One Human Community
Founded in the early 1970s, the Pacific Life Community was organized around the core beliefs to “recognize the unity of all life…affirm the wholeness of each individual…uphold our true identity as world citizens and commit our lives to resisting the militarism…that threatens our future as a human family.” These beliefs became essential to the group’s moral imperative against Trident, reflective of contemporary citizen diplomats, that the weapon system posed a global threat to the single, equal community of human beings.
According to a main Pacific Life member, James Douglass, the presence of Trident missiles ensured that Bangor “automatically become the first and most important target” to be annihilated by a Soviet strike. However, he also stated that one Trident could also “effectively wipe out the Soviet Union”, and any additional retaliation further threatened the lower mainland, Canada, and any countries caught in the crossfire. This rhetorical emphasis on global consequences cast all parties; Bangor residents, Soviet citizens, and the larger world community, into one equal body under the Trident-II.
The Morally Appropriate Course of Action
To the PLC, it was essential to preserve this human community from destruction. The activists’ statements suggested that the proper action necessitated a separation between the concepts of ‘weapons’ and ‘people.’ This split made it possible for activists and regular citizens to empathize with potential victims, much the same as citizen diplomats, and cast attempts to kill these similar groups as highly immoral. Thus, the activists believed that the morally responsible decision was to support this human community as the ultimate goal, unequivocally resisting the Trident ‘systems for global murder’ threatening to destroy equal beings. This belief in one body of humanity, created equal under the Trident, became the defining message of the Pacific Life Community and would gain multinational approval from countries seeking to resist Trident’s threat not only to their individual communities, but to their shared, interdependent world.
