sips tea Ah … come, sit with me for a moment. The tea is hot, and such questions are best answered slowly, with a warm belly.
It is natural to feel anger when one has been wronged. Even the gentlest river becomes violent when dammed for too long. But we must be careful, my friend, not to mistake the force of our feelings for the wisdom of our actions.
You ask why one should not kill their oppressors. The answer is not because they are strong, nor because they deserve mercy, nor because the world would punish you. It is because when you choose to do evil in the name of justice, you quietly invite that evil to live inside you. And once it is settled there, it does not leave easily.
You may believe you are striking only your enemy, but violence has a poor sense of direction. It spills into the soul, changing the person who wields it. The moment you decide that a “good reason” excuses a cruel act, you teach your heart that cruelty can be justified. Soon, it will begin to justify itself.
Oppression is a heavy chain, but hatred forges a second one, but this time around your own spirit. If you destroy another to feel free, you may discover that freedom never arrived, and only the destruction remained. True victory is not standing over your enemy’s body. True victory is refusing to become what hurt you. It is choosing a path that allows you to look at yourself in the mirror without turning away. The right reasons lose their meaning when they are carried by wrong actions. Like tea made with poisoned water, no matter how fine the leaves, the cup will only bring sickness.
So no - do not kill your oppressors. Not for their sake, but for yours. Because the most important battle is not against them, but against the part of yourself that believes goodness can be built from blood.
Iroh is not a pacifist. He is just very selective about the use of deadly force.
Iroh tries to teach zuko how to kill his enemies unflinchingly with “cold-blooded” lightning, and when that fails, teaches zuko to redirect lightning, which he knows is — and makes clear to be —explicitly deadly force, “to turn your enemy’s energy against them”. He acknowledges that, if he were to defeat Ozai, it would be “brother killing a brother”, because there was no realistic world in which Ozai could be contained without leading to his death. He accepts that his granddaughter “is crazy and needs to go down”.
When he chooses to take back Ba Sing Se, does he go in covertly and retake the puppet state from the occupying troops by forcing a surrender or a diplomatic solution? No, his opening move is to generate the largest ball of fire possible, then hurl it at the titanic wall, which not only does the camera show us has many people behind it, but which Iroh is ready to obliterate, soldiers and all, sight unseen. He does what must be done. Violence is his last resort, but he clearly has no moral compunction against using violence against the violent. Deadly force is met with a redirecting blow, carrying that same energy or more. In the first season, when he believes the fate of the world hangs in the balance, he threatens and uses deadly force “tenfold” that which is exacted upon the moon spirit. There is nowhere in the show that Iroh says that death is never the solution. The only reason we don’t see the deaths of the many soldiers occupying Ba Sing Se at Iroh’s hands (as well as all of the other times he has caused soldiers to be buried under their own boulders, breathed fire into their faces, or otherwise used violent infernos to defeat enemies) is that it was depicted in a kids’ show. The only person in the series who maintains that deadly force is never the answer is Aang. Aang only manages it in the finale by Deus Ex Machina because he’s the chosen one (and the protagonist of a kids’ show).
This is a fantasy land take that has no basis in reality or human history. At some point, it becomes a matter of physical well being for yourself and those around you. Telling people to just suck it up and take a beating/killing for the benefit of their “soul”…my god. Rejoin the real world buddy. It can be a scary place, but at least it’s real, not whatever bizarro world you are speaking from.
You let bullies walk on you, and they will keep doing it. The only thing that will stop them is letting them know that they will pay a real price if they keep at it. Trying to spin this “peace at all costs” worldview is intellectually dishonest and counterproductive.
sips tea Ah … come, sit with me for a moment. The tea is hot, and such questions are best answered slowly, with a warm belly.
It is natural to feel anger when one has been wronged. Even the gentlest river becomes violent when dammed for too long. But we must be careful, my friend, not to mistake the force of our feelings for the wisdom of our actions.
You ask why one should not kill their oppressors. The answer is not because they are strong, nor because they deserve mercy, nor because the world would punish you. It is because when you choose to do evil in the name of justice, you quietly invite that evil to live inside you. And once it is settled there, it does not leave easily.
You may believe you are striking only your enemy, but violence has a poor sense of direction. It spills into the soul, changing the person who wields it. The moment you decide that a “good reason” excuses a cruel act, you teach your heart that cruelty can be justified. Soon, it will begin to justify itself.
Oppression is a heavy chain, but hatred forges a second one, but this time around your own spirit. If you destroy another to feel free, you may discover that freedom never arrived, and only the destruction remained. True victory is not standing over your enemy’s body. True victory is refusing to become what hurt you. It is choosing a path that allows you to look at yourself in the mirror without turning away. The right reasons lose their meaning when they are carried by wrong actions. Like tea made with poisoned water, no matter how fine the leaves, the cup will only bring sickness.
So no - do not kill your oppressors. Not for their sake, but for yours. Because the most important battle is not against them, but against the part of yourself that believes goodness can be built from blood.
Iroh is not a pacifist. He is just very selective about the use of deadly force.
Iroh tries to teach zuko how to kill his enemies unflinchingly with “cold-blooded” lightning, and when that fails, teaches zuko to redirect lightning, which he knows is — and makes clear to be —explicitly deadly force, “to turn your enemy’s energy against them”. He acknowledges that, if he were to defeat Ozai, it would be “brother killing a brother”, because there was no realistic world in which Ozai could be contained without leading to his death. He accepts that his granddaughter “is crazy and needs to go down”.
When he chooses to take back Ba Sing Se, does he go in covertly and retake the puppet state from the occupying troops by forcing a surrender or a diplomatic solution? No, his opening move is to generate the largest ball of fire possible, then hurl it at the titanic wall, which not only does the camera show us has many people behind it, but which Iroh is ready to obliterate, soldiers and all, sight unseen. He does what must be done. Violence is his last resort, but he clearly has no moral compunction against using violence against the violent. Deadly force is met with a redirecting blow, carrying that same energy or more. In the first season, when he believes the fate of the world hangs in the balance, he threatens and uses deadly force “tenfold” that which is exacted upon the moon spirit. There is nowhere in the show that Iroh says that death is never the solution. The only reason we don’t see the deaths of the many soldiers occupying Ba Sing Se at Iroh’s hands (as well as all of the other times he has caused soldiers to be buried under their own boulders, breathed fire into their faces, or otherwise used violent infernos to defeat enemies) is that it was depicted in a kids’ show. The only person in the series who maintains that deadly force is never the answer is Aang. Aang only manages it in the finale by Deus Ex Machina because he’s the chosen one (and the protagonist of a kids’ show).
This is a fantasy land take that has no basis in reality or human history. At some point, it becomes a matter of physical well being for yourself and those around you. Telling people to just suck it up and take a beating/killing for the benefit of their “soul”…my god. Rejoin the real world buddy. It can be a scary place, but at least it’s real, not whatever bizarro world you are speaking from.
You let bullies walk on you, and they will keep doing it. The only thing that will stop them is letting them know that they will pay a real price if they keep at it. Trying to spin this “peace at all costs” worldview is intellectually dishonest and counterproductive.