Conscientious Objector

 

A ‘conscientious objector’ is a person who for reasons of conscience objects to complying with a particular requirement, especially serving in the armed forces.

 

Throughout U.S. history, ‘conscientious objectors’ have been penalized for their position. They often had to pay a fee in exchange for exemption from military service. When World War I broke out, the government restricted the rules for conscientious objectors, which led to the imprisonment of hundreds of Americans.

 

A person must be a pacifist to be a ‘conscientious objector’. You do not have to be opposed to personal self-defense (i.e. someone attacking you or your loved one) or to police force, or be a vegetarian to qualify as a ‘conscientious objector’.

 

These ‘conscientious objectors’ claimed exemption on grounds of their pacifist, political or religious beliefs. ‘Conscientious objectors’ became the targets of abuse. They were made to feel guilty for not supporting their country.

 

Other religious groups, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, although not strictly pacifist, also refused to participate. Governing authorities have dealt with ‘conscientious objectors’ disparately, with some receiving exemptions and others being fined or imprisoned.

 

In fact, a soldier has a legal duty to refuse to carry out an order that breaches the provisions of international statutes that deals with the conduct of war such as the Geneva conventions or the conventions of The Hague.

 

You can never aim at civilians, the law says. But it is not against the rules to kill civilians “collaterally,” so long as doing so is not out of proportion to the concrete and direct military aim, and so long as you take precautions to avoid or minimize harm.

 

A ‘conscientious objector’ is an “individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service” on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion.

 

In some countries, ‘conscientious objectors’ are assigned to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service. 

 

Some ‘conscientious objectors’ consider themselves as pacifists, non-interventionist, non-resistant, non-aggression, anti-imperialist, anti-militarist or philosophically stateless (not believing in the notion of state).

 

On March 8, 1995, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights resolution 1995/83 stated, “persons performing military service should not be excluded from the right to have conscientious objections to military service”. This was re-affirmed in 1998, when resolution 1998/77 recognized that “persons [already] performing military service may develop conscientious objections”.

 

A number of organizations around the world celebrate the principle on May 15 as International ‘Conscientious Objection’ Day. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military-industrial complex due to a crisis of conscience.

 

To object is to put forth in opposition or as an objection objected that the statement was misleading, to oppose something firmly and usually with words or arguments.

 

Conscience is a cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations based on an individual’s moral philosophy or value system. Conscience stands in contrast to elicited emotion or thought due to associations based on immediate sensory perceptions and reflexive responses, as in sympathetic central nervous system responses. In common terms, conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a person commits an act that conflicts with their moral values. An individual’s moral values and their dissonance with familial, social, cultural and historical interpretations of moral philosophy are considered in the examination of cultural relativity in both the practice and study of psychology. The extent to which conscience informs moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments are or should be based on reason has occasioned debate through much of modern history between theories of modern in juxtaposition to the theories of romanticism and other reactionary movements after the end of the Middle Ages.

 

Religious views of conscience usually see it as linked to a morality inherent in all humans, to a beneficent universe and/or to divinity. The diverse ritualistic, mythical, doctrinal, legal, institutional and material features of religion may not necessarily cohere with experiential, emotive, spiritual or contemplative considerations about the origin and operation of conscience. Common secular or scientific views regard the capacity for conscience as probably genetically determined, with its subject probably learned or imprinted as part of a culture.

 

Conscience is increasingly conceived of as applying to the world as a whole, has motivated numerous notable acts for the public good and been the subject of many prominent examples of literature, music and film.

 

Freedom, generally, is having the ability to act or change without constraint. Something is “free” if it can change easily and is not constrained in its present state. In philosophy and religion, it is associated with having free will and being without undue or unjust constraints, or enslavement, and is an idea closely related to the concept of liberty. A person has the freedom to do things that will not, in theory or in practice, be prevented by other forces. Outside of the human realm, freedom generally does not have this political or psychological dimension. In physics or engineering, the mathematical concept may also be applied to a body or system constrained by a set of equations, whose degrees of freedom describe the number of independent motions that are allowed to it.

 

With that said, why don’t you wear your mask?

 

Is it so much to ask to wrap a diaper on your face? Doctors have been doing it for years so their snot won’t drip into your open-heart surgery.

 

 Yet some people just don’t want to wear one. Will covering half your face ruin your appearance? Will not being able to show off your latest choice in lip-gloss destroy your romantic relationship? You can’t get within 6 feet of the other person anyway so they’ll be no lip smacking.

 

Or are you just opposing the ‘request’ to wear a facemask to protect yourself and others from spreading this germ around that is killing people?

 

When I was a kid I ‘consciously objected’ to washing the dishes. I washed the dishes and went to bed with a tanned bottom.

 

Having some knowledge of right and wrong, I was a ‘conscientious objector’ to stealing cars, breaking and entering and possibility a few more actions my friends wanted to do.

 

The war that was closest to me was Vietnam. I never got the request from the government to come join the fight. I had read enough and seen enough and heard enough to understand why ‘we’ were there and I wanted no part of it. Some I knew became members of the fray, willingly or unwillingly. Some came home. Some did not. Some people I knew spent time convincing the government that they were ‘conscientious objector’.

 

What else do we ‘object’ too?

 

Speeding tickets, waiting in line, overcooked chicken, faux couture, potholes, smelly people, financial inequality, discrimination, infidelity, opioid abuse, prison overcrowding, racial injustice, sexism, misogyny, housing, family planning, religion, movies, television, your neighbors’…. the list goes on and on.

 

What are you going to do about it?

 

Do you object…. I mean ‘conscientious object’ to animal abuse, plastic pollution, global warming? What is parked in the driveway?

 

Maybe Patrick Henry was the best ‘conscientious objector’?

“Give me liberty or give me death”