Tag Archives: Structural Violence

Ending Violence, Exploitation, Ecological Destruction and War: Creating a Culture of Peace

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By Robert J. Burrowes

The date 11 November is well known and commemorated in many parts of the world because it marks the Armistice ending World War I – ‘the Great War’ – in 1918.

In the evocative words used by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., an atheist humanist, in his novel Breakfast of Champions, the day is remembered thus:

‘When I was a boy … all the people of all the nations which fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was at that minute in nineteen-hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields at that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.’

And what, exactly, did God (by whatever name: Allah, Krishna, Yahweh…) or the Gods say? we might ask. Well even those who profess little more than scant knowledge of religious texts that purport to represent the word of God might suggest that s/he simply breathed a (silent) sigh of relief that the insanity of mass warfare had ended. For now at least.

For those of us concerned with the struggle to create cultures of peace or, even, a world culture of peace, there are some fundamental questions to consider including the classic question discussed by two of humanity’s greats – Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud – when they tackled the question ‘Why War?’

Of course, as many people now understand it, peace entails far more than simply a state without military (including terrorist) violence and war. Beyond these forms of violence, many exponents of peace seek the end of other dimensions of what I call ‘visible’ violence, including:

  1. Direct violence that goes beyond military violence, such as ‘biological violence’ (that is, violence against the body) in the family home and as a result of violent crime as well as ‘physical violence’ (that is, constraints on movement). See ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’.
  2. Institutional violence: socially endorsed violence including that inflicted by parents, teachers, police, legal and prison systems – see ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’ and ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’ – and which now manifests in a myriad other forms with the emergence of the surveillance state that spies on and gathers endless data on individuals to build substantial personal profiles on each – linking many personal records including those related to health and financial matters with political activities and consumption patterns – in violation of any basic understanding of, or commitment to, human rights in their many political, economic, social, cultural and other forms.
  3. Structural violence which Mohandas K. Gandhi originally identified when making his observation that ‘exploitation is violence’ and Professor Johan Galtung – see ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism’ and ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’ – later elaborated as violence built into structures, such as capitalism and imperialism, that deprive some people of the opportunities to live full and meaningful lives and manifest, for example, as poverty, homelessness and the economic exploitation of people who live in Africa, Asia and Central/South America. And
  4. Ecological violence: those activities ranging from destruction of the climate and rainforests to the killing of insects and wildlife that constitute destruction of the biosphere.

Of course, these categories are not mutually exclusive but they serve to illustrate categories of violence not always recognized as such.

Apart from these forms of ‘visible’ violence Professor Johan Galtung also identified the importance of psychological violence – ‘lies, brainwashing, indoctrination of various kinds, threats, etc. that serve to decrease mental potentialities’ see ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’ – and coined the term ‘cultural violence’ to describe ‘those aspects of culture, the symbolic sphere of our existence – exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical science and formal science (logic, mathematics) – that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence’. See ‘Cultural Violence’.

Beyond these and other categories of violence – including patriarchy and racism as specific manifestations of violence that are, arguably, simultaneously direct, structural and cultural – which stand between humanity and a culture of peace, there are two other categories of violence which I will argue it is necessary to end before we can make profound inroads in ending those mentioned above.

These two categories – which I have labeled ‘invisible’ violence and ‘utterly invisible’ violence – describe vitally important categories of violence which human adults inflict on children. Moreover, complemented by the ‘visible’ violence that adults inflict on children, it is this ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence which destroys the unique human individual who was created during a nine-month gestation period and turns them into a ‘socially constructed delusional identity’ who submissively fulfils the extraordinarily limited expectations of their particular adult world and, with only rare exceptions, willingly participates in many if not all of the other forms of violence that torment our world and certainly includes inflicting invisible and utterly invisible violence on their own children. Which is why the cycle of violence goes on.

Why is this?

Because society is preoccupied with producing submissively obedient students, workers, soldiers, citizens (that is, taxpayers and voters) and consumers. Hence, the last thing society wants is powerful individuals who are each capable of searching their conscience, feeling their emotional response to events, thinking critically and behaving strategically in response. For that reason our parenting and education models use a ruthless combination of visible, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence to ensure that our children become terrified, self-hating and powerless individuals like virtually all of the adults around them.

How does this happen? What is this ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence?

