| | This discussion brings me to a real problem I have with Objectivists: their tendency to see people as utterly defined by certain isolated actions. Like anyone who threatens you is a de facto hardened criminal. People make all kinds of bad choices, often thoughtlessly or compulsively, out of ignorance, out of fear. Such folk sometimes initiate force. I'm not saying that you would be wrong if you seriously hurt or even killed someone who threatened you with a knife, say, but I don't know why it is necessary for me to absolutely devalue his life as he momentarily devalues mine. He is in a desperate and possibly unique situation in his life. Why should I set my sense of life at his level, judge his life by his standards and not my own? I'm trained in martial arts and might very well be able to disarm the man with ease. In such a case, he thinks he's threatening my life, but I know that he really isn't. He has clearly initiated force against me, but I rationally judge that I am not terribly threatened. And once disarmed, his situation is very different. His new situation could very easily inspire him to make some very rational choices, like going away and leaving me alone. Am I foolish to imagine that he might think twice about pulling a knife on anyone very soon? Or are all criminal acts committed by irredeemable, hopelessly irrational recidivists?
A lot of what I've learned about conflict resolution involves deescalating the situation; leading the other person to reduce his hostility by example. Though I have not yet disarmed a a knife wielding mugger, I have been in several dangerous situations that I judge could have gone badly if I didn't react with a cool head and from a place of compassionate optimism. From what I've read, an Objectivist is morally obligated not to do so, but must meet any threat with an equal or greater and opposite threat. If I were a rational gun-toting Objectivist, I might have killed several people in my life by now. I'm very glad I haven't. Objectivists seem a little overly concerned with the mere intentions of the would-be force initiator; a little too interested, frankly, in retaliatory force. Like Dirty Harry, they want me to think that the opportunity presented by an initiation of force would make their day. In geopolitical terms, this kind of thinking leads to the perceived need to annihilate the 'Slamo-fascists because they intend to destroy us, when a lot of us really don't see that as a realistic possibility at all. With such terrorists out there, seems like a good Objectivist has only the one choice: all-out war. But one choice really isn't a choice at all, is it?
-Kevin
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