Peace, Love & Ass-kicking

So, much for wanting to blog regularly again.  Maybe eventually I’ll figure out how to live my life and blog too.  For now, I will re-visit the month-old topic of whether or not I still believe in non-violence.

I’ll start with an example. I was recently in the know about a situation that involved a woman getting choked and beaten by her fiancé.  With some assistance from friends and family, she moved out of their apartment, broke off their engagement, pressed charges, and got a restraining order.  I am strongly in favor of her doing all of those things, but that means that I support sending police officers to his house with weapons to handcuff him, put him in the back of a police car, and throw him in a holding cell until he can make bail.  Whatever happens to him next will be decided by a coercive system that runs on punishment – particularly for those without the cash for a good lawyer. It’s foolish to pretend otherwise.

While I am categorically opposed to the death penalty and support notions of restorative justice, I do believe that people who commit violent offenses should go to jail – even though I am fully aware that our prisons are dangerous and violent places and I am supporting an incarceration that will most likely involve beatings, rape, and various other forms of torture, dominance, and control. Even if all those things didn’t happen, locking someone up in a cage surrounded by guards with guns is most certainly a violent act.  I know all this, and I still think violent criminals should go to jail. I don’t think I can trumpet my commitment to non-violence just because I am not personally walking uniformed and armed through the halls of Pelican Bay.

I do the best I can in a world where broken and violent people do broken and violent things within broken and violent systems, but I shouldn’t kid myself: The only reason I don’t own a gun is because my taxes pay other people to do that for me.  I participate in violence every day, not because I want to, but because I just don’t have a better idea.

Or more accurately, I choose not to pursue more radical ways of being pacifist.  I could move into a Catholic Worker house or the Bruderhof or some commune somewhere, where we grew our own food, and lived in common, and didn't pay income taxes, thereby not supporting the military-industrial complex. I could go to the West Bank with Christian Peacemaker Teams like my friend John.  I could, but I don't want to. 

I don’t plan to buy a gun.  I’ll still skew Green, practice yoga and meditation, and support better gun control.  I still think California has too many prisons, SuperMax facilities are inherently inhumane, the three strikes law should be repealed, and Jessica’s Law was stupid.  (Well-meaning, perhaps, but stupid nonetheless.)  I do work at being non-violent, respectful and non-coercive in my relationships.  I try to share power. I shoot for compassion. (I don’t always succeed, but I do try.)

All of that is good and worth pursuing, but I’m not sure I can call it non-violence. Violence is like Kevin Bacon – there’s never more than six or three or one degree of separation between us.  My questions about non-violence aren’t really about changing my values or behavior.  They’re more about giving up pacifism – and its accompanying moral superiority - as an identity. 

Are pacifists better than soldiers or better than cops?  I haven’t got a clue.  (I could be a good Christian, and say that I’m no better than a serial killer on a murder spree  - except I think I am.)  I’ve picked my path, and I intend to continue walking it, but I’m not sure I want to congratulate myself on the good fortune of living in a society where someone else will do my dirty work. 

I know I certainly don’t feel qualified to claim that my fellow pacifists and I are walking in the way of Jesus.  Jesus was a confusing dude, and for every “Blessed are the meek”, there’s a guy kicking ass in the temple.  I don’t know which is the true Christianity – or if there is any such thing – but maybe there’s room in this sprawling, flawed, crazy religion for both peaceniks and shit-starters, for forgiving – and for not.  I don’t know – I’m still figuring it out.  It’s just one of those things that isn’t nearly as clear as it used to be. 

Comments

[Heather]

Violence is like Kevin Bacon. My friend, that is the Quote of the Day, and also a really great analogy within your essay. I love when you write, and hope that someday these writings find a larger audience somewhere, somehow. And that you get rich for writing. (Hey, I can dream for you).

[hilbertastronaut]

Even a radically pacifist commune takes root somewhere. I don't think it's possible to separate oneself completely from possibly harmful social constructs, and remain alive.

I see nonviolence as something that I can choose for _myself_: I can choose to turn the other cheek. However, it's not fair for me to force someone else to turn the other cheek -- to say to the abused woman that she should "offer it up," for example, rather than accept the violence necessary to stop the abuse. Even taxation in a land without a military-industrial complex is a kind of violence (it's not a payment for services rendered, because no one has a realistic alternative place to move in order to reject those services). And so I accept violence to protect the innocent, even as I admit that some may will to deny themselves protection.