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Okay here’s an opinion that’ll get me down voted to oblivion but here goes:
Violence is like symptom management. If you’re hurting, seriously injured etc. get that morphine. But keep using it and it becomes dependency. It’s a short term solution to one specific problem and rarely solves the underlying causes. Unless you can do that, you’ll be back to using violence as symptom management. Only the next time you’ll need more of it, just like heroin.
Famously, the human rights gained by movements using violent tactics, such as the abolitionists, suffragettes, the civil rights movement, the ANC, were all very short-lived. Hollow victories, all.
Are you being sarcastic? Because we’re still reaping the benefits of all of those. Violently gained interracial marriage got legalized at 25% public support while peacefully gained gay marriage only got legalized at 65% popular support. Peacefully won trans right are more fragile than violently won labor rights.
Yes I was being sarcastic, and I should’ve made that clearer. I know of no other way of dealing with the smug sanctimonious attitude of those in rich peaceful countries demanding that the oppressed turn the other cheek because “violence bad”. It’s this bizarre combination of smugness, ignorance of history, and effective advocacy in favor of the oppressor that I really, really, cannot stand.
Haiti should have just patiently waited to gain their independence.
That’s an apt metaphor.
I get what you’re saying, where you need more solutions to a problem than just violence if you want long term change, but the metaphor you used implies that violence should not be considered.
Violence isn’t the answer, it’s an answer, one of many.
“If you kill a killer the number of killers in the world is unchanged”
“So I should kill multiple killers”
“Hol’ up”
“Tonight’s the night….”
-Needlessly creepy breakfast montage plays-
Naw write then a STRONGLY worded letter. That would have fixed Hitler and Mussolini.
This is silly. Everyone knows, historically, you stop opressors by asking nicely. Maybe go into the street in a funny costume or something, organize a singalong. Violence is what the baddies do.
Violence is what the baddies do. Follow Albert’s Path:
Bruh, you dont even have to use violence, if everyone stopped working, paying taxes and consuming anything that the bare minimum for survival, the country would collapse in less than a month.
“But I can’t just KILL Ozai! wHaT aBoUt wHaT tHe mOnKs tAuGhT mE?” -The “hero” of the story lmfao
(yes I get it, it’s supposed to be a kids show, but still…)
Yeah instead he did the moral thing… permenantly disabling him?
the thing is- Aang himself understands that his strict adherence to his values is not always a positive thing, i remember in one of the comics (or a later season) he outright calls it his own flaw
if not for the lion turtle giving him an alternative moments before, he’d have to either kill, or watch the world be destroyed
he later has to face that flaw again (actually this time) in the big graphic novels that came out, they’re really good btw. give them a read if you have the time to spare
I think it’d be funny if the energy bending thing was given like a final “oh you actually don’t have to kill” but then this power actual fails when the final battle comes… then Aang is like wtf and hesitates but then goes through a bit of internal mental battle and then finally finds the will to kill Ozai anyways and I feel like this would be better character development than a weak-ass oh I didn’t kill anyone, just crippled him for life
Like you know those movie plot where a character is like “oh I’ll be the bait and lure the enemy and you’ll kill them” and promises they won’t be in danger, then like when the plan goes through, it’s revealed that that character’s sacrifice was always necessary but they lied so its easier for that one empathetic character to go along with the plan. Like imagine the lion turtle actually did that instead, it’d be so much better as a plot.
if Aang had to kill Ozai he wouldn’t be smiling and waving after Zuko’s coronation, he most likely wouldn’t even decide to try again with Katara, the story would be forced to turn very dark, very fast, and would need to be given time and space to breathe
final minutes of the last episode are not the time to have a character break their core values, not without a season’s worth of set up to get you to that point
Historically, almost all social progress has come from stopping before you kill your oppressor and making him reorganize the system in a way that works better. Just killing the oppressor usually only gives you another one a short while later.
Also historically, a small minority of oppressors ever accepted a truce where they reorganize the system. And killing the ones that didn’t let people run the dice again with a new one.
Historically, Europeans aren’t very interested in reorganizing their slave colonies until you start beheading them
Just to note, but that one didn’t end in a great society.
Not that Haiti was necessarily at fault for that, though. It was either brace for further conquest, or submit to incredibly harsh terms of peace that would still see the country stripped of all its wealth.
