...If you are a pacifist, you are against violence in any shape or form...
Well, here is probably where we have different ideas of the word´s meaning: For me it means that I dont believe in violence being a strat to solve problems. Tactically, I will beat whatever out of you if you touch my private area.
...By being a pacifist, you would also not seek revenge, because violence does not only exist as a physical activity, but also as a psychological entity.
Indeed. This is where male and female violence in the family is treatd (from my POV) way too differently.
Psychological violence is violence all the same.
OTOH, just to explain things a bit, here is my background:
When I was young (first class in school, at 5: One yr earlier for being talented), I was not only the shortest in class, but also red haired, 1 year younger, and knew to read, write and calculate already while the other mates didnt. I was completely bored, the green monkey, and socially inept.
This did not fare me well, for 4 years consecutively I got beaten up *every* day on my way home. I looked for alternative ways to home, but in general thi only offered hort relief periods, I had to swallow it, no way around. I did *not* like that (actually, it was quite traumatic and has marked me forever).
At 10, starting college 5th class, as I had changed schools, I expected things to change, but some of my old class had also changed school, and after 2 month or so we were back to the same routine, for another year or so (and I did less like it).
Then, when I was 12, we had this big guy repeating course in our class, intelligent and, for some reason, taking concern for my woes (buddy ever since), and he told me: "Why do you not simply everytime they beat you up answer to them: Break their pens (in the ´50s those were *really* expensive and the parents gave you a beating if you broke them), tear their clothes apart, through their soccer balls to the neighbous dogs, etc?"
My answer was: "Look, I am afraid like hell that they will beat me up..." to which he replied "...but they do that anyway, don´t they?".
This was the moment something clicked and my life changed:
From this moment on I would answer every assault with a revenge act, with open visor, in front of everybody and being castigated by the teachers for it many times.
You beat me? I slit your bycicle tubes.
You think you need to beat me more? Fine, I will douse your bicycle in gasoline and burn it. etc, etc., sometimes I went way out in the revenge scale compared to what someone had done (and said, I also applied it there).
Suffices to say that, while I did not make friends that way, after 2 mont the harrassment had stopped and has never started again afterwards.
Now, where is the pacifist angle? Here:
As I have suffered in my deepest soul a lot of violence through many years, and as my values tell me "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you", I am absolutely against violence as a general strategy. The receiving end hurts, and there is no compensation for the damgae done, if there are other ways to reach goals.
OTOH, my call sign in the AF was "Rächer" (i.e. more or less "avenger"), and I had chosen that on purpose. I have decided long ago that NOBODY will *ever* do something harmful, hurting or otherwise humiliating to me or mine w/o getting the adequate response. I learnt that at 12, am proud of it, and have always stuck to it (and it works while I dont get killed in the process).
I am a pacifist in that *I never start a fight*, no matter what adrenaline has built up.
I am a pacifist in that I have taught my kids to look for other solutions than violence (I never touched them) and tried to show them that this works (and it does, actually).
I believe in that we pacifists can make the world a little better every day just by *deciding*
when we have to fight and when not, but, as pacifists, we also have this reponsibility of making such decisions, it is a bit more complicated as for the non-pacifist.
I am a pacifist in that I have no prob at all to turn the other cheek to a minor offense, I will even buy you a beer if it is you who offended me.
Up tp a point: I also became a soldier because I believe you do not *ever* have to suffer violence from others without returning the favor, you need to know when and how to counter them idiots that do not understand other means of communication.
And when you need to swing into action because someone starts a severe attack on you, yours or your values, when you *do* respond, it better be not a few slaps but one decisive punch: Give all, shut the other guy down, terminally, instantly. All means to reach that goal are fair game, he asked for it.
Dont know if I made myself clear here, but that is how I feel and think. Revenge in this respect is fine with me.
And I consider myself a pacifist.
Rattler