FAST FOOD 2026, Seventh Helping

                                                             

Homo sapiens, the species to which we belong, has existed on this earth for tens of thousands of years. Yet, just as man himself is a comparative newcomer in global  history, not to speak of the history of the universe, so civilization and written records are very late developments in human history. And, although at times a longing for international peace and human brotherhood appeared in the thought patterns of some early civilizations, and war was denounced and passive forms of resistance practiced occasionally, pacifism in the strict sense of an unconditional commitment to the renunciation of war bv a organized community of individuals isa little less than two thousand years old.

The first clearcut renunciation of this kind appears among the early Christians, who formed a part of the religious milieu of the Near East as it existed at the outset of the Roman Empire . The total renunciation of war by a community is historically speaking, original with Christianity. For the Christian, antimilitarism is a well-defined opposition to war as a system and to participating in war in any form. Even the peace-loving Jewish Essenes, with whom the Qumran community was probably associated, were not entirely weaponless. There is no known instance of conscientious objection to participation in war by a community or of the advocacy of such objection by a community of people before the Christian era. And, until roughly the last two hundred years, pacifism in the West was confined to those who stood inside the Christian tradition. It is not found, at least in explicit form, in any non-Christian Asian or African civilization until very recent times, nor in the early and indigenous American civilizations, nor in primitive cultures. Although, it is true, the idea of personal nonviolence does occur in the traditions of peoples as distant from each other as the Chinese, Indians, Jews, and North American Indians.

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

Taken from Peter Brock’s masterpiece, Pacifism in Europe to 1914.