Is it necessary to respond to violence with violence and to evil with evil? Is it possible to preserve good by doing evil?
I may sound romantic, but when you use violence to fight violence, you generate more violence. We are free because we are committed without being forced to do so. Evil is more related to our attitudes to other people, and from other people towards us. Evil lives in the details.
Today’s Question by Aart Hilal
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
My dear Maria-M
You are or young or indoctrinated. What do you realy know about communism and regimes, one thing is idea and daily unjustice quite something else. There is no black and white in real world, there are no country where you have only two categories of people: ordinary and terorists, there are no inteligent bombs,
but there is too much prejudice, too much superficiality and above all all consuming and invading materialism.
Do you know how many inocent people were executed? If one of them were yur brother or child?
Do you know how many inocent people are at the moment inprisoned nowdays in free Europe and America ?
Do you know how many monuments, churches and nature monuments have been lately destroied by war ?
Do you think that for a mother whose kid was shot down or died of hunger is important some UNESCO world herritage monument ?
Paulo is giving us questions to open our mind, to see the life from different side, to search within us answers for better world, to fihgt and never give up…
That is how I understand his questions. They provoke reactions, very often they make us face our limits and I LOVE IT, and I am open and ready to change if needed be?
Now tell me what is the truth ? What is wrong or right ? What is ugly or beautiful ?
I have no answers, if you do, lucky you !
I know one thing for certain that ever since the war every morning I am full of joy and thankful to God (I am cristian-catholic as my parents and grand parents were even in Tito’s communist SFR Jugoslavija)to be here in my home, on this lovely planet Earth.
I consider myself fortunate and glad that destiny brought me out of that enormous sea of books possibility to know Paulo Coelho work.
Do not accept answers without searching your heart first.
Luce
P.S. Thanks and love to you Paulo for waking up our conscience
Luce,
“Where are human rights in Guantanamo?In Iraq?”
The people being held at Guantanamo are known terrorist. I’m not sure who you’re referring to when you mentioned Iraq, are you referring to the terrorists, or the citizens of this country. If it is the citizens you’re talking about, then their human rights are being protected by the “invading forces” , they were not the ones that destroyed the mosques to begin a civil war. As for the terrorist whether in Iraq, Guantanamo or anywhere else they exist, they gave up their rights as humans when they decided to act against humanity. “For they are just like their father the devil, destroyers of life and purvoyers of evil.”
I’m sorry about the suffering caused upon you by the war. Sometimes suffering is not as obvious in times of “peace”, as for example the entire reign of communism, but the suffering was and is still being perpetrated against the slaved masses of these regimes.
What in this world are you trying to do by even posing such ridiculous questions? There is now way that if what you say or write has anything to do with your own self and your values, that there is any question in your own mind. Therefore, I assume you ask the question in order to bring forth the truth from your readers as to what they know to be true, and therefore make themselves consciously aware of what they know to be true. And how arrogant is that? Sometimes I truly wonder what this blog is about…..
You know that the only way to respond to anything is from love.
In fact, I’m a pacifist also. And I don’t flew in violence.
I’m an ill-treated child, and I’m here…
I know what violence is, as many children.
But I think sometimes, and rarely, what could give me anger is Hypocrisy. Moreover when people pretend to love and be really enlightened, while they are not compassional in real, but believing they are. Or just dreaming about to become. Behaving as indifferent persons.
Indifference makes victims…
And victims could become persons that have nothing to lose in a day.
Is anger violence?
To Maria -M
War is never necessity, it is feilure !
Who can judge and say which war is right, which is not ?
Where are human rights in Guantanamo ?
Where are human rights in Iraq now ?
I think that Stanford University experiment is worth nothing,well, maybe something in USA but in world’s dimension it does not prove much.
I am recovering from the war that pushed my country and me personaly backward for centuries, but still I do believe that violence
can not be cured by violence. It can only generate more violence, hatered and destruction of single person, families or society.
Thank you Paul from Austria, for reminding us the simple truth about children and future…
Children are “treated” by mass media so the brainwashing is almost complete.
Love to all peacemakers and pacifists, people who still believe in positive energy, to all of us who never give up !
Luce
Dubrovnik, Croatia
To react to violence with violence is loosing oneself to violence. Responding to violence with some act of non-violence demands tremondous courage and creates new path ways. Gandhi was able to free India through non-vioelnce and I´m sure we´re able to overcome violence – if we choose to.
