There are very few people who seem to have a positive take on Pacifism. Whether it be a minimalist anti-war Pacifism or a maximalist social harmony Pacifism, we all seem to be deeply hated by most people? Why is the Western world so belligerent, warlike, and uncompromising nowadays?

https://kellylatimoreicons.com/collections/signed-print/products/christ-breaks-the-rifle

I'm an author, and my current book delves into vigilantism. The main characters are not pacifists, one was actually a military sniper, but most of said sniper's family are pacifists. His pacifist sister becomes important in book two.

My goal isn't really to write something with a pacifist message—I myself am not one—but I'm not writing against it either. I'd just like to explore different views and let readers draw their own conclusions.

I like the sniper's sister—she's blunt and sassy, holds firmly to her beliefs, and brings some much-needed contrast to a story with a lot of violence.

HOWEVER, as mentioned, I am not a pacifist. I'd love feedback to help me write her character more authentically and am hoping some of you can help!

What would you consider a good and bad representation of someone with pacifist views?

In what ways might her brother's past occupation affect how she sees him? (Note: she doesn't know he's broken the law, and I see them caring about each other despite their differences.)

Really, I'd love any insights that help me flesh out her character (and even the rest of sniper's family with the different views and reactions they might have).

Greetings Pacifists. I’ve just recently started having an interest in Pacifism. Have you ever had any doubts about your stance if you’re an absolute Pacifist? I’ve seen studies showing how movements that employ nonviolent resistance are more likely to succeed than movements that utilize armed resistance as a means to their goals and read books on the subject. But lately, I’ve been having doubts in Pacifism as merely a naive ideology in the face of hardened tyrants or leaders like Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kim Jong-il. These rulers have either ignored or stomped out opposition to their policies. Can Pacifism and by extension nonviolent resistance really prevail against the will of tyrants?

It's sickening to see so many posts on reddit celebrating the loss of a life

Pacifism in its fullness may be summed up in Sermon on the Mount Nonresistance that is

responding to violence with nonviolence and that what my Tolstoyanism means to me

Pacifism for me necessitates anarchism and veganism

Imagine the world in which all systems of authority have collapsed and the human race has been greatly thinned out. Specifically in a post nuclear landscape. Do you think maintaining a pacifist philosophy would be effective for survival? How would pacifism look in a world where people are forming cliques and their own communities with military forces, with people on their own, everyone desperately trying to survive and scavenge?

Tolstoyan pacifism is a lifestyle pacifism not just anti war

We embrace veganism and anarchism as part of our nonviolence

Alice , of allices restaurant fame, is dead

https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/11/22/alice-brock-alices-restaurant-dies

And because the morons are yet again busy selling the next great war, now might again be a good time to start spreading this song again:

https://youtu.be/m57gzA2JCcM?feature=shared

[edit] The song ‘Alices Restaurant ‘ is , if you wait long enough, at about 20 minutes into the song, a song against war and the draft. It’s a protest song.

I've found that while some argue that it is against human nature it have a perfectly non-violent society, there is a legitimate, reasonable way of going about this query.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how a system like this should work or whether or not it should work at all?

I have been struggling with this one. I recently started following football (American style not soccer). In recent years the violence has seemed to really taper off - players are penalized for unnecessary roughness, aren't allowed to gloat over players they tackle, and the announcers no longer glamourize the "hard hits". I've wanted to follow football in the past because I think it's a great sport but always stayed away due to the encouraged violence.

It's still somewhat violent now, but it's now more a side effect of the sport, not an encouraged part.

Unlike say hockey, where the violence isn't a part of the rules, but it clearly is encouraged since fights are allowed and even encouraged, and some players are hired just to be "goons" or "bruisers".

Maybe I'm just trying to look at football with rose coloured glasses and ignoring the obvious signs that it's just as violent as explicitly violent sports like hockey or boxing.

Would love to hear thoughts from those here

I'm curious to see if there are any I'm not familiar with.

Are you guys vegan?

If not, why not?

Edit: Thanks for the replies, interesting to hear different views

I would say that self-righteousness, self-blindness, and lack of self-doubt contribute to a lot of large and small scale lacking of peace. Having no introspective or contemplative side tends to lead to an unrestrained person from what I have seen.

