Martin Luther King Jr. explained that he had a dream of peace among the nation. One direct quote from his speech is “we must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence.” Martin Luther King Jr. was a pacifist, and I am too.

Pacifism is the ultimate belief that harming others is wrong. In mathematical terms, this concept is rather simple: a negative number added to another negative number only increases the value of negativity. A positive number added to a negative number only decreases the value of negativity. Just like this simple mathematical concept, social situations are also the same.

When person punches another person, this has a negative impact. However, if the person who was harmed only punches the person in return, that increases the overall negative impact. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

There is another reason I love pacifism: it is directly linked to the truth that physically venting our anger is always wrong. According to psychologists, we are not supposed to become violent when we are upset. It is physiologically detrimental. Instead, we are supposed to try to approach the situation as calmly as possible. Violent outbursts only increase anger; they do not mitigate physiological symptoms of anger. The more we express anger in violent ways, the angrier we become. Only the opposite, just like love/hate and positive/negative, can mitigate the symptoms of anger. Destructive behavior only leads to more destructive behavior, while constructive behavior leads to more constructive behavior.

Violence does not help either party. The person who is violent is harming their own emotional balance because their destructive behavior breeds more destructive behavior. This concept is based on neural pathways: the behavior we practice the most is the one that is mostly encouraged and more likely to be wired into our brains. Simultaneously, the person who is the victim of the violence is also harmed. With aggression and violence, no one wins.

However, aggression can be defined in different behaviors that all include hostility and force. This would include being passive aggressive and insulting other people. It is any kind of sabotage, whether emotional or physical or professional, of another person. We live in a culture where people think that anyone in an argument who has the wittier, most caustic insult is the ultimate victor; apparently, the person who wins an argument is the one who makes the other appear inferior via insults. We base this on the concept of war: whoever is willing to surrender from being the most harmed and not have enough weaponry will be declared the loser.

However, having an ongoing insult war is also aggressive because it is aimed to harm another person’s confidence, motivation, and emotional wellbeing. Emotional wellbeing is based on balanced emotions, and verbal attacks and verbal abuse have the potential to destabilize other people.

We also live in a world filled with television and movies that promote the desensitization of violence by subjecting viewers to it. When violence becomes commonplace, we lose our ability to recognize that it is tragic and devastating. We become desensitized to dehumanization and human dignity. According to Bandura's social learning theory, aggression is learned by direct observation and reinforcement. He believed that aggressive behavior is selectively reinforced because people expect a reward from being aggressive towards others.

Pacifism does not condone any kind of harm because pacifism is based on respecting the dignity of all people. Violence and competition are basic human instincts that we have for survival. However, we do not need violence and competition to coexist. That would create a paradox. The opposite of coexisting is attempting to harm one another. We cannot compete by trying to “take out competition” via aggression or seek to be superior to others and simultaneously promote coexisting. Coexisting means respecting other’s human dignity and not seeking to make anyone else feel inferior. Our basic animal instincts may drive us to be competitive, but pacifism ultimately promotes our humanity to go above and beyond basic animal instincts. Doing so promotes a stronger community.

The obvious downside of pacifism, however, is that not everyone is a pacifist. Being a pacifist does not mean being completely defenseless, but it does imply an incapability to be offensive. Pacifism produces vulnerability, and no one is completely comfortable with being vulnerable to those who do not share the same values. Because pacifists cannot fight back, they are more likely to be harmed.

Nevertheless, pacifism promotes peaceful protesting and civilized discussion because these are based on respecting human dignity. Competition, violence, and dehumanization do the opposite of this. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream that he died for, and he was willing to stand for something that benefited universal love and human dignity. Pacifism implies that the definition of evil is all types of harm, so all types of harm are never justified.