Perpetrators of violence learn their craft in childhood. If you inflict violence on a child, they learn to inflict violence on others. The political leaders who decide to wage war, the military leaders who plan and conduct it, as well as the soldiers, sailors and aircraft personnel who fight war each suffered violence as a child. The terrorist suffered violence as a child. The man who inflicts violence on his partner suffered violence as a child. The corporate executive who exploits working class people and/or those who live in Africa, Asia or Central/South America suffered violence as a child. The racist or religious bigot suffered violence as a child. The individual who perpetrates violence in the home, in the schoolyard or on the street suffered violence as a child. The individual who overconsumes, or even consumes certain products, and/or otherwise destroys the biosphere, suffered violence as a child.

If we want to end violence in all of its manifestations and create a culture of peace, locally and globally, then we must finally end our longest and greatest war: the adult war on children. And here is an additional incentive: if we do not tackle the fundamental cause of violence, then our combined and unrelenting efforts to tackle all of its other symptoms must ultimately fail. And extinction at our own hand is inevitable.

How can I claim that violence against children is the fundamental cause of all other violence? Consider this. There is universal acceptance that behaviour is shaped by childhood experience. If it was not, we would not put such effort into education and other efforts to socialize children to ‘fit into’ their society. And this is why many psychologists have argued that exposure to war toys and violent video games shapes attitudes and behaviours in relation to violence.

But it is far more complex than this and, strange though it may seem, it is not just the ‘visible’ violence (such as hitting, screaming at and sexually abusing) that we normally label ‘violence’ that causes the main damage, although this is extremely damaging. The largest component of damage arises from the ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that we adults unconsciously inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day. Tragically, the bulk of this violence occurs in the family home and at school. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So what is ‘invisible’ violence? It is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioral dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, mothers, fathers, teachers, religious figures and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (for example, by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that is generated by their feelings (for example, by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent towards themself, others and/or the Earth.

From the above, it should also now be apparent that punishment should never be used. ‘Punishment’, of course, is one of the words we use to obscure our awareness of the fact that we are using violence. Violence, even when we label it ‘punishment’, scares children and adults alike and cannot elicit a functional behavioural response. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

If someone behaves dysfunctionally, they need to be listened to, deeply, so that they can start to become consciously aware of the feelings (which will always include fear and, often, terror) that drove the dysfunctional behaviour in the first place. They then need to feel and express these feelings (including any anger) in a safe way. Only then will behavioural change in the direction of functionality be possible. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

‘But these adult behaviors you have described don’t seem that bad. Can the outcome be as disastrous as you claim?’ you might ask. The problem is that there are hundreds of these ‘ordinary’, everyday behaviors that destroy the Selfhood of the child. It is ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and most children simply do not survive as Self-aware individuals. And why do we do this? As mentioned above, we do it so that each child will fit into our model of ‘the perfect citizen’: that is, obedient and hardworking student, reliable and pliant employee/soldier, and submissive law-abiding citizen (that is, one who pays their taxes and votes and/or lobbies politicians).

Moreover, once we destroy the Selfhood of a child, it has many flow-on effects. For example, once you terrorize a child into accepting certain information about themself, other people or the state of the world, the child becomes unconsciously fearful of dealing with new information, especially if this information is contradictory to what they have been terrorized into believing. As a result, the child will unconsciously dismiss new information out of hand.

In short, the child has been terrorized in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning (or their learning capacity is seriously diminished by excluding any information that is not a simple extension of what they already ‘know’). If you imagine any of the bigots you know, you are imagining someone who is utterly terrified. But it’s not just the bigots; virtually all people are affected in this manner making them incapable of responding adequately to new (or even important) information. This is one explanation why some people are ‘climate deniers’, most people do nothing in response to the climate catastrophe and even those people who do take action usually do so ineffectively. See ‘The Global Climate Movement is Failing: Why?’

But the same can be said for those working to end war – see ‘The War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance to War’ – end the nuclear weapons race or engage in other struggles, including liberation struggles, that are vital parts of the global struggle to create a culture of peace. See ‘Why Activists Fail’.

To briefly reiterate this vital point (that each child has been terrorized in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning or their learning capacity is seriously diminished): The multifaceted violence inflicted throughout childhood and adolescence ensures that the adult who emerges is suppressing awareness of an enormous amount of fear, pain, sadness and anger (among many other feelings) and must live in delusion to remain unaware of these suppressed feelings. This ensures that, as part of their delusion, the individual develops a strong sense that what they are doing already is functional and working (no matter how dysfunctional and ineffective it may actually be) while unconsciously suppressing awareness of any evidence that contradicts their delusion. They do this because, unconsciously, people learn to identify obedience with ‘functional and working’ (because they do not get punished for being obedient). See ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’, ‘Do We Want School or Education?’ and ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

As an aside, if you want to read more evidence of humanity’s ‘love’ for our children and get a clearer sense of just how deeply violence is buried in human society, see ‘Humanity’s “Dirty Little Secret”: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our Children’.