Emotions that are against peace would probably be hate, resentment, envy, anger, the will to power and domination, greed, arrogance, and a few others I have missed.

Since the majority view is pacifists are cowardly, and passive. How do we spread the truth?

Does anyone here have any ideas or links or wisdom or anything ? (please nothing inappropriate)

When it's a self-defence situation? What constitutes a self-defense situation? Or did God/Nature leave that for us to decide basically?

Calling the police or a higher authority to protect you is still violence and you are responsible for the actions that the police commit in your defense.

The same as if a goverment sends soldiers into war , relying on authority to protect you is ethically worse because you have no control over the level of violence that is committed.

I almost drowned a day back and I was so scared of losing my life. My only life. Such vitality I’ve given to my useless life that I couldn’t afford to even think about losing it. In sheer panic, I chose to swim harder , pedal faster hoping to catch the shore. I just wanted my feet to touch the ground. Just how dear life is, at least in that moment. I’m not able to shake it off.

Then how can one chose to step down in war ? To self sacrifice for peace , for prosperity. What is peace and prosperity if I’m not there, if my family is not there. To sacrifice for the enemies family , for their peace. For the peace and prosperity of humanity , i will cease to exist. How will I sacrifice there ? How do I step down when I is the main question ? Sure I’ve attached “I” to my country. I to my family . Oh my mother and wife will get raped. So the problem is about your mother ? And your wife ? And if it’s someone else’s wife getting raped then ? It’s different ? Then where does humanity come into play then ? Then what is this talk bout peace , if it’s only about your mother and your wife ? When politicians tells their youth to go fight for them and they’re willing to say that while they sip their morning coffee. Cause as long they’re having their coffee and if their children are having their coffee then it’s alright. With “I” , there is no humanity. We can forget bout it. All this talk of humanity has no realism if you’re obsessed about your existence. You cannot be a pacifist when you’re drowning.

And if you can, then we can start talking bout , peace, prosperity and humanity.

Pacifism, often wrapped in the rhetoric of morality and peace, is, at its core, a grand illusion designed to pacify the powerless. Those in power have long understood that violence is a tool—one they wield with precision and control, while condemning its use by those beneath them. It is not coincidence, then, that pacifism is sold to the masses as the "higher ground," as the ultimate moral stance. But who benefits from this lofty position? Surely not the oppressed, whose non-violence is met with either condescending indifference or, worse, brutal retaliation.

The state, the corporate elite, and all who maintain the status quo rely on the monopoly on power. It is not only a monopoly of the means of force but of the narrative. They insist that peaceful protest is the only way to bring about change, offering the faint glimmer of hope that speaking truth to power will awaken the conscience of the oppressors. Yet, history has shown this to be nothing more than a trap. Peaceful protests, especially when they threaten to disrupt the established order, are met with censorship, media blackouts, and quiet suppression. When ignored, protestors are told to move on, to clear out, to be patient. It is a request that amounts to nothing but an ultimatum: leave or face force. And when they refuse? Then comes the violence.

The peaceful protests, when inconvenient, are brutally repressed—riot police, tear gas, arrests, the truncheon against the flesh. The state labels its violent actions "necessary" and "measured," always casting its heavy-handedness in the light of maintaining order, security, and peace. This is the paradox of pacifism: the very people demanding peace are met with violence, and those who dare respond to that violence in kind are vilified as aggressors. Pacifism is not a two-way street; it is a one-sided demand made by those who hold the power of the sword.

What happens, then, when the censored and suppressed finally resist this narrative? When they, in the face of brutal force, pick up stones, raise barricades, and fight back? Their resistance is criminalized, delegitimized, and painted as savagery. The state responds with bigger violence—escalation, militarization, bullets replacing batons. The cycle of repression grows ever more grotesque as pacifism’s promises are revealed to be hollow. The message is clear: you may speak softly as long as you remain silent, but raise your voice or your fist, and we will crush you.

In the end, pacifism serves power by disarming the subordinate class, both morally and physically. It teaches that violence—except when sanctioned by the state—is always wrong, conveniently leaving the ruling class free to employ it at will. It instructs the oppressed that to fight back is to betray the cause of peace, ensuring their submission in the face of injustice.

