Stuff You Should Know - How Pacifism Works (And Could It?)

Episode Date: January 26, 2017

There is deep disagreement over whether humans are essentially peaceful or essentially warlike. Depending on your view you may see pacifism as either hopelessly naïve or the unsung response to conflict that’s kept us from wiping ourselves out. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

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free with free shipping by going to blueapron.com slash stuff. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from howstuffworks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry. Everybody's getting along nicely in here.

You have a very interesting outfit on. Thank you. I've never seen such a variety of patterns in one torso. Yeah, I like it. It's interesting. I got... Yours is great. Yeah, I got sort of made fun of in high school

for combining patterns and I never did it again. In the ninth grade, I remember like it was yesterday. Yeah. I got, I wore like a, I think I wore like checkered shorts and a striped shirt. I think you should publicly shame those people by name right now. Somebody was like,

here's your chance. You're not supposed to combine patterns. It's like, well, in fact, I didn't know that. I didn't say that, but... And old Chuck would have. I'm suddenly sick and need to go home. Yeah. I have a wet spot in my pants.

It's funny, like I can't see because you have a beard, but I wondered if that was a turtleneck you were wearing for a second. Oh no. Then you moved and I'm like, oh, it's a crew neck. It's a mock turtleneck. Right. Remember those?

Steve Jobs style. Yeah. Have you seen all that movie? Have you seen that? No. The one with the, what's his face? Fossbender? Yeah.

Nope. It was good. I'm sure that guy's great. He's great. And Kate Winslet, boy, she's the ticket. She plays Steve Winooski? No, that was actually what's his name, Seth Rogen. Seth Rogen.

That's right. I forgot. He plays wise. How does he do? He was good. Yeah. I mean, acting was just great. And it was...

What was the problem then? Why is there a curse on any movie that has to do with Steve Jobs? It's not a curse. I think like there were Academy Award nominations on that movie. Okay. Who directed it?

It was Danny Boyle, which is great. That guy can do like any genre. Sure. But it was written by Aaron Sorkin, who I have a little problem with. That was the problem. I knew there was some problem with it. And I know everyone thinks he's God's gift of writing,

but it's just... Who says that? Well, Aaron Sorkin. Okay. He's just so wordy, man. That's just so many words. Oh, I know. And everybody has like the perfect retort

at the tip of their tongue. Yeah, it's like none of his movies speak of reality of the way people really talk. No. Which to me is the mark of a good writer. Right. But, you know, it was good. It was a good movie.

That aside. I'll check it out sometime then. Yeah. It was very nice. Steve Jobs. And you get over the fact that... That's the full title. Steve Jobs, Colin.

Very nice. You get over the fact, or at least I did, that Fassbender doesn't look anything like Steve Jobs. Because when it came out, I was like, wow, man, like, how am I gonna get past that? It's Michael Fassbender. Right. But...

He did it. Well, that's the mark of a quality actor, too. He had a Jobsian aura about him. Yeah. And that's my movie, Pick of the Week. Nice. Ding, ding, ding. Yep.

Then we need like a jingle. Now, pacifism. Yeah. Oh, are we ready to get started? Yeah, let's just tear through this one. This is a good one. You like this one? Yeah.

This was a request by me. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it got done pretty psyched about it. Yeah. So would you, before researching this, would you have called yourself a pacifist? Well, I would not have known the specific kind of pacifist.

Right. Now I do. Yeah. But I'm a kind of pacifist, for sure. Extremely violent pacifist. Like, you know, I'm well known to have never hit another human or been hit myself. Yeah.

Like I've never been a fistfight. Yeah. So that's a kind of pacifism. Right. But I'm also like, you know, sometimes like, I think you kind of have to go to war, maybe. Yeah. If you're fighting slavery or Hitler.

Yeah, there's a lot of conundrum. Yeah. I think that'd be right. Surrounding pacifism and the decision of whether or not to use violence. Yeah, I mean, even Gandhi, for God's sakes, before people were like, oh man, Chuck, I thought you were a chill dude.

Yeah. Gandhi was a chill dude and he even said, you know, but hey, sometimes you have to take up arms. Yeah. I think it's good that you characterize Gandhi as a chill dude rather than a pacifist because he pretty technically was not the pacifist that most people consider him to be or think he was.

He actually said, and it's cited in this article, no, you know, like you should be able to defend yourself. He believed that India should be able to defend itself after it gained independence. If someone else was an aggressor against the state. Yeah. He suggested that some of his fellow Indians fight alongside the British in South Africa during the Boer War,

not very pacifist. Right. So his views and identity and the fact that he's still considered a pacifist kind of reveals that pacifism is actually almost never the staunch version that people think of when they think of pacifism, which is no violence under any circumstances. Yeah, very few people can or want to adhere to that.

I'm not certain that anyone's ever been able to do it in the history of humanity. Yeah, I mean, I should add for myself, and I think I've said this before, I never avoided a fight either. Right. It just never happened. Like if someone came and hit me in the face,

I'd do my best job to swing back. I've seen a bar fighter too on TV. Sure. I'd just do it, Bert Reynolds did. Right. Yeah, oh, he got the job done. Yeah, I think you can throw like a beer pitcher in a guy's face and he trips over his friend

and then you make a kind of funny laugh. Yeah. And then you throw him out the front window of the bar. And I'll play banjo along where I'll do the score. And in the end though, you end up slapping backs with the guy you were in a fight with and you all just have a good laugh about it.

That's how it goes. All right, so let's talk pacifism, man. All right. The word itself actually pacificus is what it's derived from. That's the old Latin word. Everybody knows Latin, super old. But the use of the word pacifist

in the way that we use it today is actually fairly new. It was from, I think a peace conference in 1906 that it was officially coined. And although that concept, this pacifism that we understand it today, it did kind of spring out of this rational, humanist peace movement that came as a result of the, just this transformation of people in the 19th century.

People have been espousing pacifist beliefs for many, many thousands of years now. Sure, they just didn't call it that. No. They called it being a chill dude. Right. Should we get in the old wayback machine? Let's, man.

I was hoping you'd say that. All right, it's fired up and it's quite lovely in here. I like the music you picked out. Thank you. It's tranquil. It is very nice. I thought you were going to have on like rage against the machine or something.

No, no. Cause they're pacifists. Are they? No, no, no. I could see them being pacifist actually. Yeah. Well, I said it as a joke. Then I was like, well, wait a minute. It rang a bell.

You really have to think about that. They strike me as a kind of dudes that was, well, I don't even know. I don't know those guys. You don't know rage against the machine? They're musicians. No, but I saw Zach in LA. He lives in my neighborhood.