Just one horrific outcome of this violence against children is that our planet is run by a global elite that is completely insane. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’. And this elite plays a key role in driving many of the more obvious manifestations of violence in our world.

Responding to Violence Strategically to Create a World Culture of Peace

However we define the many positive elements of a culture of peace – which will presumably include an inclusive philosophy of society, a cooperative set of social relations, nonviolent methods for dealing with conflict and sustainable patterns of matter-energy use while allowing universal human access to the resources necessary to maintain health and well-being, opportunities for meaningful political and economic engagement as well as cultural opportunities in art, literature and music among its many other forms, while engaging sustainably with the biosphere to enhance life-opportunities for all other species – this culture of peace can only be achieved if we respond strategically to the violence in our world.

And this means that we must address the fundamental cause of human violence because this drives violence in each and all of its other dimensions. For those adults powerful enough to do this, there is an explanation in ‘Putting Feelings First’. And for those adults committed to facilitating children’s efforts to realize their potential and become self-aware (rather than delusional), see ‘My Promise to Children’.

Creating a culture of peace, therefore, relies fundamentally on understanding the critical role of suppressed feelings (emotions) in shaping deep culture and generating conflicts, including violent conflicts, and then taking action that addresses this cause.

This includes the need to understand and deal effectively with those emotions that are being acted out dysfunctionally and/or being projected – see ‘The Psychology of Projection in Conflict’ – in a particular context, which is standard human behaviour in many situations. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’. Otherwise, that most fundamental of emotions – fear – will continue to drive most cultural predispositions and conflicts in all contexts and make genuine resolution of conflicts virtually impossible. This is because it is only if people are not afraid that discussions about ideas in relation to making culture evolve as we plan (rather than unconsciously or as elites direct) and to resolve conflict nonviolently, become easily possible.

Fundamentally, our parenting and education models fail utterly to produce people of conscience, people who are emotionally functional, people who are capable of critical analysis, people who care and people who can plan and respond to violence strategically. As Professor Galtung noted just recently, ‘While we are busy exploring whether there is intelligent life on other planets, we might spend more time – and intelligence – exploring whether there is [intelligent life] on ours.’ See ‘United States vs Moby Dick’. The problem is that once we terrorize a child, the terrified adult who emerges from childhood behaves as guided by their (unconscious) fear, not by any intelligence they may possess. Again, this is routinely illustrated by the failure of even those who self-label as ‘activists’ to think, plan and act strategically. See ‘Why Activists Fail’.

Of course, we do not need to work on ending violence against children in isolation. We can campaign to end other manifestations of violence – such as war, nuclear weapons and power, economic exploitation, ecological violence in its many forms including geoengineering and the deployment of 5G, violence against women and indigenous peoples, occupations and dictatorships – at the same time. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

But if we work to end the many manifestations of violence while failing to address the fundamental cause then, ultimately, we must fail, even if we elongate our timeframe a little. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

If you are also interested in working locally to reduce your consumption and become more self-reliant, in order to reduce your ecological violence, consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

Alternatively, if you want something simpler, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

  1. I will listen deeply to children (see explanation above)
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not buy rainforest timber
  8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

And you might wish to join the worldwide movement of people working to end all violence by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Conclusion

The foundation of our violent world is the unending visible, invisible and utterly invisible violence that human adults inflict on our children. For that reason, it does not matter what superstructure we build on top of this foundation. Whether we use capitalism (and ‘democracy’), socialism or any other political-economic-social model, tack on a New Green Deal or a Just Transition, while the violent foundation on which society is built – violence against children – remains unaddressed, a culture of peace cannot be created.

So we need to raise children in a culture that does not involve terrorizing them so that they end up perceiving violence as the primary way to address conflict because they are too scared to simply perceive the power of, and use, principled nonviolent options.

Hence, until our parenting and teaching models are radically altered, a culture of peace will remain an impossible dream. And human extinction in the near term is inevitable.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

 

Learning from Gandhi

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By Robert J. Burrowes

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869: 150 years ago this year.

There will be many tributes to Gandhi published in 2019 so I would like to add one of my own.

This reflects not just my belief that he gave the world inspiration, ideas and powerful strategies for tackling violence in a wide range of contexts but because my own experience in applying his ideas has proven their worth. This included his awareness that led him to declare that ‘If we are to make progress, we must not repeat history but make new history. We must add to the inheritance left by our ancestors.’ and his encouragement to reflect deeply and listen to one’s ‘inner voice’: ‘you should follow your inner voice whatever the consequences’ and ‘even at the risk of being misunderstood’.

