Comment on fighting evil by moonlight
bearboiblake@pawb.social 7 hours agoI disagree with this. Violence always leads to more violence, so it should always be our last option on the table. Remember that those who commit violence will also suffer from PTSD.
We need to be willing to escalate, but also to de-escalate. We need a peaceful revolution which is willing to defend itself. An implicitly violent revolution does not remove the ruling class, it simply replaces the existing ruling class with a different ruling class (e.g. the American Revolution, the USSR). We need to completely abolish the ruling class and prevent them from ever returbing.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 7 hours ago
I love it when someone actually challenges my opinions.
bearboiblake@pawb.social 6 hours ago
Me too! I figured you probably didn’t genuinely hold these viewpoints, but someone reading this thread might, so I appreciate the opportunity to speak directly to those people through you.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 5 hours ago
I’m open and understand of other’s views, but I skew towards horrific revenge that will make it very clear what happens to bad people, once the good ones have enough. This is from experience, knowing that peace brought us nothing, made us look like weak victims for the picking, ensured we have no real resistance.
No, this is the Godzilla threshold. Woe to anyone who has escaped lawful justice!
Though for certain reasons, I am forced to fight economically for now, which is my main plan on Lemmy. Let me show you something: Image
bearboiblake@pawb.social 5 hours ago
Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate that and I understand your position. Your values align closely with mine, but my #1 top value is that no one should have power over anyone else, because most humans are predisposed towards using any power they have to benefit themselves - so if you have someone even with 1% more power than others, they will use that 1% of power to their own benefit, and to grow their own power. Over time, that 1% will grow and grow until we have a situation like we have now, where the ruling class have overwhelming power over the majority.
I totally get the drive for revenge, I’m very sympathetic – I used to feel the same. What I have come to realize though, is that negative reinforcement isn’t very effective at all. We have a whole prison industrial complex which is unbelievably cruel and punishing towards those in its grip, the ultimate tool of revenge against those who have wrong society, and it is completely ineffective in reducing or preventing any crime. Cruelty against those who have wronged us just hardens hearts against our larger goal, the liberation of all living things, because it gets both “sides” stuck in an escalation trap of using escalating levels of violence against the other.
The only way we can fix our broken society is by convincing everyone that using coercive power/violence against others leads to bad outcomes. We need to be willing to use violence (and the threat of violence) because if we do not then our enemies will indeed make us victims, but it must always be the option of last resort.