Oh yeah. So I used to see him getting tacos all the time. Yeah. We shall fight the power. He said, wrong group. So pacifism, if you want to talk about the OG or at least the OG that, I'm sure there were pacifists around,

but the one that got notoriety at least, first one was probably Siddhartha, as you point out. The grand founder of Buddhism who said, you know what? This fighting, this warrior stuff is no good for me. And so I'm going to break with that tradition and I'm going to try and take the path less traveled. Yeah. And he was a part of the warrior caste, right?

So him saying, no, I'm not doing this. I'm not fighting was pretty significant. So much so that a religion formed around him. Buddhism, right? Yeah. So he's kind of credited as one of the earliest pacifists that, at least on record, and pretty quickly his pacifist views spread

and there was a king who was a Buddhist king in India. His name was Ashoka, great name by the way. And he said, you know what? My kingdom's not going to be involved in any more wars of conquest because I am a devout Buddhist now. Nice. It's a great way to go.

The Greeks followed with their stoicists. Boy, I could not have said that in the old toothless days. That would prevent it, presented a lot of problems. The stoicists, they were definitely not down with violence. Of course, Jesus himself was known to be a pretty chill dude. Yeah. He said, turn the other cheek, man. Yeah.

Famously. In fact, one of his followers, Roman named Maximilian, very famously became one of the early Christian martyrs when he said, you know what? I'm not going to serve in your legion. I'm not going to kill anyone. And they said, fine, we'll kill you. Yeah.

And he said, fine. Which is, the irony of all this is, as you'll see throughout this whole podcast, is all these pacifists over the years that are like, I don't want to fight. They're like, all right, well, we're going to be violent on you and make your life a living hell. Yeah.

You're like, I just don't want to fight you guys or fight anyone else. Just leave me alone. I know, it's a, I don't know what it is. Like this, this. Well, it's a duty and an obligation, I think, that warists, and we'll talk about warism, which is the other end of the spectrum.

I think that's what they feel like, is like, no, you have a duty to take up arms against an aggressor against you or your countrymen. Yeah, go kill that guy. Somebody of a higher socioeconomic status commanded you. Yeah. Pretty much. So moving along, we'll just jump forward

to Renaissance Europe. Yes, it's much nicer there, right? There was this, thanks to the blossoming of science, there was this kind of idea that, well, there was the foundation of humanism, right? That humans should take care of other humans, and part and parcel to that was kind of picking up on the idea of pacifism, and it really started

to take root in Europe and the Western world around that time during the Renaissance. Thanks in part to a guy named Erasmus, a Dutch writer, who famously said, building a city is much better than destroying one. He probably dropped the mic and was like, argue with that. They're like, mics haven't even been invented yet.

And then, of course, if we jump ahead a little bit more to the early days of what would become the United States, there were people here called Mennonites and Quakers who came to colonial America so they could just sort of be among themselves and be chill dudes. Right. Then the Revolutionary War broke out, and they were like, ugh, what do we do now?

We came here to be chill dudes, and now everyone expects us to fight for our freedoms. Yeah, and actually, Pennsylvania was this, I was watching this short video about pacifism yesterday, I think, and they were talking about Pennsylvania and how it was the first colony to outlaw slavery. And there was just a lot, because of the influence of the Quakers and the Mennonites,

there was a lot of, well, just kind of pacifist ideals. Interesting. Yeah, and they would thrive. Like Philadelphia was the most important city in the colonies at the time. It was in Pennsylvania. But yeah, when the Revolutionary War broke out, it was tough to be a Quaker pacifist,

because everybody else was saying, hey, does that mean you're loyal to the king? If so, we're going to beat you up. And then the Tories would say, hey, you have to come fight with us. You're obviously loyal to the king. You're not fighting with the rebels. So come fight with us.

And they'd say no. So they were caught between this rock and the hard place, where both sides just treated the friends very badly. Yeah, in 1777, 1777, 17 Quakers. That is so confusing. Yeah, in 1777, 17 Quaker leaders were accused of treason, and they were exiled to Virginia by the Whigs. And I guess they got there, or like, Virginia's not so bad.

Not much of a punishment. But they wanted to be home in Pennsylvania. They're like, oh, tobacco, you can smoke? Probably so. And then, like you said, if you were a Quaker who stuck to your pacifist ideals, you could have been abused, or you could have had your property confiscated. It was not good.

Yeah. And apparently, they were so committed that when the war broke out, when the Revolution broke out, they, the Quakers who were running the government, all quit. They all resigned. So we can't have anything to do with this. So we're going to go make oatmeal and fine furniture. Exactly.

The Napoleonic Wars in the 1800s was a very bloody affair. They were a very bloody affair. And so this gave rise to a lot of people saying, hey, like the London Peace Society, maybe we should try and think of a different way to go about resolving our conflicts rather than just like trying to kill more people than the other guys. Yeah, apparently, the War of 1812

was extremely unpopular in the United States. And that, combined with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, just kind of allowed this mentality to really blossom on the continent and in the states, where this peace movement kind of developed over the 19th century. And things were going pretty well, actually. It was getting a lot of traction. People were starting to think, like, hey,

maybe we can go without war. Maybe we can just be peaceful. And then the Civil War happened. They ran headlong into this problem, right? Because there was this immediate problem that was facing the pacifists. It was great. You guys are doing a heck of a job keeping the peace.

But part of that peace is there's a group of people over here who are enslaved and living in horrific, brutal conditions, being forced into labor against their will. So what do you say about that? How does that, is that peace OK? Right. And the pacifists still grapple with that one today. Yeah, there was a writer named Angelina Grimke-Weld,

a political activist, and very much into peace as an advocate. And she said, oh, yes, war is better than slavery. So I think there are quite a few pacifists that probably said, you know what, sometimes you just have to take up arms and do what's right. Right. Yeah, I mean, it created a big division in the pacifist movements that American Civil War.

And like I said, people are still grappling with it today. But before the whole thing could sink in, pacifism, I think, kind of congealed again. Because it seems like when World War I finally came, pacifism was back. It was a thing still. It hadn't just been blown away by Napoleon or the American Civil War.

Right. You know? Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right, let's take a break, and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about the opposite of pacifism. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s,

called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it.

And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week

to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so you put this thing together, and you did a bang-up job. This is no, I expanded on Patrick Keiger joint. Oh, is this from our original article? Uh-huh. Oh, good.