In essence, we can productively learn from history but we can build on it too. And, vitally, this includes dealing more effectively with violence.

So how did Gandhi influence me?

Shortly after midnight on 1 July 1942, my Uncle Bob was killed when the USS Sturgeon, a U.S. submarine, fired torpedoes into the Japanese prisoner of war (POW) ship Montevideo Maru. The ship sank immediately and, along with 1,052 other POWs, Bob was killed.

Apart from his older brother, my father’s twin brother was also killed in World War II. In Tom’s case, he was shot down over Rabaul on his first (and final) mission. He was a wireless air gunner on a Beaufort Bomber. See ‘The Last Coastwatcher: My Brothers’.

My childhood is dotted with memories of Bob and Tom. The occasional remembrance service, war medals and the rare story shared by my father.

In 1966, the year I turned 14, I decided to devote my life to finding out why human beings kill each other and to work out how such killing could be ended. The good news about this ‘decision’ is that, at 14, it all felt manageable! But I wasn’t much older before my preliminary investigations proved that even understanding why humans are violent was going to be a profound challenge. And I intuitively understood that I needed this understanding if any strategy to end violence was to be effective.

In any case, as one might expect, my research into violence and strategies for addressing it led me to nonviolence. I came across virtually nothing about nonviolence during my own studies at school and university but was regularly presented with news reports of people participating in activities – such as demonstrations and strikes – that I later learned to label ‘nonviolent action’.

In 1981 I decided to seek out materials on nonviolence and nonviolent action so that I could learn more about it. I had not been reading for long when the routine reference to Mohandas K. (or Mahatma) Gandhi, about whom I had heard a little and knew of his role in leading the Indian independence struggle, forced me to pay more attention to his life and work. So I sought out his writing and started to read some of his published work. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth was an obvious and early book but there were many others besides. I also read many books about Gandhi, to get a clearer sense of his life as a whole, as reported by his coworkers and contemporaries, as well as documented by scholars since his death. And I spent a great many hours in a library basement poring over The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.

The thing that struck me immediately about Gandhi was that his own interest in tackling violence had a comprehensive ‘feel’ about it. That is, he was not just interested in the violence that occurs when nations fight wars or one person kills or injures another. He was interested in addressing the violence that occurs when individuals and nations exploit other individuals/nations (such as when British imperialism exploited India and Indians) and the violence that occurs when a structure (such as capitalism or socialism) exploits the individuals within it. In his words: ‘exploitation is the essence of violence’. He was interested in the violence that occurs when members of one social group (say, Hindus) ‘hate’ the members of another social group (such as Muslims). He was interested in the violence that occurs when men oppress women or caste Hindus oppress ‘untouchables’. He was interested in the violence that occurs when humans destroy the environment. And he was interested in the violence that one inflicts on oneself.

This comprehensive interest resonated deeply with me because, apart from war, my own childhood and adolescence had revealed many manifestations of violence ranging from the starvation of people in developing countries to the racism in the United States (highlighted by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s) to the destruction of the environment, each of which had gradually but deeply embedded itself in my consciousness. Tackling violence was a far bigger task than the large one I had originally imagined. Violence is everywhere. Most importantly, it seemed to me, there was enormous violence directed against children in the family home but little was spoken or written about this.

So how did Gandhi explain violence and what was his strategy for addressing it?

Gandhi on Conflict and Violence

For Gandhi, conflict was a perennial condition. He also viewed it positively and considered it desirable. For him, it is an important means to greater human unity precisely because their shared conflict could remind antagonists of the deeper, perhaps transcendental, unity of life, which is far more profound than the bond of their social relationship.

He viewed violence differently, however. And, as might be gleaned from the many configurations of violence that concerned him, as noted above, he considered that violence was built into social structures and not into people.

Fundamentally, as Leroy Pelton characterized it, Gandhi understood that the truth cannot be achieved through violence (‘which violates human needs and destroys life’), because violence itself is a form of injustice. In any case, violence cannot resolve conflict because it does not address the issues at stake.

To reiterate then, for Gandhi there was nothing undesirable about conflict. However, Gandhi’s preoccupation was working out how to manage conflict without violence and how to create new social arrangements free of structural violence. The essence, then, of Gandhi’s approach was to identify approaches to conflict that preserved the people while systematically demolishing the evil structure. Nevertheless, he firmly believed that structural purification alone is not enough; self-purification is also essential.

