Good, thoughtful article. You are young and idealistic. You are the ones who lead the way.

Society changes slowly. There will always be vestiges of medieval thinking which linger in our “modern” culture and traditions. However, I do think there is progress toward your ideals. Torture and violence are used much less in Western societies than they used to. Homosexuality is slowly becoming accepted and decriminalized. (unfortunately some progress has dwindled with the backward, fundamentalist attitudes prevailing now)

Keep speaking your ideals.

take care,
David

I’ll agree that the greatest evil is not the imprisonment of homosexuals or the other things listed in the post. That was simply me being overly melodramatic in order to prove a point regarding my disgust.

That said, by violence/coercion/force, the physical taking of that which one does not own most certainly would fall under that category. Not all force leaves behind broken windows.

Anyways, thanks for the comment — healthy disagreement is incredibly beneficial for understanding any issue further. =)

Moreover, a real worry with your picture is that we would all (seemingly) agree that the state is involved *only* in response to acts of violence. Thus, we imprison murderers and rapists, but spare most everyone else. This seems false. For example, after someone’s death a thief enters the estate and steals several items of value. Suppose that this crime left the estate in pristine condition otherwise: no doors/windows broken, etc. Did an act of violence occur? One view of the harm done is that the owner was harmed in having valuables stolen. However, it is difficult to conceive how we might harm the dead as they no longer have interests (at least on one view, not necessarily my own). So no violence against anyone (alive) seems to have taken place. However, it seems nuts for the state not to be involved, least of all fail to criminalize such thefts.

What is more, violence is a contested concept…and not all acts of violence are acts we want to forbid, whether it be dangerous driving (again: no victims), etc.

Debbie Downer time. I dont quite buy this line:

“We desire peace. We desire happiness, and the absence of any need for coercion. We seek to be free, to be able to do what we want, to live in comfort. What then is the delusion that masquerades as accomplishing these goals yet actually works against them?”

“We,” the American people tend to desire security. For security, “we” would sacrifice our peace (war on a battle tactic and not an ideological group), we would sacrifice our happiness (preferring the security of a 9 to 5 job to adventure) and “we” would certainly allow pretty much any form of coercion to assure our security (especially if it involves taxing those greedy rich people).

Oh…and if we truly owned ourselves, we could commit the ultimate form of violence–suicide.