Drink Tea? You Can't Be a Conscientious Objector

Conscientious Objection needs be holisitic, or the mores of any given time will catch an appellant up.  In WWI, the draft board tried to catch presumed hypocrites by asking if the drank tea:

It appeared that the tribunals tried to argue that as a taxed good, drinking tea was a contribution to the war effort.
Thousands of conscientious objectors refused to perform military service, usually on moral or religious grounds, as conscription laws enlisted 2.5 million extra British troops from 1916 onwards.
By March 1916, the British Government was desperately short of soldiers, conscription was introduced and all able-bodied men, aged between 18 and 41, were ordered to join the war effort.

Conscientious objectors can drink tea even if taxed, because a tea tax is a minor violation of human rights but killing others is an existential violation.  You'll need to be holistically formed to defend your objection when the next draft comes.

They drafted 41 year olds?

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Conscientious Objector and the Pacifist

Sometimes they shoot conscientious objectors.  How to define those who are to be shot?

Conscientious Objector, or CO, generally relates to war, but can relate to anything: Romney/Obamacare, school choice, you name it.

Assuming freedom is the ether necessary for us to have free will, then the ability to choose is fundamental to being human. Conscientious objection is grounded in freedom, and freedom assumes all is voluntary.  Violence violates freedom, so conscientious objection is necessarily nonviolent.  But one confusion is the homophonic word but profoundly different meanings.

Although pacifism is what conscientious objectors are all about, that is making peace, people speak of conscientious objection as though they were passivists.

You see above in the verb and adjective form the sense, the difference, emerges.

Tohei Sensei, aikido chief instructor and the only ju-dan awarded, taught about positive non fighting, that is dealing with violence peacefully.  To pacify the violent is the work of pacifists.  Tohei contrasted positive non-fighting with negative non-fighting, for example, running away form a fight is negative non-fighting.  Passivism would be a form of negative non-fighting.

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A Rainbow of Conscientious Objection

Conscientious objection is not limited to war, but all violence, defined as force to effect an injury.  Forcing people to recognize same-sex marriages is a violence, one to which there is objection.

The government will propose new protections for “conscientious objectors” to same-sex marriage which marriage equality advocates fear could allow civil celebrants, registrars and even bakers and florists to refuse to serve same-sex weddings.

There are those who conscientiously object to gay marriage.  They ought to live out their conscience.

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Talk About Misogi Training

In addition to the mountain water no doubt ice cold, there is the fall.  I make a big deal about my cold water swimming...  this guy is tough...  cold water mountain waterfall diving!



True, the fall won't kill you, it's what you strike below.  Then there is the green water.  Hope that is vegetation and not pollution.

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No Place for Moral Convictions in Conscientious Objection

Medicine is another field where willful killing is practiced, and seen as a virtue.  In Australia they are working on a CO status for doctors.

Establish medical conscientious objection review boards. Robert Card, of the University of Rochester Medical Center (US), argues in the JME that doctors need to give “public reasons” for conscientious objection. This would rule out even “effective referral” for a procedure. Their reasons need to be solidly grounded, empirically and ethically. This rules out reasons based on prejudice (sexism or racism) or sincere moral convictions.

Wait, what? Sincere moral convictions are no basis for CO status?  Well, I guess we cannot have morality in medicine.

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