How Perfectionism Affects Pacifism

Many thinkers always believed that pacifism was a worldview that wasn’t realistic and not achievable because of the requirements for it. Although many find that unrealistic, people still tend to believe this ideology. This essay will consist of a firm explaination of the values, beliefs and goals of a pacifist world view, how effective and positive a pacifist or a pacifist like worldview can be. Reconciliation, pacifism and peace education three contents that will be elaborated to prove how effective peace and control of power can be. The Pacifism article from Miskelly Matthew and Noce Jaime will be reviewed, as well as the article concerning Peace Education from Corkalo Dinka and the Reconciliation document from Raymond G. Helmick.

Pacifism has always been a worldview present in this world. It consists of a world with peace and controlled power as well. Pacifism has been present since the sixth century B-C in India. Over the years the idealogy obviously changed, adapted to the changes in the world and it created different branches from it. It is a worldview that consists of international peace that might seem very unrealistic to a lot of politicans without the use of abusive power. Like explained in the document Pacifism by Matthew “International peace, they argue, can only be attained by a combination of hard–headed diplomacy and military preparedness. Domestic peace, they claim, will only be achieved with a strong police force and a tough court system. Pacifism, say many thinkers, belongs not in the domain of politics but in the realm of religious ideology. At best, pacifists are seen as hopeless idealists or as otherworldly dreamers. Thus, pacifism is recognized in standard political philosophy by its rejection.” Pacifist is a worldview that always believed to be against war and violence more about peace and control. It is the root to many other ways of thinking that we still applied today in our world because they were successful. The main goal is to always remain at peace and control of power. That is where most politicians find it wrong. Pacifism might not be applied in our world today, but many ideologies that came from this idea are working today in our world.

Pacifism also manifests in school, it’s called peace education because the goal of it is to have education at peace. Peace education contains a pacifist world view of things because according to Dinka, it means “Negative peace is defined as the absence of large-scale physical violence the absence of the condition of war. Positive peace involves the development of a society in which, except for the absence of direct violence, there is no structural violence or social injustice.” Its main goal and purpose is to have an environment with peace and no injustice. It is an important factor because it wasn’t always present in our world. In Corkalo’s article he explained the text about world war 1 was a powerful message to having a peaceful educational system. World war 2 then also created a movement for peace education, mostly because there was a lot of victims and the use of chemical attacks. Education should always, have a peaceful environment for the kids that attends the school not for their safety but for their academic result as well. Dinka’s document explains that “The complex systems of society, the circumstances, and the context make the peace education field very active and diverse.” It has many positive effects as well because there are less separation of any ethnic group or any kind of separation based on unethical thinking for example a racial group separation, etc. Individual equality, values and rights will be more respected with this method. Peaceful education is present in the world of today it is all the rules that are put up in the school to prevent violence and any kind of unethical or dangerous act to happen or occur. It is also a perfect example of a successful way of pacifism in our world of today.

Pacifism has many branches to other ideologies, including Reconciliation. According to Raymond “Reconciliation, the overcoming of differences, the healing of broken relations.” Usually it is a reaction of something that happened. For example, the Reconstruction Era after the civil war in 1865-1877 was formed to reorganize the South’s political system using military. It is a good example of reconciliation because new governments were formed to go against this military domination in the south, expressing reconciliation because they were setting the objectives of reconciliation (trying to overcome injustice and differences). Another successful attempt of pacifism into our society was during the Victor’s Burden says Helmick“The Civil War was precipitated by the decision of the Southern states to secede from the Union in 1860–1861, but it was caused by the Southerners’ long-term fear that their valuable and profitable institution of slavery was endangered by a hostile majority in the North. This fear came to a head with the election of a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, to the presidency and his Northern party’s capture of Congress. As a result of the war, secession was defeated and slavery abolished. Alarmingly, how- ever, the successful resolution of the long-term cause of the war (slavery) and of the short-term cause (secession) did not end the matter.” What Raymond means by this is that reconciliation is the positive consequence after these wars uniting people together and creating peace. These important oppositions in these events that I stated were to maintain and to finally have peace, justice and controlled power. It clearly shows and indicates how the act of Reconciliation can look like specifically according to what Helmick described in his article. This branch of pacifism worked perfectly fine into our society and led a few countries to many positive outcomes. The power of Reconciliation is very important because it unites many people together and is a powerful and peaceful way to reduce violence and maintain the power into the majority.

To conclude, pacifism might not be used in the world of today, but many of the ideas coming from it are being successful and effective in our generation. Peace education might be the best example of pacifism in our days, because it maintains peace and a violence free environment in our educational system. Reconciliation an idea that is pacifist like used in the late 1880’s was also a key component to keep peace and uniting the population for multiple reasons after a disastrous war is the perfect reason why pacifist like ideas can lead to positive results in our world. This world view matters because it spreads non violence ideas and promotes peace which is never bad and a control of the power that we might need to consider still because the control of power is a huge problem in today’s world. If the world view of pacifism was really applied word by word in today’s society would it have a positive or negative result?