[hackerspaces] Sigh -- I'm not helping with Maker Faires this year.

[Al Jigong Billings]

On Apr 7, 2012, at 8:10 AM, Walter van Holst wrote:

> On 4/6/12 6:40 PM, Al Jigong Billings wrote:
> > Where did Mitch say anything about Pacifism, Mr. Straw Man?
> 
> Mitch mentioned having issues with working with DARPA, Mr. bottom-quoter. In other conversations about DARPA, the issue was mostly with it being part of the military. Unless there are other objections against DARPA then it being part of the military that I have completely overlooked, this is about conscientious rejection of having anything to do with the military.

True but "rejecting the military" and "pacifism" are not the same thing. One can have a problem with or moral questions around an institution without it being about violence in general.

> Not wanting to be involved in anything remotely military is, unless I am very much mistaken, pacifism. Which is lovely and all that as long as there are no more psychopaths on this planet. An assumption that is not going to be met unless we start hacking the human DNA in a rather unprecedented way.

No, not wanting to engage in any violence or the moral conviction that one should not is pacifism.

Not wanting to be involved with the military *may* be an outgrowth of pacifism or it may be something else. There are *lots* of reasons to reject military involvement in aspects of our lives that do not equate to having a complete unwillingness to engage in any violence whatsoever.

To point, I'm objecting to DARPA involvement as well (and to the military in general) in our schools. I'm not a pacifist though. I don't know that Mitch is a pacifist unless he has said as much. 

Al
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