Pacifism and other steadfast principles

A friend sent me this article on "A Quaker in the Military". I really like the article. He has a clear expression of his models and thoughts on the matter. And it got me to thinking about the principle of pacifism and other such principles. There is the rationalist's dilemma about when is it right not to be pacific, i.e., if one can stop violence or harm to another, should one not step  in and do what it takes? Very confusing at that level of thinking. So I escalated the thinking to the next level of abstraction to see if I could find a way out of this dilemma.


There is a saying in NLP that Every behaviour is appropriate in some context. Then there is the example of "reality". Even what we consider as the "fundamental forces" of nature break down in certain contexts and / or combine to become a different / unified force. So, when we make up principles that we want to hold in all contexts, e.g., non-violence, we are in direct contradiction with the nature of  this particular universe. And is that why we encounter the "dilemma" at a particular level of thinking? Being one with the Way, is there no dilemma there? One adjusts to the context and does what the context requires? Does this presume a certain level of thinking / development?


Another issue in the article is the intentional direction to improve different societies and situations. It seems to me that there is something else going on in that context. We have spent billions / trillions across the world. And in many cases made the situation worse by these attempts at control and management. For example, the elimination of Allende in Chile, the support of sociopathic dictators in various countries. Seems to me that the underlying ontologies in the command and control attempts are rather fundamentally flawed. The people doing these interventions may have the best of intentions or be caught up in institutional forces. And the results of these actions seem to me to be in the large rather detrimental. So, I see these new proposals of "now we are doing the right thing, we have learned our lessons" as being more of the same. The place of being / spirit that generate these command and control systems are part or the whole of the problem. And I think that is in part my objection to some of Barnett's perspectives in the Pentagon's new map.