PERSONAL PACIFISM

2014 Graphic Depicting the Roots of Today's Violence. The National Action Network in the USA Today Is Behind "No Justice, No Peace". 

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One of the outcomes of my seven years of Jesuit education and subsequent decades of self-education has been my perspective as a pacifist historian. It is impossible to study the histories of various strains of humanity on a weak stomach. The propensity toward war and carnage is deeply imbedded in our animal brains. 

My pacifist epiphany happened when I was about twelve. I was a social child and an active one. War games were the standard form of play among the boys in my blue-collar neighborhood. We lived on the edge of a small city. Plenty of rocky hills with trees and grassy patches. A landscape that doesn't exist any more that close to a major city. We spent warm days rambling around on nearby hillsides or in small wooded areas. 

As several of us developed pubic hair, we formed a homosexual cabal. Two brothers gave us access to their basement recreation room for the purpose of sexual experimentation. Their parents worked late hours. We were uninterrupted in our fumbling play at being tactile and affectionate with each other. We all had our first experiences of mutual orgasm in that basement. Frightening at first. Close to addictive thereafter.

My cousin Tom was part of the games. He lived across the street from me. Our mothers were sisters. Tom and I were six months apart in age. He was dark, muscular, compact and a bit sullen. I was tall, blonde, precocious and a bit chubby. The two brothers in our cabal were similarly different. One was dark and slight. The other, adopted, was simply a beautiful all-American blonde born in Texas. He had been orphaned as a newborn by a nationally reported car accident.

My pacifist epiphany occurred after I lapsed into a blind rage. The whole neighborhood of youngsters had happened to assemble one Fall afternoon on our street. Boys and girls. We were goofing around like typical pre-adolescents of the time. Tag, hide-and-seek, card games on stoops. I inadvertently put my arm around my cousin's should after a game of tag. Thought nothing of it.

Tom pushed me away violently and yelled, "Don't touch me, you sissy." I thought it was a joke and pursued him. He became enraged and yelled, "I'll tell everyone you're queer." The activity on the street froze. I didn't. My rage was instantaneous, blind. I pushed him against a telephone poll. He fell over. I started strangling him and eventually woke up as I was being pulled off him by my father. I had been rubbing Tom's left cheek against the concrete sidewalk. He was unconscious.

I was not a violent child. Quite the opposite. The previous year I was attacked on the way home from school by several school bullies whose fathers had been arrested or given traffic tickets at different points by my policeman father. I took a beating and fended off my attackers long enough to escape. There were points when I could have inflicted damage but hadn't. 

So, my pacifist epiphany was rooted in the horror of what I had done to someone I truly loved ... my cousin Tom. I also took the lesson that loving someone intensely does not mean they will love you back.  Cousin Tom grew to be a conflicted homosexual man and a lifetime alcoholic, who died relatively young. Tom never trusted me or forgave me. 

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The impact of my own violence goes deep in my psyche. I have not forgiven myself for what I did to my cousin. Obviously, I will never forget it. As I look through history, I see how human violence has perverted our evolutionary path forward at every turn. The militarist might see wars as healthy competition, survival of the fittest. I have heard otherwise sane politicians excuse wars as bringing tremendous invention and progress, yielded from trying to figure out how to kill the enemy.

Frankly, that is bullshit. I may have to admit that some inventions were driven by military necessity, but, as a scientist, I can also argue that alternative inventions, just as beneficial to mankind could have developed sooner if not impeded by the catastrophe of war. I would like to offer some of my imaginings about alternative time lines of American history without wars. 

The initial impetus that unintentionally led to the discovery of the Americas was trade, not war. An Old Europe, exhausted by plagues and regional wars, looked outward to Asia as an trading partner. Devising a circumventing water route to Asia was something of a practical necessity after centuries of Holy War between Christendom and Islam. Muslim nations stood squarely in the path of the Silk Road from China. European nobility and developing trade classes were hooked on Asian goods.

Instead of China, early explorers happened upon the Americas. After initial disappointment, the powers of the time realized that the Americas offered something greater than silk, spices or gold. Land...miles and miles of tree-covered, water-abundant land. Land was a commodity already becoming scarcer in Old Europe. Populations continued to rebound despite wars and plagues. Aristocrats and wealthy men of commerce were also growing in number. Competition for land and resources was building.

