What if we understood violence?
by Michael Nagler
Historically, the study of violence has been fragmented across disparate fields of study with little cross-disciplinary collaboration…
Prof. Bandy X Lee
THE STOIC PHILOSOPHER Epictetus (c.50-135 CE) once said that the beginning of ignorance is the ‘failure to connect particulars with their underlying principle.’ This is particularly, and harmfully, the case with one underlying principle in particular: violence. And, conversely, its opposite nonviolence. We have seen a dramatic example recently 𑁋 among many others 𑁋 in the breaking of windows in Tesla showrooms to express disapproval of Elon Trump, the firm’s founder. This is worse than a waste of time; it’s counterproductive. By using one form of violence (vandalism) to protest Musk’s various forms of violence (supporting deportations, etc. etc.) This may have, in the short term, a small beneficial effect by deterring a few prospective buyers from adding even more to Musk’s unimaginable wealth; it will certainly have the harmful effect of endorsing the underlying principle of destructive violence, in whatever form.
In other words, we have well-intentioned people enhancing the actions of ill-intentioned people by unconsciously buying into the worldview they support. There are two useful ways of understanding this; we can look at the underlying principle, as we just did, or look at the emotions and the mindset of the recent vandalizers. They are expressing anger; fair enough, but remember, Martin Luther King said in his movement they were “expressing anger under discipline for maximum effect.” When we express it without discipline, or more accurately let it express itself through us in its raw form, it still has an effect, certainly 𑁋 but the opposite that we intend.
The problem is that in our culture we are not given the opportunity, the encouragement, or the tools to look under the surface and see the deeper sources of our motivation and the consequences of following them. What we would see is in practical terms not very complicated: as St. Augustine pointed out a few centuries before Epictetus did his work the world is an interplay of two drives, or “loves,” as he called them, toward the “city of man” where our superficial, conscious feelings are the criteria for whatever is good or bad and the “city of God” where a much higher vision operates.
While human nature is in a way wonderfully complex, we really are on one level the locus of a tension between these two primordial forces. If we understood this, we could be much more effective, for example in the dire need to resist the authoritarianism eating at the vitals of our democracy.
To be clear, I don’t blame the vandalizers for being angry; I don’t blame Rep. Jasmine Crockett, (D. TX) who says, along with other politicians about the president, “We are going to fight him tooth and nail.” And lose.
No, I am just making a plea for deeper understanding of what moves in us and builds the society we live in. To avoid being violent does not mean having to confine ourselves to what Gandhi called “Constructive Programme” (though there is much to be learned from that ambitious project). Nonviolence can be and often is resistant, and that is breaking out all over as we speak, often in the form of refusals and civil disobedience to the rank injustices being perpetrated. Our friend and colleague Rivera Sun, among others, lists an exploding number of acts of resistance every week now, in her website, Nonviolence News. If we can concentrate this energy on a single, well-thought-out campaign and keep it free from the ambiguity of vandalism or other forms of counter-violence, we can save democracy for now and much time to come.