Jim wrote: ↑Thu Dec 11, 2025 11:43 pmGhandi showed that resistance to oppression can be non-violent and successful. The US civil rights movement was also mostly non-violent. Resistance entails suffering, whether violent or non-violent. I think non-violence will be more effective; the oppressors have greater firepower. Not resisting also produces suffering.
Jim points up the fundamental quandary concerning whether to resist or not, but also hints that non-resistance merely perpetuates suffering where resistance
may shorten it. Therefore, it becomes a decision of how much suffering one is willing to undergo to obtain a meaningful end result.
Under normal circumstances and situations I choose non-violence if possible. If however, the opposing side shows its hand that violence will be used, then I regard it as largely inevitable that it will be at some point in time unless a deterrent to its use is established (which becomes an externality). Note that as history has proved, violence will be -- and has been -- used in the past against non-violent resistance -- in which it comes down to the vagaries of history which party is the victor and which is the oppressor.
It's also important to note here that we are dealing with forces vastly more powerful than the right to simply wear what we want; this cuts to the core of what it means to be human. Encouragingly, history seems to largely be on the side of freer societies as pointed up in the not-too-distant past where the Thousand Year Reich lasted but seven years. (The current regimes in the USA and Russia have already lasted longer.)
How important is the right for a man to put both legs down one pipe instead of two compare to two shooting wars (Russia/Ukraine and USA/Venezuela) and an ongoing genocide (Israel/Gaza)? I'd posit not very in the grand scheme of things.