Well, at any rate, you and Patrick did a great job. But you guys make a great point that if you want to understand pacifism, you have to understand war. And there was this pacifist and a writer named Arthur Ponsonby. Yeah, he was a member of parliament. Oh, OK. And he has this great quote from one of his writings about war. War is a monster born of hypocrisy, fed on falsehood,

fattened on humbug. Yeah. That really dates it. Kept alive by superstition, directed to the death and torture of millions, succeeded in no high purpose, degrading to humanity, endangering civilization, and bringing forth in its travail a hideous, brood of strife, conflict, and war more war.

Yep. Pretty down view on war. Yeah, and I think most people, probably even professional soldiers, would agree with Ponsonby's assessment, right? Yeah. There's basically no one out there who's like, no, war's good. War's great. Right.

Let's go to war right now. Go find somebody to go to war with. People don't think like that, right? Generally, sure. That's not the mentality. Even that's not the basis of warism. Warism is the idea that war can be morally justified. Right.

And there's even some circumstances that could require it, right? Right. And if you go back to the early Christian church, the earliest version of it, there was basically nothing but nonviolent pacifism. And then the church started to join forces with the state, the government, specifically at first

in the guise of the Holy Roman Empire. And the Holy Roman Empire was all about conquest, getting new land, subduing people. And so one of the tasks that fell the theologians, Christian theologians, was to figure out a way to justify that. And starting with, I believe, St. Augustine, they came up with this concept called the just war.

Right. And the just war basically says it effectively cancels out the possibility of absolute pacifism, where absolute pacifism is just war and violence are never justified under any circumstances. This was, there is such a thing as a war that can be conducted in a certain way, that can be entered into for all the right reasons.

Right. And if all these conditions are met, then you have a just war. And technically, you're not really breaking any Christian ideals or morals. Right. It's still morally justifiable. Yeah, and those are the two big questions

that you just said are simply, when is it justified? And once you have justified it, how do you go about it? Right. And in regards to the first one, there are six conditions. And we should point out that in order for it to be a just war, you have to meet all these conditions. Yeah, not some. Yeah, it's not like, oh, the first couple.

Right. But never mind. We got most of them. Two through six. The war must be made on behalf of a just cause, number one. Yeah. The decision to go to war must be made by proper authorities.

It can't be some jackass. Right. Participants must have a good intention rather than revenge or greed. That's a big one. Yeah, it takes care of a few wars. Sure. What do you mean, it's like cancel some out.

Must be likely that peace will emerge. That should be the ultimate goal. Right. Right. Not a war that would lead to another war. And that's that mentality I'm talking about. Like when people who even warlike people will say, well, the goal is peace.

Right. You just have to do it through violence. Right, which is tough to wrap your head around. Especially if you're a pacifist. Going to war is a last resort. That's a big one. These are all big. And then finally, the total amount of evil,

it's like a formula. The total amount of evil resulting from the war is outweighed by the good that will come out of the war. Right. So you have to fulfill all six of those before entering the war. Right. Right.

And then once you're in the war, you have to say, OK, what parameters do we have to work within for it to remain a just war? Yeah. And we actually did an episode. Rules of war. Yeah, the rules of war, so it was pretty good if I remember correctly.

We recorded that in serious studios in DC. Remember that? That was weird. Yeah. It's like a hallucination. Just to show how great we are. Or were they trying to pilot us or something? I think so.

Man, I don't even remember those days hardly. Yeah, it's a long time ago. But yeah, we did do that one in serious studios in DC, I think. Yeah, it was weird. But when you're within a war to maintain it being justifiable, you basically have to say if to be discriminant. And the stuff you're doing has to be proportional, right? Right.

So with the proportional thing, if somebody is shooting at you with a machine gun and you fire a missile at that person, if that's the way you're conducting the war, you're not really carrying out a just war. Yeah, but dudes are into war like, no, no, no. That's exactly what you should bring a gun to a knife fight. Sure.

And then discrimination is a big one. And that's one that we seem to be having increasing trouble with as the century goes on or as the last century went on. Is that collateral damage? Yeah. Where you have to discriminate between OK targets and not OK targets. Right.

OK targets are other soldiers, other members of the military, or people who are enabling the other side to carry out war. Like even workers in a factory making missiles, they're a justifiable target in a just war. But the people who live around the factory, they're not. So if you're going to drop a bomb on that factory, that bomb has to hit.

And if it misses and you kill those people, well, then you're not carrying out a just war. Supposedly there's been a lot of bending over backwards and saying, no, no, there's spillage. There's collateral damage. Right. Some civilians who aren't intended to be targets are going to die in a war.

But you want to limit those people. And the key here is to not specifically target civilians and you're OK. That's a lot of bending over that's been done as wars gotten less and less discriminate over the 20th century. Yeah. And it's kind of ironic that we're

far more precise than we ever have been in terms of targeting. But I think that just the sheer size of the armaments, you can't help but have collateral damage. I saw a UNICEF article that said that at the beginning of the 20th century, collateral damage, civilian deaths, represented about 5% of casualties in war. Yeah, it used to mainly be soldiers who died. Right.

By the 1990s, it was up to 90% of the casualties in a war were civilian targets or civilian people who, like that's beyond collateral damage. Yeah, and I think part of the problem, and boy, I'm just speaking off the top of my head here. Let me preface that. But part of the problem there is, is the kind of wars we fight these days,

you'll drop a bomb on a house where there are like five suspected terrorists in a neighborhood of 2,000 people. So that probably has a lot to do with the, and I'm just guessing here, but it should have a lot to do with the casualty rate of civilians. It's not like there are 3,000 troops in that house. It's just not how it works these days. No, it's not.

There's these small, tiny, little groups. Right, and I think specifically also, from what I understand, I'm speaking off the top of my head as well, from what I understand, the modern battlefield takes place much more in more populated areas, whereas before, there used to be things that essentially resembled pitch battles. Yeah, let's go meet in this field.

Right, and duke it out. You wear this color coat, we'll wear this color coat, and then we'll shoot at each other, right? But yeah, as it started to move more and more into urban areas, of course, more and more civilians are going to die, right? But I think part of the other thing that really started to drive up those numbers, Chuck, and it's stuff

that you don't learn about in school and history class, were the bombing campaigns that were carried out on both sides, but the allies too, the British and the US, carried out bombing campaigns where we were just leveling civilians, just whole cities. We were just leveling with bombs, like fire bombs. Like we fire bombed Japan in World War II. The British fire bombed German city centers in World War II.