In other words, in Gandhi’s view, resolving the conflict (without violence) is only one aspect of the desired outcome. For Gandhi, success also implies the creation of a superior social structure, higher degrees of fearlessness and self-reliance on the part of both satyagrahis (nonviolent activists) and their opponents, and a greater degree of human unity at the level of social relationships.

Two Key Questions

Despite the enormous influence that Gandhi had in shaping my own conception of conflict and the precise conception of nonviolence that should be used in dealing with it, I nevertheless remained convinced that two questions remained unanswered: What is the psychological origin of the violent behavior of the individual who perpetrates it? And what theory or framework should guide the application of nonviolent action so that campaigns of all kinds are strategically effective?

The first question is important because even if someone is trapped within a social structure (such as the class system) that is violent, the individual must still choose, consciously or unconsciously, to participate (as perpetrator, collaborator or victim) in the violence perpetrated by that structure or one must choose, consciously, to resist it. Why do so many individuals perform one of the first three roles and so few, like Gandhi himself, choose the role of resister?

The second question is important because while Gandhi himself was an astonishingly intuitive strategic thinker (whose 30-year nonviolent strategy liberated India from British occupation), no one before him or since his death has demonstrated anything remotely resembling his capacity in this regard.

Hence, while nonviolence, which is inherently powerful, has chalked up some remarkable successes, vital struggles for peace (and to end war); to halt assaults on Earth’s biosphere; to secure social justice for oppressed and exploited populations; to liberate national groups from dictatorship, occupation or genocidal assault; and struggles in relation to many other just causes limp along devoid of strategy (or use one that is ill-conceived). So badly are we failing, in fact, that humans now teeter on the brink of precipitating our own extinction. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

Anyway, having studied Gandhi extensively and learned from his strategic approach to nonviolence (elements of which I was progressively including in nonviolent campaigns in which I was involved myself), I resumed my original research to understand the fundamental origin of human violence and also decided to develop a strategic theory and framework for addressing violence in the campaign context so that Gandhi’s strategic thinking could be readily copied by other nonviolent activists.

It turned out that developing this strategic theory and strategy was simpler than the original aim (understanding violence) and I have presented this strategic thinking on two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

Despite my preliminary efforts in the 1990s to encourage fellow activists to use this framework, it soon became clear that only the rarest of activists has the capacity to think strategically about an issue, even when presented with a framework for doing so.

The Origin of Human Violence

Consequently, the vital importance of understanding the origin of human violence was starkly demonstrated to me yet again because I knew it would answer key supplementary questions such as these: Why to do so many people live in denial/delusion utterly incapable of perceiving structural violence or grappling powerfully with (military, social, political, economic and ecological) violence? Why is it that so many people, even activists, are powerless to think strategically? How can activists even believe that success can be achieved, particularly on the major issues of our time (such as the threats of nuclear war, ecological devastation and climate cataclysm), without a focused and comprehensive strategy, particularly given elite resistance to such campaigns? See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

Hence, in an attempt to answer questions such as these, Anita McKone and I went into seclusion in an endeavor to understand how our own minds functioned so that we might better understand the minds of others. I hoped it would take a few months. It took 14 years.

So what is the cause of violence in all contexts and which, depending on its precise configuration in each case, creates perpetrators of violence, people who collaborate with perpetrators of violence, people who are passive victims of violence, people who live in denial/delusion, people who are sexist or racist, and activists who cannot think strategically (among many other adverse outcomes)?

Each of these manifestations of human behaviour is an outcome of the adult war on children. That is, adult violence against children is the fundamental cause of all other violence.

How does this happen? It happens because each child, from birth, is socialized – more accurately, terrorized – so that they fit into their society. That is, each child is subjected to an unrelenting regime of ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence until they offer the obedience that every adult – parent, teacher, religious figure… – demands.

So what constitutes ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence?

‘Visible’ violence includes hitting, screaming at and sexually abusing a child which, sadly enough, is very common.

But the largest component of damage arises from the ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that we adults unconsciously inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day. Tragically, the bulk of this violence occurs in the family home and at school. For a full explanation, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

‘Invisible’ violence is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioral dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, mothers, fathers, teachers, religious figures and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (for instance, by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that is generated by their feelings (for example, by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for the biosphere because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent towards themself, others and/or the Earth.

So what do we do?

