Re-evalutions of old values.

As is the case with anybody who progresses through adulthood (except for the most stubborn and inflexible of people), I find myself reconsidering and re-evaluating my old ideas and values.

An area in particular to which I've been giving a lot of thought recently is in pacifism. Which in itself is just a sub-set of weighing idealism versus necessity.

Once upon a time, I believed pacifism could solve any conflict. Human beings, using their inherent ability to reason and capacity for empathy, could put their differences aside and work out their issues together.

However, as I grow older, I find this outlook more difficult to accept. Yes, I have become more cynical, but I've always felt that a little cynicism is healthy. And please do not misunderstand me here; I am not militaristic and I am not advocating war and violence.

Why, then, do I no longer accept pacifism as a solution to any and all problems? Well, the reason is simple enough to flat-out annoy anybody reading this: it's just the way the world works.

You see, in order for pacifism to work, all sides involved need to be committed to it. All sides need to want to have dialogue, all sides need to want peace. A curious look at the world's conflicts, both past and on-going, shows that this is simply not the case. In almost all instances, we have different groups fighting each other because of conviction. All sides are absolutely convinced of the righteousness of their respective causes and see any form of compromise as ideological defeatism.

Pacifism also works on the assumption that all people can be reasoned with. Again, this assumption is plainly wrong. There exists people and groups who either have psychological problems or are so indoctrinated as to completely dissolve any form of rational thinking. Other factors, like desperation, also account into eroding common sense and reason.

Truth is, human beings have relied on survival instinct and the will to dominate for far longer than we've relied on our ability to reason. It's not a flaw that needs to be corrected. It's part of who we are, part of the human experience.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword. Far too many people have attempted to brush it off as "an unavoidable necessity". It's simply too easy to do a crime and say afterwards that you had no choice and that the ends ultimately justified the means.

And here I am, having gone through this cycle of thought, no closer to a resolution than when I started. There is simply no easy answer to the necessity of peace and war. But then, nothing is easy, is it?