Like that was part of the strategy, was just killing so many people that we were trying to force them into unconditional surrender. Yeah, it wasn't like nowadays where they're like, have a geo-coordinated target, and it looks like a video game. It was like, you've seen the old footage. It's like, well, we're over the city. Start shoving bombs out the door.

Exactly, bombs away. Yeah. So I think that drove up the numbers and really drove it from 5% at the beginning of it, centred it to 90%. And I'd love to hear from people that know a lot more about this on these couple of points that we just... Yeah, both sides, for sure.

But the idea that war used to take place basically outside of populated areas, away from targets that should be discriminated against. Some people say, maybe those wars were acceptable, but the type of war that we're fighting now has evolved so far away from that, that war is no longer acceptable. You can't justify it any longer.

And there's actually a name for that type of pacifism specifically. That, I believe, is selective pass... No, technological pacifism. Yeah, and I wanna quickly say that I think that's part of the idea of terrorism and the cowardism of terrorism is like, hey, let's go set up shop next to this nursing home.

Sure, yeah. Is they don't wanna be out in the open in the middle of the desert as an easy target. Right. Yeah, so you mentioned one of the types of pacifism. I counted here, and including the subgroups, I think there are about seven. And you should think about pacifism as a spectrum

from absolute pacifism on one end, which is like nothing ever. Never. No violence, no violence, no violence, no matter what. Like, I'd rather die a morally just death than even defend myself. Or your loved one, anybody. There's no justification for violence ever.

That's absolute pacifism. So that's on one far, far end. So then next we have conditional pacifism. And that's basically when you're like, you know what, I'm opposed to violence in this particular situation. I don't think it's the right solution to this problem. Yeah, conditional pacifism's kind of like the umbrella

that really falls basically between absolute pacifism and everything else. It covers everything else. It's basically there's some time when violence is usable, right? And then there's a bunch of subgroups under that conditional pacifism umbrella. For example, pragmatic pacifism, right?

So pragmatic pacifism basically is a type of conditional pacifism where you're saying, I don't really have any problem with using violence, but in this particular circumstance, it's gonna make things worse. It's not gonna solve the problem at hand. I'm a pragmatist. Thank you for listening to me.

And the example that this article gave was that the slavery, a war over slavery, like can ending slavery justify a war? And a pragmatist may say, yeah, totally, we really should because that's what it's gonna take to end slavery and slavery is so bad that it's worth the lives that are going to be lost to end slavery.

Ultimately, the good that comes out of it is better than the evil of the war. But the pragmatic pacifist could also say, on the other hand, no, we really shouldn't start a war here because it's just gonna cause the slaveholders to kill all their slaves out of spite. So that's two examples of pragmatic pacifism. Yeah, and under that even,

and it's another subgroup, fallibility pacifism, you know how we talked about meeting those conditions of a just war. This is the kind of pacifist I am. So fallibility pacifism is like, yeah, sure you could be down with that, but there's so much you don't know and the scale of war is so massive

that you don't even have the information you need to decide whether or not it's a just war as a citizen. There's so many factors involved in a war and going to war. So many things you're told or not told. There's so many ways you're manipulated through the media. There's so many personal vendettas possibly involved, money, oil contracts, who knows? That because of the scale of it and all of the factors,

we can't possibly know even enough of the details, let alone all the details to say, yes, this is a just war. Let's go to war. That's right. That's fallibility pacifism. Good one. Collective is pacifism is that maybe you might think that executing this person who murdered

and sexually assaulted children is okay. Like not into violence, but this guy should not be walking around the earth anymore. Yeah, he needs to be wiped out. But maybe the sheer magnitude of a war you might still be against. Yeah, for sure. Maybe you should call that pick and choose pacifism.

Well, I mean, that's a part of conditional pacifism, you know, saying, yeah, it's okay and violence is okay in this sense, but not in this sense to me. And that's the thing, like pacifists are called on to justify their beliefs a lot, or else be thrown in prison or just be treated horribly. But the thing about pacifism is it is about as personal a belief as one can come upon.

Yeah. And people may ask you to justify it, but there's no, you have no burden to justify your own personal pacifism. Yeah. It just is, it exists in you in that sense. And it's personal to you. Right.

It's an interesting thing. Like a collective pacifist might be against the death penalty even, but they might have children. And if someone murders children, that might even sway them to say, you know what? I don't even believe in this, but I believe this person revoked their card as a human

when they did that. Right, that's the way that they would put it, that they basically, at one point had a right to be free from violence inflicted upon them, but what they did was so bad that it erased that right. Yeah, I'm kind of in that camp because I'm not, I've never been a staunch advocate for the death penalty at all,

but there are just some things it's like, it's not like you can get the death penalty for any old thing. Yeah. There's some things like, just don't do that, the worst thing, don't do the worst thing, and you can still live and maybe be rehabilitated, and, but when you have people like, you know,

clearly sick serial killers, and like the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world, what good does it do unless you're just literally studying their brain to keep them around? Will you keep them alive? I don't know, man. It's a very, I have a lot of moral tug of war,

big moral tug of war going on when it comes to stuff like that. Well, I mean, that's the, yeah. And not just you, people have been trying to wrestle with this for thousands of years now, you know? I mean, like it's a- It's not a simple black and white thing. No, it really isn't.

I mean, I guess unless you're touched by the pacifist bug. Right. And you just know, you just know how you feel about it. AKA smoked adobe? Maybe, maybe, or, you know, saw somebody shot in front of you or whatever.

I think like personal experience definitely leads to epiphanies regarding pacifism for sure. That's my new favorite euphemism for smoking marijuana. Adobe? No, touched by the pacifist bug. Oh, okay. Nice.

I think we could make that a thing. Probably. Get that, spread that around. Oh, we just put on a t-shirt, sell it on our spread shirt store. I mean, we made Sniff'em off the case. A true saying. Well, not really.

Mike's on pants off. Yeah. Clark me something. Yeah, Clark me something. And those are all just dumb. Yeah, they're terrible. Touched by the pacifist bug. That's for real.

It's going to be an album title. It's going to be a, who is it? Soup Dragons? No, Diarrhea Planet. They'll be the name of their album. Those guys are going to be like, why are you obsessed with us? Please stop, please pretend we don't exist, okay?

And then finally, selective, oh, I'm sorry, not finally. Well, we sort of talked about technological pacifism, but I guess penultimately, selective pacifism is when you oppose certain kinds of violence, like, and nuclear pacifism was a big kind of this, was like, hey, I'll even support a war, but man, nuclear war, forget about it.