They could not have a series of civil wars, though. And the people on that revolt specifically using a more complex system to judge the civilians than “what is your skin color?” would have contributed a lot to help the country improve some decades after the revolt.
Of course, it’s not really something they could just stop and choose to change.
What historical events ended the way you say? None seem to come to mind. Unless the corruption is systemic, like the Romans and Spartans, removing the problem typically solves the problem for a few generations.
Which way are you asking about?
Anyway, the corruption is always systemic. I’m not sure punctual corruption is even a thing that exists.
I’m not the previous poster, but the French Revolution > Reign of Terror > Napoleonic Era > etc. comes to mind. A cycle of despots one after another.
That’s about the least Iroh thing to say. Congrats for the quality shitpost I guess.
It’s Iroh-nic, don’t you think?
He wouldn’t word it that way, and he wouldn’t suggest that killing is universally the best way to go about it, but this is not the least likely thing that could come out of his mouth, as another commenter pointed out “Azula is crazy, and needs to go down”. Even as he turned down the team’s request to defeat Ozai, he made it clear that it could only end in death, “brother killing brother”. He was under no illusion that capturing Ozai was ever an option.
Do you think that the white lotus took back Ba Sing Se without killing anyone with those 100-foot-tall walls of fire? No, you don’t expel an occupying force by just cutting the tips off of some spears. Avatar shows us the least-bloody parts of the recapture, but do not mistake Iroh’s depiction in a kids’ series for pacifism. Iroh is very clear, vocally, that violence is necessary in some cases. He teaches zuko to redirect lightning to send it back at the person who launched it, as he says “to use your opponent’s energy against them”. He prefers nonlethal methods, but that doesn’t mean he refuses to employ deadly force. He and his friends use heavy fire against enemy metal tanks, which would boil alive the soldiers inside. They use rocks to stop up the holes through which benders were actively shooting fire, which would rebound and fill the tank with that same conflagration. Those tanks get shot up hundreds of feet in the air and have hard landings on top of one another, which would not only concuss anyone inside to death, but would crush all of the tanks on the bottom. Iroh literally starts the liberation of Ba Sing Se with a fire blast large enough to completely obliterate the titanic wall, as well as everyone previously depicted positioned directly behind it, in an instant. He doesn’t know how many soldiers lie behind that wall. He just destroys it, sight-unseen.
Iroh is not a pacifist, he is just very selective in his use of deadly force.
The oppressors are well armed and well organized through the time and battle tested bureaucratic institutions of the state
Shouldn’t, not can’t (at least not with that attitude)
Like we never tried this shit before… So who is the one deciding who gets taged as oppressor? Designate a “benevolent” dictator, or you vote on it, or just give everybody guns and make it a free for all?
Do you murder the oppressor’s children as well because they benifited from their perents behavior?
Where do you draw the line, who is an oppressor? Your boss, the cop doing her job, the train ticket expecting dude, someone stoping desperet people from shoplifting from her store?
What is wrong with you people? This is how some of the worst atrocities start.
If we’re fine with resorting to violence to get what we want, we’re no better than them. If you kill a murderer, the number of murderers in the world remains the same…
BUT, this doesn’t mean we should never, ever resort to force as a final, last, desperate act, but only when there’s no other option.
As with Batman, the number only remains the same if you only kill one murderer. Kill two, and that’s a net positive!
What Gotham really needs is safety bars around acid pools and more than one licensed therapist, preferably one that doesn’t turn into a manic pixie dream clown
It’s hard to argue with that!
I dunno man, killing a genocidal maniac makes someone a hero in my book.
I’d say we throw that hypothetical person a parade. During which, they are presented with various awards, and accolades. Definitely an honorary doctorate somewhere too. We would then of course need to nominate that person for a Nobel peace prize—and I’d bet they’d win.
we’re no better than them.
The slave doesn’t want to be better than the slaver, they want to be free.
There’s an argument that murder is unlawful killing of another human. If ending the life of a murderer is done lawfully, the number is m-1.
I am not claiming that I support this theory, just putting it into the discourse as a thing that some folks could easily believe.
Also, it’s semantics as the argument you’re making still perfectly holds if the word murderer is swapped for ‘killer’
Because they can’t suffer if they’re dead.
motherfuck turning the other cheek