I think evil behavior is unconscious and destructive – not preserving, sustaining or developing
Children’s attitudes and personalities are both shaped by nature and nurture, so I agree with both Paul and Christine. Some children can grow up in the most nurturing homes and still resort to violence, because the capacity for evil/hate is in all of us, as is the capacity for good/love. As it was demonstrated in the University experiment Paulo wrote about on his blog a couple of days ago. Even though I think the experiment was flawed, (I’m not going there); my point is the young men acting in violence in the experiment probably did not come from violent homes, and not all children growing up in violent homes resort to violence, or become serial killers when they grow up.
Is evil ever necessary, and is the death penalty ever justifiable? That’s a moral question. It cannot be reason by intellect alone. If you’re a Christian and you follow the commandment “Thou shall not kill” then you can’t decide it applies only to “good” people and not “bad” people. Christianity is not the only religion that follows this belief, most major religions of the world have this in common.
What about war, is war ever a necessary evil? I believe the answer is yes. When there are human rights violations, and when a mad man, or a totalitarian government wants to steal from millions of people our God given rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and ultimate takes their lives, we can’t just sit back and watch this happen and not take any action. By all means try the non-violent approach first, but in most cases mad-man doesn’t respond to anything other than violence (that’s why they’re mad) and the only choice is to raise our arms against them. What are the “peace keepers” at the UN doing about Darfur? And human rights violations in China, in so many countries in Africa, and the Middle East, and in Cuba (by the way in this country there is a doctor, Dr. Biscet, serving a 25 years sentence for trying to do what Gandhi and Martin Luther King did, bringing change by non-violent means, and most of the world don’t even know his name)
Hi
I agree with you both, Paul and Christine
and I also add that not all evil crimes are the product of childhood mistreatment etc
but a large factor is that so much is ‘gotten away with’ or tolerated…starting on the small scale before ending up as Christine said, 6yrs for a life.
Love
La violencia genera violencia y la no violencia he comprobado en la vida que también genera violencia, entoces ¿Qué hacer?.
thank you Paul
love
Agnieszka
I agree with Paul. Children today are our only hope for tomorrow. I in NO WAY suggest violence toward children. I’m curious Paul, what do you think should happen to the man who held his daughter hostage for 24 yrs raping her in front of her (their) children? In America a pedophile can rape and kill a child and be out in 6 or 7 yrs. To me that is unacceptable…he has taken something and should die for that b/c if not once he’s let out he will do it again. This happened a few years back to a little girl named Jessica in a trailer park. He raped her and then buried her alive. If my government would have extinguished him before he had the chance to do it again we would have one more happy soul here today. But people are afraid to say that, that man should have died for killing the little girl he killed before Jessica, they said 6 yrs is enough punishment because our jails are over run and so he served 6 yrs and was set free and he did it again. Her death is as much a failure of the legal system as it is of that evil man. And whether he was mistreated as a child, I don’t know, but that’s a what came first the chicken or the egg kind of a question and I’d rather deal with the reality of today. The government should extinguish the bad and start over for the future. I too want to live in a peaceful and loving world. I think that people are naive if they think that b/c they are good there is good all around them. A friend of mine was murdered when he was 27 yrs old. 27! A month before that him and his wife had just had a baby. The man who murdered him will get out of jail when this child turns 20 or 25…just as this child starts to look like his father and begin building his future. Is that fair to all who loved my friend & his child? Do you think that by putting him in criminal college (jail) he will be reformed or will he emerge more evil then the day he arrived?
i just did Paul, yes..so…beautiful..
love
Agnieszka
I totally agree, although I could sometimes regret french racy persons that made the revolutions.
Maybe violent words are rather unworthy than violent hands. But it seems I’m an hybrid from Love and violent words.
You helped me a lot to calm, but I can feel as a frustration sometimes.
I feel tricky to show only love face to miscreants. Though I know my foul response, whatever it could be, would not add a paw to a duck, as we say here.
As if I was a looser with my love, in front of us.
That’s a real problem I have to solve.
With gratitude.
“Nothing comes from violence…nothing ever could..”
“Fragile” – Sting
love
Agnieszka
I’m a complete pacifist. I do not like violence. I’m not a violent person but I am not like every person and sometimes I have to remember that. “Bad people” by that I mean people who rape & torture others or abuse others don’t speak the same language that we do. Sometimes their own brand of violence is the only thing that they will understand. I’m non violent but I believe in the death penalty for murderers, rapists & pedophiles. I do believe that people who fall into those categories are EVIL to the core not only in detail. I think that, like myself, it might be difficult for a man like Paulo Coelho to see evilness in others but it does exist.