Well, if you want to make an enormous contribution to our effort to end violence, you can make the commitment outlined in ‘My Promise to Children’. If you need to do some healing of your own to be able to nurture children in this way, then consider the information provided in the article ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If you want to systematically tackle violence against the biosphere, consider (accelerated) participation in the fifteen-year strategy, inspired by Gandhi, outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. This project outlines a simple plan for people to systematically reduce their consumption, by at least 80%, involving both energy and resources of every kind – water, household energy, transport fuels, metals, meat, paper and plastic – while dramatically expanding their individual and community self-reliance in 16 areas, so that all environmental concerns are effectively addressed. As Gandhi observed 100 years ago: ‘Earth provides enough for every person’s need but not for every person’s greed.’

But, critically important though he believed personal action to be, Gandhi was also an extraordinary political strategist and he knew that we needed to do more than transform our own personal lives. We need to provide opportunities that compel others to consider doing the same.

So if your passion is campaigning for change, consider doing it strategically, as Gandhi did. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

And if you want to join the worldwide movement to end all violence against humans and the biosphere, you can do so by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948. But his legacy lives on. You can learn from it too, if you wish.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford, Victoria 3460
Australia

Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Feelings First
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

Overcoming the American Dream

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By Frank Castro

Source: The Hampton Institute

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” – James Baldwin
My house sat tucked a mile deep, wrapped in 500 acres of sprawling oaks and towering pines. Dense thickets crisscrossed the land like formidable barricades protecting masses of forests from the intrusions of bored, yet curious children. They would leave you picking daggers from your sides and forearms if you journeyed too far. I grew up in a remote place called Farmhaven, the midway point between Canton and Carthage, Mississippi. Driving through you would never know you were somewhere with a name. Farmhaven is one of those places marked by only an intersection and a road that always goes somewhere else. It is here though, with my father and my brother, in the heart of the South, that I learned the most important lesson life could teach me.

When I was very young the world was a place of limitless potential. Like a naïve summer breeze still clinging to the fantasy that winter will never come, I was no different than most children who believe the world is theirs. You do not have to be rich to dream such dreams. A swift run and leap off the South end of our porch, where the ground was soft and the magnolia leaves puddled, was all it took. With my arms stretched wide I pretended to be a fighter pilot leaving the deck of an aircraft carrier. I never really knew or cared what fighter pilots do; I just wanted to see the world through a bird’s eyes. It was my own American Dream. And the further from the porch I landed, the more I believed I would someday soar.

It’s probably not an unfamiliar story. After all, in children imagination abounds. About this time we start being told to follow our dreams, as if the world were built in such a way that the realization of all our dreams is possible. Certainly that’s what I believed, that people just out to make the imagined real. Life is not without a cruel sense of irony though, and elders rarely mention to adolescents the kind of world in which we live. They shield us from it, understandably not wanting to damage the authenticity and fragility of our youthful ambition. But reality will come knocking. It always does. It will come to tell us that the world has been built in such a way that our dreams will be withheld from us, that the joys of making them real cannot be ours, but rather, with and atop our backs, they must be forfeited to erect someone else’s.

This is the price of poverty.
Knock, Knock

“Capitalism is cruel and heartless and tears people apart, mentally, physically and socially.”   - Susan Rosenthal

My father taught me the value of work. For all his faults, I could never question how hard he labored to provide for my brother and me, or how determined he was to instill in us a love for building with our own hands. He tried to teach us how to work the land. We plowed and planted. We built homes for our chickens, turkeys, and ducks. We constructed wooden and wire fences for rotating our goats and horses from one field to another. During the winter months when our grazing fields turned to tundra, I hoisted buckets of feed to the troughs I had built. My brother and I became so proficient with our hands that often my father would drop us off in the woods with supplies and expect a job to be done when he returned with lunch.

But neither our farm nor all the work we put into it was ever what kept a roof over our heads. Even after the fruits of our labor yielded plates for our table, we still needed money. I knew this all too well, even as a seven year old. My room was in the middle of our house. You could not get from the kitchen to the living room without first walking through it. Often a door was left cracked open, not intentionally, but because door frames shift with age and require a firm snug to be pulled completely shut. Through the years while I had a step-mother I heard my father and her argue about bills when the doors where ajar. Always more bills. They both worked in addition to our farm. She worked at a cigarette store. His job always changed. And still it was never enough. Sometimes they got loud. Her voice screeched. His slurred. And mine would make lists in my head of everything I was going to do the next day to make it all better.

