I think a movement that turns to murder as a means of gaining power will continue using murder even should it achieve its goals.
Someone in the past pointed out to me that the American Revolution is an exception to that. I don't disagree but so many other examples in history would seem to support my view.
Going back to the American revolution it was in essence a battle between the Tories and the Whigs with the rebels and a great deal of the British leadership being Whigs and making “the progress” of Americas founding inevitable.
Of course, you can also argue that all government is a form of violence, the police are the only ones allowed by society to enact violence to protect property. If the state actions diverge from the population ideals enough, then to some extent the population is already at war with the state.
Arab spring protests too 2011
There are many examples actually, and there will be more and more with the current rate of environmental destruction. I can already forecast people blocking airports in the future if the governments don't anticipate and regulate drastically civil aviation
---------- The professor elevated his nose and said sternly, “I don’t believe in violence. It’s immoral.”
“It’s unethical ever to use violence,” said the bosun.
“I’m terrified of violence,” said the lady passenger. --------------
They are literally talking about people like you in the story lmao. The ship is further going north and they know they are gonna drown if they don't have a violent revolution against the captain and throw him out of the ship(killing him) so that they can turn the ship around.
> "The point of the story appears to justify murder as a legitimate means to enact change."
Well what the hell do you do in this scenario(in the story) ?? Have a non-violence protest and risk losing lives ?? Or throw the captain off the ship and steer it south ?? Violence/Murder is 1000% justified and is the answer in this story's scenario.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy
The problem is that every one has different views of what the ship going north means. If you permit violence, then many groups will use it…don’t be surprised when some religious extremists use it because “they’re killing babies!”
It's also something politicians are well aware of (or at least have been reminded about recently).
We don't have to fantasize about violence. But even in our relatively safe, civil societies, we should be aware of it, and not categorically discard it as aboherent in all case.
My opinion is that violence is abhorrent in all cases except in self-defense when the recipient is a directly active threat to your life.
The captain and his mates don't necessarily need killing, even though a revolt might be desirable. Even in plenty of actual ship mutinies, the rebels didn't outright kill the overthrown officers, only imprisoned or marooned them. And that was in the context of the death penalty hanging over them if they failed.
Violent revolutions in general have the small problem of bringing other violent psychopaths to power. Kaczynski might not mind, but I do. It was a well-known problem in actual pirate crews as well, and pirates actually had some interesting rules (including a fairly modern division of powers on board) to prevent the most violent psychos from taking over their ships and introduce some measure of consensus into their internal politics.
His caricature of "weaklings abhorring violence" does not address the succession problem at all, and even if the original officer crew was bad, another officer crew self-selected of willing murderers could conceivably be worse by being both professionally incompetent and ready to torture their opponents etc.
Not clear. Several legitimate interpretations of "going North" into current situations are factually «life-threatening».