step would be violent intervention, which is outside the pacifist range of peace-building options. For the pacifist, leaving the nonviolent range of peace-building techniques is tantamount to surrender because it amounts to betraying one’s ideals in pursuit of them. But perhaps this is too quick; after all, there are legitimate versions of pacifism where a small scale, personal resort to violence, while never desired, can be warranted – such as force used by police to apprehend a criminal for trial. Still, no pacifist can resort to war.

When warism is recognized and taking war for granted is challenged, a variety of pacifist positions become possible. And, as it turns out, pacifism is not naïve or unrealistic at all. In fact, all of us are pacifists to some degree, since all of us oppose violence as a means of interaction in many aspects of our lives. Building on this active nonviolence can expand our capacity for peace-building and make us increasingly wary of war as a solution to conflict.

This brings us back to warism, which I consider the major obstacle to a more peaceful world. Warism is the view that war is morally justifiable in principle and often morally justified in fact. War is considered to be a natural and normal activity of nations. War is simply what nations do. It seems so obvious to most people that war is morally acceptable that they don’t realize it is war they are assuming. Warism is like racism or sexism: a prejudicial bias built into conceptions and judgments without awareness that it is presupposed. Given the prevalence of warism, national focus tends to be on making war effectively or allying with nations who do.

Warism is like an international epidemic. It threatens our very survival because it supports the prevailing means of organizing our world, namely, the war system. Warism is especially insidious because it is nearly invisible behind our building, maintaining, and ever expanding the means of war. Some of us condemn the practices of weapons production, conducting foreign policy by way of military threats –and actions– and devoting growing percentages of national resources to war making. But condemning warism is like condemning cancer; it doesn’t do much good. We have yet to discover ways of exposing and eradicating the sickness that is warism. This would clear the way to replacing the war system.

Racism and sexism have been drastically reduced because they were exposed, dragged out of hiding, and made to be seen for what they are: prejudicial biases that distort our judgments, pervert our values, and mislead us into thinking we know when we do not. Warism is similarly invisible, behind our thoughts and actions, shaping and distorting our perspectives and thus our behavior. Central to exposing warism is shining a light on it, pointing it out, revealing the role it plays behind decisions public and private. Exposing warism is especially difficult because warism is so widely held.

Exposing warism by pointing it out, by bringing it to light, is made especially difficult by the increasing control governments place on the media when it comes to war. During World War II reporters had broad access to soldiers on front lines, often at personal risk. By the US war in Vietnam twenty years later, political considerations began to control media access to troops in action. Government control of media coverage of flag-draped caskets containing remains of soldiers killed in action increased after the Vietnam war, again to thwart opposition to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ownership of the bulk of large media outlets by relatively few multinational corporations contributes to the difficulty as well. Nonetheless good work is done. I’m thinking of rare reporting of US torture in Iraq and the relationship between torture and converting Middle-Eastern citizens into terrorists, of civilian casualties of the US drone warfare program, and of work like that of Nicky Hager here in New Zealand, exposing a US/NZ atrocity in Afghanistan along with government cover up. Such reporting of the truth of war and how it is fought today, reporting without misinformation or cover up, helps to shift the wider culture away from the prevalent warist paradigm. But we need such work to be common rather than rare. This is made especially difficult in an era of “fake news” and “alternative facts.”

Sadly, there is no easy or quick fix to the broad cultural addiction to war and the war system that organizes our world. But resisting stereotypes of pacifism by showing the range of pacifist views, demonstrating the positive aspects of pacifism, and exposing the warism behind our values and political decisions all are conditions for taking pacifism seriously. Until we do, our global future promises more violence, more killing, more war. The choice is not merely between war and peace; it is between war and survival. Only a transformation from warism to pacifism can help us to build a sustainable future. If we are to have a long-term future we have no choice but to embrace pacifism.