Yep. Which these technological wars, a lot of people say that's as bad as nuclear war. Yeah, some people do. But if you're a nuclear pacifist, you may be one of those people who say, nope, as long as you're not using nukes, and the war is just war, I'm fine with it.

But there's no way you can justify a nuclear war, because it's just too indiscriminate. It's just too, it kills too many people who couldn't possibly be legitimate targets. So you could never justify a nuclear war. So that's why nuclear pacifism has its own thing. There's also other ones too, like ecological pacifism, people are like,

no, war destroys the planet. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of different reasons people have pacifist beliefs. Some people too, also Chuck, will say, I'm a pacifist and my country's going to war, so I'm not doing anything. Yeah.

I'm not going to register for the drafts, I'm not going to drive an ambulance, I'm not gonna do anything. Other people will say, I will go to war for my country, but I'm not gonna carry a gun or kill anybody else. Well, drive an ambulance or... What was the New Mel Gibson movie? The Hacksaw Ridge was about a guy who was a pacifist.

Yeah. Who rescued a bunch of people, never fired a bullet. I wonder if it was one of those guys on that crack list. Yeah. I bet it was. Totally, yeah. And Mel Gibson himself is a famous pacifist. Right.

Oh, no, wait, that's not the word. Lover of pornographic violence. And then there's, so Chuck, there's one other thing we have to say about pacifist or what makes a pacifist. There is, anti-violence is a huge part of pacifism, right? But also there's this thing called positive peace too, which is, okay, not only, you can't just sit there

and be like, no, no war, no war. Like come up with an alternative and pacifists say, oh, yes, we have tons of alternatives. There's things like diplomacy is a big one. Like the entire existence of the State Department represents the idea of pacifism by the US government. Yeah. And even on a very local level pacifists believe

that the more groups understand one another and the more they can possibly share in common, the less likely they are to engage in violence to resolve their differences. And so the idea of getting groups together to share stuff or to understand one another or to see that their difference is actually enriched human experience rather than

threaten those people's stability is the promotion of positive peace. So that promoting positive peace and being against violence are basically the two halves of what the pacifists hold. Yeah. Really interesting. Yeah. Should we take a break?

Sure. All right, we'll come back and talk a little bit about, a little bit more about conscientious objection after this. Who's that you should know? On the podcast, pay dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

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All right, you know what? I want to amend my statements from earlier about the death penalty. Okay, let's hear it. Well, not amend, well, maybe amend. I just, it's tricky to throw that stuff out there in the public. I think my deal is I don't care what you have done.

Even if I think you might have revoked your card, there's still a compassion inside me for that person that's done the worst thing. Really? That's really fascinating. Yeah, because I think that A, either what happened to them to make them like that, or to lead them down that road. Man, my hat is off to you, man.

Well, you don't just turn out that way by accident. You either, I believe, have something scientifically biologically wrong, biologically wrong with your brain. Okay. Or- Yeah, tough to fault people in that situation. Or you have suffered so much at someone else's hand as a child that you have become a monster yourself. And I still might say that I just, I'm not one of those

people that would go out at a execution and party outside with signs. Sure, no, that's pretty sick. It's just not, I still have compassion for that person deep down. Wow, that's impressive. No, I don't think so. Like I would never be one of those people

who celebrated someone's death ever under any circumstances. But I, like those people that you can feel compassion for, people can do something that turns off that switch in me. Yeah. And it's replaced by just vengeance. Like, nope, you're done. No, I hear you. I think for me, if you look at,

if you just picked someone on death row, looked at their crime, and then looked at their history and childhood, there's probably, there were probably victims of some serious abuse. Yeah, and I also want to say, I would guess that I would not feel vengeance toward almost anyone who's on death row right now. Like, for that vengeance switch to be flipped,

you have to have done something like objectively evil. As evil as it gets, you know? Like, and I'm sure there's plenty of people on death row who would flip that switch for me, but just them being on death row, I don't automatically say, oh, well, you deserve to die. I like it. I'm a little more selective than that.

But when you hear about somebody who is like a, like you use child rapist slash murderer, it's an excellent example. Somebody who, like, even if they are redeemable, is there a point that you get to where it's like, Why bother? Yeah. Like, you gave up the right for us to exert any effort

or give you any leeway any longer. And like, what you did, you should be punished for. Not the door should be left open for redemption. You should be punished by having your life ended. I struggle with this a lot. Like, this isn't an absolute thing in me at all. Like, I don't see any of this as black and white, but I have encountered crimes before where you hear about it.

And I've just been like, yeah, the person should die for that. And it's a terrible feeling. Like, it's not a good feeling at all. Again, I would never celebrate that person's death, but it's something to struggle with. I think people should struggle with it, you know? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, my wife is one of the most compassionate,

kind-hearted people I know. One of the best people I know. And she reads a story about someone doing something to animals. And she goes cold. She's like, put me in a room with that person in a chair and give me a baseball bat. That's another good example. Yeah.

She's like the least violent person you could imagine. And when it comes to animal torture and stuff, she's like, oh, man, I wish I could just take care of that. Sure. Anyway, boy. Who knew that we'd have a deep conversation during the pacifism episode? Well, we need to step out and get

touched by the pacifist plug. So one of the reasons pacifists are largely famous is usually in reference to resisting a war, right? World War I was a big one. And actually, starting in the colonial war, those Quakers, by the way, could have paid somebody to go serve in their stead. And everybody in charge of the colonial militias.

And I think you could do this in the Civil War, too. They were fine with that. It was fine. Like, here, go pay somebody and the person makes some money. And if they survive, great. But you're considered having served by finding your replacement. Quakers are like, no, that doesn't count.

But World War I was in conscientious objectors, really started to become part of the cultural landscape. Yeah, which kind of surprised me. I was surprised that way back in 1917, there were 21,000 men, young men, who sought to get exemption from the war in the draft. I don't know, there's just way more than I thought. You get the idea back then, like everybody

was always behind the war effort. And that just wasn't the case. Yeah, and that was in the US alone. Great Britain had another 16,000 conscientious objectors. And in both countries, the groups were treated horribly. Very badly. In Great Britain, there was a kind of a grassroots campaign that was started, I think, by one of the military officials

in Great Britain, where women who saw a man on the street during the war who wasn't in a uniform would be given a white feather. And a white feather was a symbol of cowardice. So a shame campaign? Yeah, and it worked. A lot of people went and joined up after getting a white feather and then went and died on the battlefield.

