[Buddha-l] Silence of the List

[Joy Vriens]

Stephen wrote:

> First, note that I was paraphrasing from memory.  Perhaps I should have 
> said that "it is only appropriate for the strong ... " or something like 
> that.

I don't know, what did Gandhi say? :-)

> What I thnk Gandhi was saying is that a conscious and deliberate 
> choice to adopt pacificism is more laudable in the case of the strong 
> because they have other options, whereas the weak (unless they are 
> stupid) do not have the luxury of making such choices -- they are 
> generally pacificists out of necessity.   Does that make things clearer 
> for you ?

To be honest, I already expected as much, but even then I find such 
statement problematic. Why do I have to be a woman to talk about 
feminism, black to talk about racism, gay to talk about homosexuality, a 
politician in power to talk about pacifism with more weight? I watched a 
debate yesterday about the colonial past of France (the book I mentioned 
recently starts to have some effect) and it was mentioned that the way 
colonising countries treated the colonised is (I don't write shouldn't, 
I write is) not as much a problem of those who were humilated and still 
have a hangup about it as some seem to see it, but especially of those 
who still silently are colonists in their heads and haven't really moved 
on. It very much undermined and weakened the French republican ideal of 
human rights and therefore its own very fundations. It was mentioned 
that before 1958 75% of the history books were about the glorious 
history of the colonies and after 1960 there wasn't a single mention 
anymore of colonies in the French history books. What I mean to say, 
that we are all in it together, every problem in society is a shared one 
and every decision ought to be a shared one. And especialy when we are 
talking about democracies, like the India Gandhi dreamt of, who are the 
strong ones whose mention of pacifism is more laudable and who are the 
weak ones that ought to dim it?