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By Root 2485 0

pacifism is a better, more effective, more moral, or more adaptive way to structure a community, or that it is an appropriate response to the deathliness of civilization. It is also simply untrue to ascribe universal moral pacifism to the Cheyenne. Certainly the famous Cheyenne fighter Roman Nose (Woo-Kay-Nay or Arched Nose) would have been surprised to learn that the Cheyenne were or are moral pacifists. So would the Cheyenne who fought alongside Red Cloud, and those who fought alongside Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Far from being in any way pacifistic, the Cheyenne had at least seven full-fledged military societies: the Kit-Fox Men (Woksihitaneo); Red Shields (Mahohivas); Crazy Dogs (Hotamimasaw); Crooked Lance Society (Himoiyoqis), known by the ethnohistorian George Grinnell as the Elks; Bowstring Men (Himatanohis); Wolf Warriors (Konianutqio); and the famous Dog Soldiers (Hotamitaneo).465

In fact, instead of disproving my point about traditional indigenous peoples not advocating absolute moral pacifism, I think instead Lawrence Hart’s article—given his Christianity—supports it.

Having said all this, I think we all know the real reason behind the paucity of speeches in support of moral pacifism by the indigenous, which is that absolute moral pacifism is a product of civilization. It is, as we’ll soon explore in Volume II, a response by the exploited to their trauma. It is an unnatural state. It is a state that is nurtured by exploiter and victim alike, to perpetuate their exploitative and destructive relationship.

STAR WARS

Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action. . . . The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is always being prevented—and then do nothing.

Soren Kierkegaard466

I WENT TO SEE STAR WARS WHEN I WAS IN FIGH SCHOOL, WHICH SEEMS about the right time to see it. I liked it a lot. I wasn’t one of those people who saw it a hundred times or anything. I wasn’t that much of a nerd. Besides, I was too busy playing Dungeons and Dragons. I saw it again recently. It’s not so good as I remember. In fact it’s pretty bad. The characters are flat, the dialog hokey, the acting nondescript. But I still loved the ending, where Luke remembers to “use the force” to blow up the Death Star. For those of you who may have forgotten, the Death Star (according to the official Star Wars website) “was the code name of an unspeakably powerful and horrific weapon developed by the Empire. The immense space station carried a weapon capable of destroying entire planets. The Death Star was to be an instrument of terror, meant to cow treasonous worlds with the threat of annihilation. While the massive station is evidence of the evil that was the Galactic Empire, it was also proof of the New Order’s greatest weakness—the belief that technology and terror were superior to the will of oppressed beings fighting for freedom.” That’s all pretty interesting stuff, and of course applicable to the discussion at hand: civilization as Death Star.

The website also says, “The Death Star was a battle station the size of a small moon. It had a formidable array of turbolasers and tractor beam projectors, giving it the firepower of greater than half the Imperial Starfleet. Within its cavernous interior were legions of Imperial troops and fightercraft, as well as all manner of detention blocks and interrogation cells. The Death Star was spherical, and dark gray in color. Located on the Death Star’s northern hemisphere was a concave disk housing the station’s main laser weapon. . . . In a brutal display of the Death Star’s power, Grand Moff Tarkin targeted its prime weapon at the peaceful world of Alderaan. [Rebel princess] Leia Organa, an Imperial captive at the time, was forced to watch as the searing laser blast split apart her beloved world, turning the planet and its populace into orbital ash and debris.” I’m not sure if you feel a stab of recognition at being a captive of the empire, forced to watch your beloved world and its (human and nonhuman) populace turned into orbital ash and