But hey, at least they proved they weren't a coward. I'm surprised they went through all the trouble of being a conscientious objector. Like, I got out of the war and they're like, I got that feather. That feather did it. I guess I'm going. But it actually did do it. And one of the reasons why there was such a campaign

is because this was during the time when countries, including the US, had universal conscription for men, which was if you were a man between this age and this age and you were able-bodied, you're in the military. You're being drafted to war during World War I. So the idea that these people had brothers and cousins and uncles and husbands and fathers who were going off to war to fight and possibly die,

and these guys were walking around saying, I don't believe in war, that was their side. The other side was they didn't believe in war. They didn't believe in violence. And the ones who really stuck to their guns, they suffered for it for sure. Yeah, should we tell a couple of these stories? There were these dudes, the Richmond 16.

I thought it was just one guy's name. Confusing. 1777, 17 Quakers. They were a group of conscientious objectors. And they were sent to Richmond Castle, which was not the place you want to go. It was an NCC base. And they were sent to war camps in May 1916.

And court-martialed, basically, sent us to death by firing squad. And then Prime Minister Asquith stepped in and said, no, let's not kill him. Let's sentence him to 10 years hard labor, breaking up rocks in a Scottish quarry. And one of them died of pneumonia. They were all pretty upset when they found out

they were busting up this rock to make military roads. Yeah, because remember, they were still part of the war effort. Yes, they were like, no, we're not helping you with your war. But even breaking up rocks into gravel to be used for roads for the military, that was a big one. That was a big deal to them. Yeah, and I don't think any of the 16 came out of it OK. No, I'm sure.

There was death and suicide and malnutrition, depression. Yeah. Yeah, none of them came out of that OK. Over in the states, there was a guy named Evan Thomas, who apparently was not the only person who was treated like this. He was a conscientious objector who was thrown in jail because he wouldn't do anything for the war effort.

And he went on a hunger strike and refused to eat. And so the prosecutor, I guess an army prosecutor, tried to get the government to just go ahead and execute him as a show of strength. And the government said, yeah, you know what? We'll just give him 25 years hard labor instead. Right. He was freed on a technicality actually sooner than that.

But he was, oh, it wasn't him, I'm sorry. There was another guy in England who was still working after the war was over, after World War I was over. He was still being put through hard labor himself after the war for being a conscientious objector, which is just vile. Yeah.

You know, at the very least once the war is over, just let him go. He actually died during hard labor. He was on a diet of a slice of bread a day. His name was Ernest England. Of England? Yep. Wow.

Pretty on the nose. The word got out about these horrific stories, though, and how these people were treated. And there was a little bit of public sentiment that moved in the other direction of respect and said that, you know what, this actually takes a lot of courage to object to something and to stick to those values in the face of all this brutality

that they're going to face. Yeah. It's really interesting. To go to prison and live on one slice of bread a day, die from hard labor, and not just be like, OK, fine. I'll drive an ambulance. Right, right. It takes a lot of courage.

And so as a result of that, by the time World War II rolled around, the conscientious objectors in that war were treated much better. Yeah. Much, much better. They were treated almost respectfully, really. Some were still thrown in prison. If you wouldn't do anything, you would go to prison.

But the US government, in particular, came up with the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940. Part of that said, OK, you can drive an ambulance. You can be a medic. You can have a non-combat role in the military. Or if you don't. It should be a lab rat. Yeah, that was one.

Or you could just go work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, where you're just doing infrastructure stuff within the country that's really not directly helping the war effort at all. Or yeah, you can be a lab rat. Yeah, and there were dudes that did that and said, oh, that's great. I'll be a human guinea pig.

That beats going to war. And they said, all right, get in that room. We're going to spray you down with DDT. Or we're going to inject you with a hepatitis virus. Or make you go on a starve yourself for a year, basically. Yeah, the Minnesota University of Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Yeah, so how's that?

And they all went, oh, maybe this isn't so good either. Do we get to eat if we're lice infested? They said, yep. Actually, there's a quote from one guy who was a CEO. His name was Neil Hartman. He said, I was young, and I wanted to show that I was not a coward, which is why he signed up for medical experimentation.

Wow. You know? Well, the Korean War kind of had a similar, you know, things were just kind of going along in a similar fashion, as far as being offered alternative jobs of construction or farm work. And it was really the Vietnam War where things changed. It became a lot harder to get that CEO status because the law

changed and said, basically, the only reason you can be a CEO is if you have a religious reason. And you're religiously opposed for a religious basis to all wars. Yeah. It can't be I don't think the Vietnam War is just or I'm opposed to all wars because I think all soldiers are pawns of the elite ruling class.

Right. It has to be for religious reasons. And so a lot of people, I think 170,000, 170,000 were granted CEO status during Vietnam for those reasons. But other ones, and I think if you're a true conscientious objector, you're not going to lie and say it's for religious reasons when it isn't for religious reasons.

Right. So those people, a lot of them, went to fled to Canada. Sure. Or Mexico, I imagine, too. Yeah. The two countries, the other two in North America. Yeah, I'd like to think if there was a draft today, I would try and get out by saying, you don't want me.

I would not be good at this. I'd go across the trenches in no man's land and say, hey, let's get a conversation going. Yeah, this is the last guy you want fighting for you. Really, just let me stay at home. Maybe I'll do some good writing for you. Or maybe I'll do a great podcast on your efforts. And they'd hand you a pitcher of beer and say, get in there

and go throw that on that guy's head. You're in war now. Wait, there's one other thing that Vietnam changed. Vietnam's conscientious objection and pacifism in the Vietnam era became inextricably linked to hippies and free love and their version of the peace movement. And it just disgusted everybody who wasn't a hippie.

And pacifism actually really, it became disjointed, disorganized, and fell to pieces during Vietnam, not because Vietnam was a just war or that even most Americans were behind it, but because the pacifist groups were just so poorly organized during the time that it almost gave pacifism a bad name. And it wasn't until the early 80s that nuclear pacifism sparked a revival of pacifism in the United States.

So those that was non-hippie? Yeah, yeah. That it was just about anybody could get behind of all stripes. Nuclear pacifism was a, I remember that being a big thing in the 80s. No nukes? Sure. Or nuke the whales, one of the two.

In 1973, the draft ended and wars from that point on were voluntary or military service at least was voluntary because there were still conscientious objectors within the military. In 2004 in Iraq, there were 110 soldiers who filed their paperwork to become a CEO, not a commanding officer. Right.

They're like, I don't want to be a grunt. Just send me to the top. And about half of these were granted. And the ones that were rejected some of them went AWOL and went into hiding somewhere court-martialed and went to jail. Which is unusual that this is a volunteer force. But they still had conscientious objectors on it.

