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Principles have lost their mystic hold over me. Acting well in the world and doing good have not — in theory if not in practice — but principles have. Principles are guides, not justifications.

I went from believing that one is moral by adhering to principles, to believing that principled action can be morally wrong even when the principle is good. If there are times when dying for a principle is the right thing to do, it’s not for the sake of the principle but because of the effects a principled death can have.

In fact, oddly, my pacifism began with the recognition of complexity: Each person is a world that we can only know by living with them for a lifetime, and even then, well, after 25 years of knowing someone personally, every human would still be a mystery to me, which I’ve come to believe is a condition for love.

So, I am no longer a pacifist if that means I pledge never to use violence no matter what the situation, real or hypothetical. But I would like to reclaim the term: I am a pacifist because I want us to go to extremes to avoid using violence. Why? Because violence is the ultimate over-simplification.