:If you don't make that exclusion and abstain from any physical force then you are left with persuasion which will not always work.
The premise of this little discussion was what I laid out as a pacifist society achieved through a critical mass of devoted pacifists. BE further refined that as 95 percent pacifist. Right now, pacifists are a teeny tiny minority. If they were dominant, they wouldn't behave as they do in our world. After all, they're running things.
The pacifists are the government, such that it is. There would be laws for settling disputes and some means of enforcement, which assumes force. The acceptable means of enforcement would be different from what we do now, but there would still be enforcement. Pacifistic subcultures that exist now, such as the Amish, have enforcement measures. It seems unlikely that this society would eschew force entirely. They'd probably be vegetarians. They'd probably disarm the population. But they would need some means to stop somebody who goes psycho and is in flailing around endangering himself. Maybe they'd use dart guns to stop and disable. Dart guns are pretty benign. Maybe those twelve guys would just follow around the guy with the baseball bat, taking turns sleeping, until he got so groggy he nodded off. Then they could cart him off to some place of isolation. Who knows. This is a new paradigm. Surely, though, some means of enforcement that suited their philosophy would evolve.
Karen |
