alt Hacker News>> I'm not sure it's accurate to define yourself as a pacifist if you believe safeguarding the concept of a nation-state is more important than human life, ethics, or the downstream effects of using "every weapon at your disposal".
Wait till you hear that I'm also an anti-nationalist :P
But I'm also pragmatic. Nations aren't going away and they have armies and they like to invade each other. If my country were to be invaded (not a zero probability; I'm Greek and if NATO collapses...) I would put the good of my people above my personal beliefs before you could say "peacenick". C'est la vie.
>> I don't think you realize the creativity and variety we humans have put to use when designing weapons.
I think I do but why do you say this? I didn't understand how it connects to the rest of your comment, or to mine.
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>I think I do but why do you say this? I didn't understand how it connects to the rest of your comment, or to mine.
not the parent, but i have a guess.
they mention the variety of weapons because some weapons are abhorrent. designed to be maximally painful, for the maximum amount of time, purely to bring about maximum suffering.
"every weapon at your disposal" includes those weapons. and that is really difficult to square with "im a pacifist", even when considering conditional pacifism.
But don't you think Greece, if nothing else, emphasizes that a country isn't defined by whoever happens to declare it as part of their borders, but the people within those borders? Greece persisted for millennia, even when there was no Greece. The state disappeared but the people persisted.
I'm not at all a pacifist but there is no country I would fight, let alone die, for. Because when we say that we're really speaking of fighting and dying for politicians, not a country. And there is no political group that, in my opinion, deserves anywhere near that level of loyalty.