I began doing my own laundry about that time because I wanted my step-mother to stay. My child’s mind thought it would make a difference. She left after a few more years though, and when it happened I really could not blame her. My father had begun turning to his bottles more often than he turned to her. When he got drunk enough one night to put a shotgun to my brother’s head, she lost all composure. Refrigerator doors flung open. Voices thundered. Walls shook. Glass bottles clanked and flew further off the porch than I ever had, exploding all over the lawn - just like my family, exploding. My screams were equal only to my tears. Every little list I had made in my head was useless. The gun landed in the yard too after my step-mother snatched it. My brother and I spent that night in the shadow of two people we loved parting ways forever. Soon we lost the farm… and our father too.

I never soared into those magnolia leaves again. In the years to come dreams of a family and a home where I belonged replaced all desire to fly.

Not till much later did I realize that nothing I did then would have made a significant difference. Neither my brother nor I held fault for our poverty and, despite his drinking, it was not entirely my father’s fault either. Addiction, I learned, is most often endemic of a society that generates addicts. Something bigger loomed, something far more pervasive and far-reaching than the lives of a few backwoods Mississippians. Reflecting on how expensive poverty had been for my family, asking why I was poor and why were we ripped apart, I found myself on an inescapable trajectory to discover the origins of inequality.
Their Gluttony Is Our Starvation

“The class which has the power to rob upon a large scale has also the power to control the government and legalize their robbery.”   - Eugene V. Debs

My family’s farm was bought by a group of wealthy men who wanted a hunting resort. For the majority of the year our old home sits empty and rotting. It is a reminder that in the halls of country clubs and on the decks of overpriced yachts, poverty is, in the most acute sense of the word, the abundant currency of the rich. Their very existence is predicated on the existence of the poor.

This is not a fact we like to grapple with in America. Here everybody believes they can get rich. We believe the realization of ALL of our dreams is possible. We call this belief the American Dream, and it has been incredibly successful at stifling plausible attempts at equality outside the capitalist framework. To paraphrase John Steinbeck, socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. It is the worst sort of fabrication because it makes us believe the preposterous - my family could have our house, our farm, a decent living with ample food, and an environment where addiction would stymy, while simultaneously rich folks could use it all to shoot animals for sport.

If it sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is.

Under capitalism one party was always going to lose, and generally the party which loses is the one with significantly less money. Our socioeconomic realities are structured this way. “Losers” are a necessity for capitalism’s survival. My family’s misfortune was a microcosm of structured events that play out against billions of poor people in orchestrated symphony every day. They (we) find ourselves in battles with people, organizations, and nations who have enormous financial capabilities, and therefore power, and because our global political system was built around empowering the moneyed class, before the battle ever starts our circumstances are engineered for defeat. Scaled up or down, this predisposition between those with power and those without is consistent. It is why my family lacked the financial agency over our lives to survive. But it is also why entire poor communities are displaced and gentrified by wealthy developers, or entire swaths of the planet are exploited by wealthy nations and their corporations. Where ever we are, our struggles are connected.

The American Dream then has at least two primary functions. Its first is to generate a mythology around itself which can effectively negate the reality that within capitalism not everybody can realize their dreams, that there must be an oppressed class. Such a mythology atomizes people from collective struggle. It induces a form of hyper individualism often seen in the “Boot-Strap Myth,” or the idea that anybody of little means, with hard work and determination, can lift themselves to the highest rungs of bourgeoisie society (the richest of the rich). By focusing on individual stories of capitalist success, the Bill Gates and Sam Waltons of the world, the vast poverty and suffering required for the emergence of massive fortunes is left out of the picture. One can point to Gates and believe their own ascendance is possible without understanding its possibility is predicated on the systematic exploitation of tens of thousands of workers in mines and factories across the globe. And more importantly, focus on the few success stories of the super-rich invisibilizes the structure which keeps wealth within their hands at the direct expense of the poor and makes it beyond examination or reproach.

A second primary function of the American Dream is to facilitate an overpowering sense of entitlement through exploitive competition. It cleaves us from cooperative modes of thinking and existing by constantly pitting us against each other. Through competing with fellow human beings for the necessities of life - work, housing, education, affection, nourishment, social belonging, etc. - an individual is conditioned to accept that competition is the natural state of human existence, and therefore competition necessitates winners and losers. Here, belief of capitalist mythology graduates into acceptance of capitalist power structures, and then finally into the endorsement and full-fledged participation in them. The latter is crucial, for in order to amass a huge fortune a person has to endorse a sort self-maximizing choice which, in their minds, justifies widespread exploitation. At this point it is believed that “losers” (the exploited) are inevitable, thus the more losers, or the greater number of exploited, the richer (and fewer) the winners. If you play the game ruthlessly enough to win, or even thrive, the logic follows that you are entitled to all the rewards and privileges expropriated from the oppressed.