Well, they didn't believe in that particular war effort, perhaps. Yeah, I guess so. Let's go back to Gandhi a bit. He had this bag, his bag was called Sacha Graha. And that means truth force. And his whole thing was peace is a weapon. Yeah.

And we can use it that way and basically equalize this struggle using all kinds of folks in a peaceful way. But not just to say, I'm a pacifist, but to really try and disrupt the efforts of the war through pacifism. Yeah, he was to be a thorn in the side. He would be characterized technically as a pragmatic pacifist.

Because he realized that violence was not going to help the Indian cause and was going to make it worse. And that non-violence in this case could be weaponized and he weaponized non-violence. And it really worked. And the reason why it worked was because the world saw these British soldiers beating helpless Indians who were not fighting back.

And the British had long said, not just in India, but everywhere we have colonies, we're civilizing these areas. But it doesn't look very civil. Yeah, when you're beating an unarmed, non-resisting Indian, elderly person, right? And it worked in that sense. But again, he was not against the use of violence

in other situations. So while non-violence is a part of pacifism, they can be separate things. Yes. You don't have to be a pacifist to be non-violent. It can just make sense in certain situations. Yeah, and there are three main ways that you can kind of go about this non-violent resistance.

The first, you can write letters. You can lobby, you can petition and pick it. You can wear a symbol. You can march and protest. If you want to kick it up a notch, you can move on to non-cooperation, which is boycotting something, slowing down something, reporting sick, having walkouts, embargoes.

And then finally, if you really want to go for it as a pacifist, non-violent resistor. Nonviolent intervention, which is fasting and sit-ins. I form a shadow government, write an underground newspaper, basically just acts of civil disobedience. Pretty powerful stuff there. Yeah, and all that's non-violent. But again, you don't have to be a pacifist to engage

in these kind of things. Correct. So there's a lot of, if you're sitting there like, what about this? But what about that? What about this? You might be a pole hoker. Pole hoker?

A pole poker. Right, which is like a grand tradition among humanity. Because there's basically two ways of looking at people. And we did an episode on, I think it was called, what's the most peaceful time in history? Yeah. And we talked a lot about whether humans are inherently violent or inherently peaceful.

Yeah. So people love to say like, hey, weirdo, who thinks there's no justification for violence, what about this situation? Yeah, pole hokers. Right. So the pole hoker might first say something like, well, wait a minute, wait a minute.

You're trying to tell me that you're cool with executing a criminal or shooting a guy who's coming at your family to set you all on fire. But you're not OK with going to war. What's the difference? Right. Or they might say, well, yeah, it's super easy to be a pacifist as long as someone else is going

out there and fighting the war that keeps you free to be that pacifist. Right, and that's one that pacifism probably has the hardest time answering. Right. Because, yeah, for a pacifist to sit around, say, in the United States, you're in a pretty safe, comfortable position, in part because other

people went off and fought wars, or in a country that's been invaded before. That's a tough one to defend. And really, the only solution I've seen is that pacifists say, well, I think that we should outlaw all acts of aggression, or all acts of violence, even against aggressors. And that's just how I feel.

If other people are going to go fight, that's their thing. But if somebody came to kill me, I would let them kill me. Wow. That's a tough one, for sure. Because I think a lot of people who would say something like that might not necessarily stick by it when they're actually being assaulted by somebody who intends to kill them,

or probably more to the point, like their loved one is being assaulted by someone who intends to kill them, to just stand by and say, I'm sorry, but pacifism is the most morally upstanding thing I can do. So you're dead. Yeah, and I think, and I'm talking off my head here again, but I think a pacifist, it probably has to be a practice, like an active thing you work at,

because I think mostly the innate human response if someone tries to kill your child or your loved one is to snap and defend them. So you probably really have to, like a meditation is a practice. I imagine that kind of pacifism has to be a practice. But one of those pole hokers, as you call them, might say, did you do what's morally right

when you let that person indiscriminately kill your child in front of you and didn't do a thing about it to stop them? I think that's so extreme, though. I know, but that's where philosophy exists, and on those extreme ends. When you take an idea and you test it to its furthest tensile strength,

that's when you really get into the meat of it. Like, what about this? What about that? And that's a, I mean, I don't necessarily know that's moral. But then the pacifist would say, well, why is their life, my child's life worth more than the life of this aggressor? To which I would answer, well, your child's not an aggressor. Aggressor's taking a step below your child by being an aggressor.

Boy, the tensile strength is high. Shall we talk a little bit about World War II here? Kind of have to. In the closing moments? Yeah, for sure. Because it's really easy to look back at World War II and kind of whitewash it as, boy, the allies were out there to fight Hitler because he was trying to kill Jews

and commit atrocities against humanity. And so we had to go in there and stop him at all costs. Right. And a lot of people point to World War II saying, finally, after 1,500 years, here is what proves the just war theory. Right. This guy was so bad. Yeah.

And the stuff he was doing was so bad that we had to go to war to stop him. Pacifists, you're idiots for saying otherwise. Yes, but here with the benefit of hindsight, there are some people out there, historians, theologists. There's one guy named Nick Stanton Rourke who said, it's a sad fact that the allies did little to fort the worst of Hitler's atrocities.

Times of death camps which were bringing in and vetting more people every day, transportation routes into death camps could have been targeted with no tactical risk to the Allied forces involved. But they were routinely denied often because the military was careful to avoid the appearance of fighting, quote, for the Jews, which would have lost popular support for the war.

So a lot of these historians now make a point that a lot more diplomacy and pacifist resistance could have been more, saved more lives even than the way they went at it with Hitler. I didn't know all this, did you? I didn't know at all. So basically, really eye-opening. From what we found is that apparently the allies were well aware of the threat to the Jews in Europe.

He was going on for a long time before we got involved. Yeah, and he was publicly saying, if this turns into a world war, I'm laying it at the feet of the Jews and I'm going to exterminate the Jews in Europe. So US, take that for what it's worth. And the US apparently knew this, that if they entered the war, it would spell doom for the Jews in Europe. And this is the pacifist stance.

Had we gone to Hitler and said, you know what? We will accept conditional surrender if you will allow free passage for the Jews out of Europe into other places where they're going to be safe. If you'll just let them go, you're saying that you have to get rid of them because they're useless and you can't afford to feed useless people. So you got to exterminate them.