Colonization of the Americas was initially marked by little violence against the native populations. This was due in part by the home advantage of the native populations. They could depend on environmental and biological challenges upon the new arrivals to even the strategic advantage of better weaponry in the hands of the intruders. 

Imagine two great continents being peacefully incorporated into the structures of Old Europe, rather than being forced to submit and reciprocally stained by genocide. There were those among the colonists who did imagine just that. Jesuit missionaries often scouted the new lands ahead of military incursion. They learned native languages in a misguided attempt to convert the native populations to Christianity. Some were butchered. Others went native themselves. Others succeeded in converting tribes.  

Had the Jesuits, with the understanding that peaceful coexistence was preferable to homicidal conquest in the name of God, prevailed, colonization of the Americas would have been exponentially less bloody for both sides. And, the reciprocal impact of nature-based cultures of the Americas on the jaded Christian nobility of Old Europe would have benefited that continent's evolution.

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Fast forward to the American Revolution. 

What if the English government had been less violent in response to commercial protests by New England colonists? There were wise men in the English Parliament of the time who strongly advised moderation in response to colonial protests. The Crown was held by rather unstable Hanoverians, Germanic nobility with more arrogance than common sense. 

If Parliamentary moderates had managed to convince the Royal establishment not to take aggressive measures against the protesting colonists, the American Revolution may never have occurred. The violence of the English response to the colonials' demands led to the conflict. If that conflict had been resolved without a bloody revolution, we would be at one with our Canadian brothers and sisters. Think of the difference that would have made in our development as a nation.

A united North America under British imperial rule would have seen the abolition of slavery in 1833! More than thirty years earlier than Emancipation with the saving of millions of lives. There would have been no Civil War. All of North America could have been united in English law, English parliamentary representation, English education and the English language eventually without the bloody violence which has gotten us basically to the same place with less benefit. 

The United States after the Revolutionary War may well have chosen a non-violent approach to the North-South conflicts that led to The Civil War. There were those in Congress who presented models of compromise. Even after Secession, The Confederacy might well have become a functional and cooperative government without bloodshed. 

Abolition, despite the revisionists versions, was not the only impetus for bloody war. Commercial conflict between Northern manufacturers and Southern raw materials providers is seldom mentioned, but was a serious element in the politics of war. 

The Confederacy of Southern States would most likely have agreed to abolish slavery sooner if left to its own devices, since its chief trading partner would have been the British Empire (including English Canada, of course), instead of The United States. Abolition of slavery may well have occurred years sooner in The South to satisfy the British Empire. 

The remaining United States would have been forced through business to become much more aligned with the French, the Dutch and the emerging Prussian Empire (Germany). United States (Northern States) manufacturing would have been modified to a less environmentally damaging level with a development and protection of its own natural resources. Would The United States in this timeline be more like the European Union of today? Most likely. Would this global diplomatic configuration have made WWI and WWII less likely? Perhaps. 

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The most valuable aspect of developing a personal pacifism is its facilitation of eliminating unnecessary conflict in daily life. It is a demanding discipline in a society which is rife with the hormonal tensions that exist between heterosexual men and women. Heterosexual men approach each other with aggression more often than not. Women approach all men with the anticipation of aggression toward them. A pacifist homosexual befuddles both camps. 

A friend of mine has adapted as an effeminate gay man who engages in business with primarily heterosexual men, many of them blue-collar construction contractors. My friend discovered early on that aggression was a common language with these heterosexual men. He greets any heterosexual aggression with homosexual aggression. He sexually demeans any straight man who treats him like a fag. And it works. Most of those demeaned actually enjoy it. But some have taken offense and the aggression has turned rarely to violence.

My experience in the world as an openly gay pacifist has been varied. Woman, once they get to know me, usually drop the standard female defenses against men. In other words, we are able to relate openly simply as human beings. Heterosexual men generally suspect me of some hidden agenda against them. I am bombarded with endless statements about their male-female relationships, their provenance in society, their superior education, their children's accomplishments, etc.. All signs that my lack of aggression toward them makes them very suspicious and insecure. 

The net result of being male, homosexual and pacifist in American culture, as I see it, is to be rather prone to isolation. Luckily, seventeen years ago I met another homosexual pacifist. That relationship has convinced me more deeply that my path to non-violence and truthfulness in my life has been the right way.