Yes it's a totally different debate... I think you're asking the wrong question though. We have evolved as omnivores as have many other mammals. Meat eating is so prevalent in the animal world and it's such an integral part of evolved human behaviour that you need to make a conscious decision not to eat meat. I think people choose this behaviour because of a particularly refined sense of morality and an advanced understanding of the concept of consciousness in other minds and other species. But this is - quite understandably I think - the exception rather than the rule at this point in our cultural development. I don't particularly want to be jumped on and pummelled to death by vegetarians here, I'm not condoning meat eating, just as ever attempting to understand...
I can't forsee ever joining the armed forces. I'd be quite prepared to kill to save my own life, or to save the life of someone else who was being threatened, but I don't think I'd have the heart to kill someone who posed an indirect threat. For example, while I could understand the moral justification for going to war with Germany in 1939, I don't think I could have participated. I'd be killing conscript soldiers, not Nazis. I think the use of violence is one of the most complicated moral questions that we can ever face. When does the end justify the means? It becomes even more complicated when nationality and politics enters the mix though.
no matter what the circumstances were, i couldn't kill anyone. even if it was to save someone elses or my own life. How would that make it right, if i were to kill them? because then i'd be doing exactly the same thing that they were gonna do. another thing, i don't believe it's my place to alter the pattern of someone else life, i don't think any human has the right to say whether another one lives or dies... if someone was pointing a gun at me and shot me, well then, they've shot me. Sure i'd probably do something in self-defence, but i could never, ever kill or attempt to kill another person.
Going back to the experience of my grandfather. He spent some time guarding German prisoners of war, most of them were just grateful to be away from the conflict and they'd often swap trinkets and memorabilia with each other. I think my Grandad aquired a couple of cap badges. Another story he tells is how they often handed their guns over to POWs while climbed into the back of a truck and then grabbed them back again when they were all onboard. He often commented on just how pleasant they all were.
I don't think I ever would. I refer to myself as a pacifist, although I do recognise certain situations when war is the lesser of two extreme evils. But even in those circumstances, I don't think I'd be able to pick up a gun and shoot an anonymous soldier fighting for the other side on the command of a superior. What of their family? Of their loved ones hoping for the day they'll come home? When you kill a soldier in battle, you do not know them, nor their own views on the war, especially since many armies still use conscripts. It's simply kill or be killed to achieve a certain objective. And when you do kill, you don't just destroy one person's lives, but the lives of everyone who cared about that person. Lives are so easily ripped apart, but it is much harder to piece them back together. Could I trust my own judgement to know that doing that was right and for a higher purpose, even if the cause itself seemed to be so? I don't think so....
On a more serious note, at the peace rally in Trafalgar Square yesterday, I heard the mother and daughter of a British soldier killed in Iraq speak. By the end of the daughter's speech there were tears rolling down my cheeks. We hear of these cases because we live in the west. Just because we don't know the damage our soldiers are causing to countless Iraqi families, doesn't mean that they don't exist, or don't matter. No, I could never inflict that kind of pain upon them....
I think this is part of the problem. I don't believe those that advocate violence have any understanding of what it actually entails. I struggle with the idea of military intervention even where there's a strong moral case for it. It's all very well to intellectually support the use of violence, but could you look into a woman's eyes as she cradles the bloody remains of her dying child and tell her that the ends justify the means? I know I couldn't.
