Domination and violence tend to generally be bad combinations; and on the topic itself, there are no merits to violence.
The merit bit especially, actually. Violence has been seen as basically the lowest form of conflict since ancient times. Sun Tzu and earlier, we hear that the masterful wins victory without battle, and that it is only the inept that considers violence anything but failure. There can be merit in the
means to commit violence, I believe -- martial and physical mastery has its virtues -- but the actual expression of violence is a sign of
failure. Failure to plan ahead, failure to out-think and outmaneuver your opponents, failure to master the self such that the former can be accomplished. One who can accomplish a thing without violence is greater than one who can only accomplish that thing with violence. Etc., so forth, so on.
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M'latest idle rumination on th'subject has been trying to apply a sort of modern-ish economic heuristic to the concept of physical violence. Way I currently see it, the primary reason that physical violence is of so little value is because it's
ubiquitous. Nearly
anyone who eats the right things and performs the right actions may become excellent at performing physical violence, and even those who do not can exert the maximal amount of violence (kill, in other words) with minimal effort. It does not take skill or genius or merit to brain someone with a rock, merely consistent effort, and sometimes not even that. So the
supply approaches infinite, and further,
quality makes little difference beyond a low threshold.
But the demand... the issue with it is that violence itself is but a tool -- the
least of tools, but a tool nonetheless. As such, there is no demand for
it, per se: There is demand for the things that can be
accomplished by its use -- and there are other tools that can accomplish the same thing, but whose supply is
much more limited. The value of a thing is determined by the amount of demand relative to supply. Violence is ubiquitous, other tools which accomplish the same ends are not, thus as a tool, violence is of less value than similar tools which can accomplish the same ends but are more scarce.
Still thinking on it, really. More generally,
conflict has its place, but physical violence is a method of last resort. It means you have already failed, and have no other option. If there is
virtue in
necessity, I cannot see it.
Author
Topic: Pacifism and nonviolence in general (Read 7800 times)