One: When my partner worked as the system administrator of a small college, her boss (the head of IT, a fatherly older man) came to her with a bit of an ethical situation.
It seems that the Dean of Admissions had asked him about taking down a student’s personal web page hosted on the college’s web server. Why? The web page contained pictures of the student and her girlfriend engaged in public displays of affection, some not particularly clothed. The Dean of Admissions was concerned that this would give the college a bad reputation.
Naturally the head of IT completely rejected the request out of hand, but was interested in discussing the implications. One that came up was that taking down a student web page about a lesbian relationship would be worse reputation than hosting it could bring. Another was that the IT staff did not feel like being censors over student expression, and certainly did not feel like being so on behalf of the Admissions office.
It’s not clear to me that this case is especially analogous. It may be rather irrelevant, all in all.
Two: There is the notion that politics is about violence, not about agreement. That is to say, it is not about what we do when everyone agrees and goes along; but rather what we do when someone refuses to go along; when there is contention over shared resources because not everyone agrees what to do with them; when someone is excluded; when someone gets to impose on someone else (or not); and so on. Violence is often at least somewhere in the background of such discussions, in judicial systems, diplomacy, and so on. As Chairman Mao put it (at least, as quoted by Bob Wilson), political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And a party with no ability to disrupt the status quo is one that nobody has to listen to.
As such, a position of nonviolence goes along with a position of non-politics. Avoiding threatening people — taken seriously enough — may require disengaging from a lot of political and legal-system stuff. For instance, proposing to make certain research illegal or restricted by law entails proposing a threat of violence against people doing that research.
Two thoughts:
One: When my partner worked as the system administrator of a small college, her boss (the head of IT, a fatherly older man) came to her with a bit of an ethical situation.
It seems that the Dean of Admissions had asked him about taking down a student’s personal web page hosted on the college’s web server. Why? The web page contained pictures of the student and her girlfriend engaged in public displays of affection, some not particularly clothed. The Dean of Admissions was concerned that this would give the college a bad reputation.
Naturally the head of IT completely rejected the request out of hand, but was interested in discussing the implications. One that came up was that taking down a student web page about a lesbian relationship would be worse reputation than hosting it could bring. Another was that the IT staff did not feel like being censors over student expression, and certainly did not feel like being so on behalf of the Admissions office.
It’s not clear to me that this case is especially analogous. It may be rather irrelevant, all in all.
Two: There is the notion that politics is about violence, not about agreement. That is to say, it is not about what we do when everyone agrees and goes along; but rather what we do when someone refuses to go along; when there is contention over shared resources because not everyone agrees what to do with them; when someone is excluded; when someone gets to impose on someone else (or not); and so on. Violence is often at least somewhere in the background of such discussions, in judicial systems, diplomacy, and so on. As Chairman Mao put it (at least, as quoted by Bob Wilson), political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And a party with no ability to disrupt the status quo is one that nobody has to listen to.
As such, a position of nonviolence goes along with a position of non-politics. Avoiding threatening people — taken seriously enough — may require disengaging from a lot of political and legal-system stuff. For instance, proposing to make certain research illegal or restricted by law entails proposing a threat of violence against people doing that research.