Well, we'll take them from you. There was a lot of stuff that could have been done that wasn't done. So from the pacifist standpoint to point to World War II and say, this proves the just war theory and that pacifism doesn't work, the pacifist would say, actually it proves that we were not willing to try pacifism even when it was apparent that that was going to possibly work way better than

going to war was going to, going after an unconditional surrender. Well, and some historians point to Denmark as being a prime example of how things could have gone differently perhaps and how they handled Hitler's aggression. Denmark very famously was, what did they say? They were neutral. Yeah, they said we're neutral and Germany said we don't care.

Yeah. So Germany invaded him anyway, but they said, you know what? We can't resist Hitler with arms like we're all going to be dead because we're just too small. We have no means to fight this war machine that's coming at us. So they basically kind of gave up, said that would be a suicidal move to do anything otherwise and said, here's what we're going to do.

We're basically going to be pacifist resistance resistors. Right. And they slowed things down. They delayed transportation. They sabotaged equipment. They sabotaged railroads and infrastructure. Workers went on strike when they were producing materials for the Nazis.

They basically just said, we're not going to follow your anti-Semitic policies. And when Hitler said, all right, I want to deport all the Danish Jews, they said, no. And they hid them. They said, what Danish Jews? Yeah. And they hid them all in addition to about 1,500 more

people were refugees there seeking protection and not a single Danish Jew died during the Holocaust. Right. And apparently in the same post from Nick Stanton Rourke, he said that later on some of the higher ups in the third Reich said that they were confounded whenever they were confronted with non-violence because they didn't know what to do with it.

Yeah. You know? And that non-violent resistance to the third Reich actually was more successful than bombing it into nothingness. Well, yeah, because you still need some sort of support, public support behind you. Yeah. And if you if the news reports are of like Nazis just wasting

away Danish citizens who aren't fighting back, like they're not they're not going to have any support from their own followers. Well, that would erode. Remember in our dictator episode, we talked about how belligerence from a foreign nation often causes the population to be afraid and get behind their dictator. Yeah.

Where Nicholson Baker, who's an author, who is also a famous pacifist, he basically said that that it was fear that bound Hitler and Germany together. Yeah. Whereas if suddenly there was a cease to fighting and there was no threat any longer of being invaded or bombed by the allies that who knows what could have happened. Hitler, there were a lot of like traitorious conspiracies

against Hitler within his own ranks. Sure. There were a lot of resistance movements against him. Maybe he would have been replaced and at the very least he would have died eventually and and probably some of the victims of the Holocaust would have been saved. Yeah.

It's like that's but think about it. That's almost blasphemy to talk about that like not being violent or aggressive toward Hitler. Yeah. And but apparently that's because of a revision over time right over the the goals and the reasons why we entered World War Two. Super interesting.

It really is. It's very eye-opening. And then lastly, does pacifism work with terrorists like ISIS? I love how this article basically sums it up. Probably not. No. Nope. Yeah.

Nobody knows what what no pacifist knows what to do with something like ISIS. They that maybe they probably break pacifism even more than Hitler does the idea of it. Yeah. Well, that's a big one. Yeah. Boy, good.

We haven't had a good deep talk like that in a while. Glad we touched. What was it? We were touched by the pacifist bug. Yeah. Glad that happened. If you want to be touched by the pacifist bugs, just type that word into the search bar how stuff works and it will

bring up this great article. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. We got an email about our CTE episode from a NFL player from a Dallas Cowboy. Did you read that one? No. Wow. Emmett Cleary, he's a guard.

He's a guard for the amazing offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys and a smart dude went to Boston College. Thanks for writing. Yeah. I was pretty excited and he said that I could read this. Hey guys, current NFL player, big fan of the show. I have the background in science biology at Boston College and my interest was peaked about CTE.

You covered all sides of it, but wanted to share the perspective of an active player. As the research has progressed and garnered media coverage over the last 10 years, awareness of the risks of repetitive brain trauma among players has grown. Can't speak for everyone, but guys seem more cautious with their brain health. From the time I started college, football culture has changed.

Players have become more proactive reporting head injuries and more conservative in returning to play. I've seen my teammates look out for each other and advise each other towards safety. In an occupation that promotes a warrior mentality, this is a good thing. We understand that nobody gets out of the game healthy and while most people are okay with bad knees or shoulders

or back problems, brain health is a serious concern. As this all went public, it became increasingly apparent how deceitful NFL leadership has been. While the league office and club medical staffs include many good people who undoubtedly care about our long-term health, the leadership has consistently obfuscated evidence, promoted pseudoscience, and outright lied about the effects of head injuries.

Retired players feel betrayed and active players have no reason to trust that league, that the league will prioritize our health over covering its own, but legally. Protecting brain health is good for everybody involved, but the league is more concerned with avoiding liability and convincing public that football is harmless. Until longitudinal studies can accurately quantify the risk of football, we do the best we can with the information we

have. The guys balance the known risks of against the joy and benefits of playing. Personally, I am hoping to enjoy my career and get out relatively healthy. I love my job and don't want to jeopardize my long-term well-being. Thanks for bringing your typical rigorous research and

balance you point to a critical issue. Offensive guard, Emmett Clary. Yes, don't tell anybody I said this, okay? Man, that was a great email. Thank you, Offensive Lyman Clary. Yeah, thank you. Isn't that how you address professional football players? He said if we come back to Dallas or Chicago, I guess he's

maybe from Chicago in the office. We'll hang. We'll hang. Cool. Drinking contest. Nice. And we'll put on the helmets and crack them together. Yeah.

Oh, I watched the game. Oh, man, I think it was Louisville versus somebody. Who knows? A team that had different colors on, right? College football? Yeah. Yeah. It was a bowl.

Louisville versus somebody. Well, whoever they played in their bowl, was it LSU? I'm not sure who they played this year. Well, somebody led with the crown of their head and hit somebody else in the helmet and got ejected for the game. Yeah. And rightfully so. They made a big deal of it.

Yeah. College football, they'll do that. They call it targeting it. Yeah, they did. But I mean, I remember a couple of years ago, they're like, that's a good hit. Yeah, he rung his bell. Yeah.

But everybody's talking very seriously and quietly about how this is a big deal. And I'm like, okay, this is progress. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot. Again, offensive lineman, Cleary. And if you want to get in touch with us like he did, you can tweet to us.

I'm at Josh Clark. And I'm also at SYSK Podcast on Twitter. Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook and at facebook.com. We can both be reached at stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com via email. And as always, hang out with us at our luxurious home on the web, stuffyshino.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Matt. I'm Noel.

I'm Ben. And we are stuff they don't want you to know. Each week, we cover the latest and strangest in fringe science, government cover-ups, allegations of the paranormal, and more. New episodes come out every Friday on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Welcome to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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