And so, the great scam of pacifism is laid bare. It is not a pathway to peace but a leash around the necks of the powerless, held by those who use violence and the threat of violence to maintain their dominion. Peace, as it is presented, is not the absence of conflict; it is the absence of resistance. True peace, the kind born from justice, will never be handed down by those in power. It will only be wrested from them, by any means necessary.

I view pacifism and violence as languages, means of communication that are taught, learned, used, expanded on, developed, and livded. Pacifism, for all its moral pretensions, is often misunderstood as a universal language. Its proponents speak of dialogue, negotiation, and reason, as though every human being is fundamentally attuned to the language of peace. Yet, this assumption is not only naive but dangerous. The world is not a place where all speak the same language. Just as some tongues are unknown to others, so too is the language of pacifism foreign to those in power, who have long spoken and thrived in a different tongue—violence.

Violence is not merely an action, it is a language—rich in nuance, direct in meaning, and understood implicitly by those who wield it. For centuries, violence has been the lingua franca of kings, states, and empires. Borders have been drawn and redrawn in blood, power shifts negotiated through war, and social hierarchies built upon the domination of one group by another. This is the language of conquest, of subjugation, and of authority. It is a primal speech, and those in power are fluent in it.

The tragedy of pacifism is that it attempts to communicate in a language that the powerful do not care to understand. Pacifists speak of moral duty, justice, and peaceful coexistence, but these words fall on deaf ears. To the oppressor, pacifism appears weak, submissive—a form of pleading from those who have already been dominated. Power, after all, is not maintained by mutual understanding or compromise, but by force. The powerful do not speak the language of peace because they have never needed to. Their rule is secured by the sword, the prison, the gun. The very tools that sustain their authority are inscribed in the language of violence.

For the powerful, violence is not chaotic or senseless—it is coherent, structured, and highly effective. It is a system of communication with clear rules: resistance is met with suppression, defiance is met with punishment, and insurrection is met with annihilation. Pacifism, by contrast, appears to them as the language of the vanquished, a foreign dialect of submission and weakness, powerless to alter the status quo.

The failure of pacifism, then, lies not in its ideals but in its assumption that the powerful will respond to it. They will not. To them, pacifism is a language they neither speak nor recognize. It cannot move them because they are untouched by it. No amount of peaceful protest, reasoned dialogue, or moral persuasion will sway those who only understand power in terms of coercion and domination. You cannot reason with those who speak only in violence by refusing to speak their language.

If the powerful are to be convinced, they must be taught to understand a different message—a message they can comprehend, and the only way to teach them the basics is to speak the language they already know. Pacifism will never succeed until it is coupled with an understanding of violence as a form of communication. It is not an abandonment of ideals but an embrace of reality. To challenge power, you must first speak its language.

Just as an oppressed people may rise up in rebellion, using violence not as an end but as a means of expressing their refusal to submit, so too must those who seek justice learn to communicate with those who hold power in terms they understand. The only way to force the hand of those who control the machinery of violence is to show them that their monopoly on it is not unchallenged.

To speak the language of violence is not to descend into chaos, but to make oneself understood in a world where dialogue has failed. It is to demand, rather than ask. It is to compel, rather than request. It is to teach those in power that their position is not invulnerable, that their control is not total. The very basics of this language must be communicated forcefully, with clarity, through resistance that can no longer be ignored.

This is not an argument for the glorification of violence, nor a celebration of destruction, but a recognition that those in power will never respond to peace until they are made to. When the oppressed speak in the language of pacifism, they are offering dialogue. When that dialogue is ignored, their only choice is to shift to the language of violence—not because they desire it, but because the powerful have left them no other option.

The first step in teaching those who hold power is to make them listen. And they will never listen until their world is shaken by the very tools they use to maintain control. Only when they are made to feel the consequences of their own violent rule will they even begin to entertain the possibility of understanding a different language. Only then, perhaps, can true dialogue begin.

Hi all, I myself am not a pacifist but the idea fascinates me. I was wondering if most of pacifists believe in absolutely no violence under any circumstances. Would you not defend your kids/family if an intruder broke in? Would you not defend yourself if you were being assaulted? In what situations would you ever resort to violence if there is any? Also please let me know if I am misunderstanding of the pacifist beliefs. Thanks!