On Violence

My friend Deepak Menon has an abiding interest in non-violence. After a meeting with him yesterday where this came up for discussion (along with many other things), I thought I would write down my thoughts on it.

At the first level - violence is doing harm to someone and its a bad thing.

While its easy to identify and condemn physical violence, psychological violence is a more subtle thing. Constantly criticising someone. Not providing children the care and love they need. Organisational heads creating or allowing a toxic organisational atmosphere with back-biting and self-interested actions. These are example I would say, of psychological violence. Is it possible or desirable to completely eliminate psychological violence ?

Violence within oneself. Having a strong desire to inflict physical harm but suppressing will result in the violence showing up in other negative ways. I was struck by the fact that despite Gandhiji's strict adherence to non-violence, finally the country got independence through one of the most large-scale episodes of violence in its history (partition). One wonders if this is a symptom of suppression of violence engendered by Gandhiji, that finally burst out. But contrarily, Gandhi's genius in seeing how one could accomplish the goal of getting rid of an oppressor without violence, has to be acknowledged. It was the first time that it was tried, particularly on such a large scale, in the modern world. 

Other examples of internal violence: Feelings of hate and other strong negative emotions. Internal conflict, eg. pushing yourself very hard all the time.

People who have had some amount of corporeal punishment as children often grow up to say that it was a good thing and that the 'healthy fear' of the punishment put them on the right path. I've wondered about this. Is a small amount of physical punishment for children a bad thing? My feeling is that it is. When you do this, you are implicitly saying that under some circumstances its okay to be violent (and that its okay to use a position of superior strength to impose your will on somebody by force).  These kind of things (another example is violent toys) add up. They add up for example to an adult who is okay with war as a means of settling disputes.

Standing by while violence is happening is not so different from participating in it. In that way, we are all complicit in the matter of the many wars and other large-scale conflicts happening in the world . For another situation, consider World War 2. If a country had a choice of joining in the war or being neutral what is the right thing to do ? America did indeed have that choice. Personally, I am unable to see clearly what is the right thing to do in this situation. 

I think violence is sometimes an immediate or temporary tool for example in self-defence at different levels (single individual, community, country). But its continued or systematic use is not correct. 

On a personal level, I have to deal with how to address this issue in the context of my growing child. I have felt that society's casual acceptance of violence in the matter of toys (and in entertainment like TV and films) is a deep pathology.  Vibhat plays an online game called Clash of Clans which is about attacking other clans and capturing them.  He talks with casualness about bombs and so on.  He is also practising Karate now and I wonder what are the messages he is picking up in the process.