What kind of peace?

Are you against war or do you think fighting is sometimes necessary? ?Are you a pacifist?

Those two questions do have some kind of urgency currently for obvious reasons. I tried to do some thinking and take a position on this and I tried to understand how can I call myself a pacifistic person and still think you have to draw a (blood?) red line against aggressors invading other states. I will not go into the final outcome of this but I want to explain some crossroads on the way to my conclusion.?

I would describe myself as “pacifistic” and would be quick to put that label on my personal description – social media, fast and erroneous. We became so used to quick and almost always dirty shortcuts to be faster than others in making impressions, but I am too old - actually I grew up without a mobile phone for the most of my lifespan – to jump to conclusions without a second thought. So, I googled for “Criticism of Pacifism in wars” and to my big surprise I found out,

There is no Pacifism, actually there are several quit different flavours of Pacifism.

The range is going from (religious) Pacifism (e.g., Gandhi, The Quaker-Movement) to a radical Pacifism (e.g., Kurt Tucholsky and Carl Mertens). From never ever use aggression to reach the target to how to fight literally against war and war preparation.

The second boundary condition of every process working towards peace (a kind of pacifism too) is, that every participant in a conflict does have an understanding that the total annihilation of an opponent can be a potential goal of a conflict but no any other third party not entangled currently into this conflict can accept, because the major question is than, Who’s next? Such visions of gaining supremacy will not accept any other substantial divergent opinion as a threat for very long. So, you might end up like in the old story of the “Chess-Play with the pigeon”. Playing chess with a pigeon is totally useless, the bird does not know the rules, does topple all the pieces, shits on the board and prances around like it has won the game.

The takeaways of this quick research for me (and others?):?

• Never use unclear definitions – saying I am a pacifist is so specific like saying I was born on planet earth.
• You never play chess with a pigeon and if the pigeon interrupts you, you just have to get rid of the bird quickly.

?HFG 2022

?

?