Pale Dawn wrote:I am not suggesting that I am indifferent or that it is fine to soil the soul by one's actions. Only that as a course of actions within ones life it is not always avoidable. Regarding repercussions I would still say you are oversimplifying. We are always responsible for our actions and for our choice not to act. If you have the capacity to protect those in your charge and you choose not to that is your right, you can find justification for it, but it is not blameless as you still carry the weight of the inaction. Our responsibilities are many and often conflicting. We can say that ones primary and first responsibility is in to God, but within the secular there is no clear delineation of priority and we must sort it ourselves. Your death through non violence is only blameless in so far as you do not owe any others an aspect of your life. If your place in life is to provide for those around you and you allow another to make the final choice of rather you live or die, you surrendered that responsibility and would be held to blame for the lack of provision. If you allow those under your charge to come to harm or death through inaction and a commitment to nonviolence then you are guilty of breaking their trust. To claim that these obligations hold no weight on your soul sounds like an empty existence. To say that trust does not physically exist and therefore of no moral weight when presented with choices of action is to proceed into emptiness and to devoid yourself also of love for there can be no love if there is no trust. If you forego love and trust in life for the sake of nonviolence that is a hollow victory.
I do agree that one is culpable just as much for action as inaction, so long as either is a result of volition/intent, but this is very context-dependent. To reiterate, the conception of relationships of trust as obligations isn't true on some real level. At some point trust is broken, almost always. This isn't even necessarily immoral, because the trust involved in these relationships exists only to the extent that each participate ascribes it as existing. To lose love for a romantic partner and to leave them, for example, is often to break a faith and trust that they had that the relationship would not end, but this is not a blameworthy action. Trust is only binding to the extent that one vows to do one thing or another, and to that end one shouldn't make promises they cannot or should not be keeping. and they should not justify other immorality to keep from the immorality of having broken a vow. Perhaps recognizing this does create a "hollow victory," to entertain that idea, but that is not ultimately the goal. The goal of life, in my eyes, is not winning but in ending suffering. To that end, the "hollow victory" is a mere byproduct to that path.
Beyond that, as before, in seeking non-violence one seeks to end the cycle of violence and creates conditions conducive to violence's end. One can be ultimately satisfied in knowing they have done all that could be done for that end. On the other hand, if one dies in the act of causing pain and affliction, in hurting others, knowing that in failing they have brought about only evil in the world, what are their final thoughts of? Surely not satisfaction with having accomplished the task at hand, but hatred for their adversary and pain at their failure.