Eradicating Warism: Our Most Dangerous Disease*
by Duane L. Cady

“All Eyze On Me,” the life of Tupac Shakur

I had a chance to see he HBO biopic on the life and death of rapper Tupac Shakur (b. 1971; d.1996). It came out a couple of years ago but has been available only on HBO so access has been limited. I wanted to see the film because my son was a fan while in high school in the early ’90s and his mother and I never understood his fascination with a rapper using the language he did to express himself. When challenged, or son always defended Shupac for his social justice message and suggested we “get past” the words he used.

Tupac Shakur (aka 2pac, Pac, and Makaveli) was deeply influenced by his mother, a member of the Black Panther Party, his step-father, a black supremacist, and his biological father, an anti-racism revolutionary. Tupac went to te Baltimore Arts High School and fell in love with Shakespeare, landing a role as Hamlet while a junior. He never played the part because his family moved to Los Angeles.

On the significance of Shakespeare, Shakur once said in an interview:

I love Shakespeare. He wrote some of the rawest stories. I mean
look at “Romeo and Juliet.” That’s some serious ghetto shit. You
got this guy Romeo from the Bloods who falls for Juliet, a female
from the Crips, and everybody in both gangs is against them. So
they have to sneak out and they end up dead for nothing.

His analysis of Macbeth follows the same line.

Tupac started in the music industry at16, as a side man; he went solo at 19. His first album, “2Pacalypse Now,” shows his social consciousness, focused on inner city problems (injustice, poverty, and racism). It went platinum. Music journalist Chuck Phillips called him “brave, wise, and smart, wickedly smart.” Shakur was known for his clever rhymes, impressive rhythms, cadence, attitude, and protest message.

Tupac had more than his share of problems in his short life. He was brutalized by two cops for jaywalking. He sued for $1 million, won his case, and received $45,000, most of which went to his lawyers. He was involved in a street skirmish in which a six year old took a random bullet to the head and died. The gun was registered to Shakur but he was aquited. He was a ladies man, broke up with a girlfriend, but she seduced him three days later and cried rape (Tupac: “I didn’t rape nobody”); he was found not guilty of rape but was convicted for sexual assault. His sentence: 4-12 years.

Tupac was the first recording artist in history to release an album while in prison. It sold 250,000 copies the first week, setting a record. An old black inmate, a “lifer,” advised him to “survive” rather than get in constant skirmishes with felow inmates. His mother asked him “where’s your spirit?” and said “they can destroy your body but not your mind. Above all, to thine own self be true. Hold your head up.” He ended up serving less than a year of his sentence.

Out of prison he partnered with MC Big to manage the east coast rap scene while Big maneged the west coast. The idea was to reduce the rivalries, mostlyover money, and the subsequent violent conflicts. He was “robbed” and shot five times in the lobby of his studio. He “checked himself out” (i.e., pulled the tubes and IVs) and left the hospital after three days. It was never clear who was responsible for the shooting. Pac never thought it was robbery since the gunmen took his necklace but not his Rollex watch.

In prison Tupac had become interested in philosophy, especially philosophy of war, and military strategy, studying The Prince by Machiavelli (the source of his adding the nickname “Makaveli”), and The Art of War by Sun Tzu. His first album after prison was “The Don Killuminati: the 7 Day Theory.” Followers took it as a stark contrast with his early work. It was seen as emotionally dark, focusing on pain and aggression.

Vice President Dan Quayle lumped Tupac with “gangsta rappers” on national TV, suggesting that the government would put an end to rap due to the vile language. Tupac’s mom: “They’re afraid of your message, not your language. You’re a black leader.” Shakur represented rebellion pure and simple.

While pop music is poetry put to melody, rap is poetry put to rhythm. Tupac Shakur is the most copied MC of all time. Nine of his albums went platinum while he was living, seven more after his death. More than 75,000,000 recordings of Tupac Shakur have sold, and his work is still selling. There are murals of him around the world and statues in both the US and Germany. In 2012 a “hologram” of Tupac Shakur performed in concert with Snoop Dog at the Cochella Music Festival, so his influence –and popularity– continue. Perhaps substantive social criticism stands the test of time while entertainment seeking wealth is fleeting.