With little doubt, I imagine the men who bought our farm thought nothing of it. In their minds having the money for it was the only requisite needed, and since they had played by the rules of capitalism well enough to be rewarded with the money needed to purchase it, they were “entitled” to it. But it was never their home. They had never toiled in the fields for crops. They had never spent a birthday or Christmas Eve in the house. They had never fished the ponds. They had never run around the yard filling the trees with laughter, or fed the hummingbirds from the clotheslines. They had never made peace with the bees that burrowed into the oak joists beneath the porch. They had never labored with an axe to stock firewood or climbed beneath the house and wrapped the pipes for winter. They knew nothing of the land or the house but its acreage and price. And that was enough, because the memories of children don’t fetch power when money talks.
Poverty Is a Weapon of Mass Destruction

“You cannot call a society which has 3.5 million homeless and 18.5 million vacant homes civil. That’s violent and morally bankrupt.”   - Frank Castro

Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. We just do not see it that way because we have a very limited understanding of what violence looks like. Statistics paint a broad picture, like the fact that 7.7 million people die of hunger every year (21,000 a day), or the fact that 3.5 Americans remain homeless despite 18.5 million vacant homes; but unless we know those individuals’ stories, and they resonate with us in some way, a culture of competition and entitlement keeps us preoccupied with trying to realize our own ambitions - or resolve our own problems. Whatever the reason, often we are concerned more with ourselves than our collective struggle.

Myths like the American Dream condition us to accept that an elite minority profiting off widespread misery is the way of the world. But remember, the hungry don’t choose to starve, and few houseless people choose homelessness. They are starved and put on the streets by a system which structurally denies them access to food and shelter. If we are to get a realistic picture of how destructive global capitalism is, it requires a broader and deeper understanding of violence.

In 2013, Peter Joseph tried reframing the parameters of violence:

“If I put a gun to someone’s head, say, a 30-year-old healthy male, pull the trigger, and kill him, assuming an average life expectancy of, say, 84, you can argue that possibly 54 years of life [were] stolen from that person in a direct act of violence.
However, if a person is born into poverty in the midst of an abundant society where it is statistically proven that it would hurt no one to facilitate meeting the basic needs of that person and yet they die at the age of 30 due to heart disease, which has been found to statistically relate to those who endure the stress and effects of low socioeconomic status, is that death, the removal of those 54 years once again, an act of violence? And the answer is “Yes, it is.” You see, our legal system has conditioned us to think that violence is a direct behavioral act. The truth is that violence is a process, not an act, and it can take many forms. You cannot separate any outcome from the system by which it is oriented.”

***Distributed equally, the grains produced throughout the world would provide each person 3,600 calories per day . The average person requires 2,000 calories a day to maintain a healthy diet.

If we can understand the scenario Peter explains as a process of violence multiplied by millions of starving and homeless people, then little more evidence is needed to indict and convict capitalism as the sadistic, murderous, and megalomaniacal system it is. Contrary to what the Boot Straps Myth and the American Dream tell us, poverty sits infinitely more on the shoulders of structures we are born into than it does personal choice, ambition, or determination. If more understood this, perhaps then finally the lie that billions like me were born into poverty because our parents were lazy, untalented, or lack the ambition to succeed, could die.
Dream Differently

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”   - Angela Davis

When poverty consumed my family it destroyed any understanding of unity I had. To this day my dream remains to rediscover what family means for me, what it will look and feel like; but through the pain and the loss this much has become clear: There is no room left for “America” in my dreams. I imagine a world where families are no longer faced with the looming pistol of starvation and homelessness. No borders, rules, or regulations will rip our homes from us. No person or institution will dangle over us the future we strive toward like a tree that grows inches with every stretch for fruit. Instead we will live in cooperation with each other, a cooperation which builds beyond blood and yields families the breadth of communities. I have survived this long by doing what most people with dreams do - by continuing to live every day to make them reality. And while I struggle every day to keep mine alive, I am inspired by the building happening all around me, and by the friends who have been my family.

My story is only one of billions across the globe though - one among a sea of poverty’s victims. Ensuring billions more are not to follow suit requires shedding America’s myths. When we tell children to follow their dreams without empowering them to envision a world beyond global capitalism, and beyond America, we limit them to the possibilities afforded through oppression. We preclude the possibility of starting our lives with visions of a world that centers liberation, cooperation, love, and justice.

As Wolfi Landstreicher once said, “If one loves life, if one wants to expand and flourish, it is absolutely necessary to free desire from the channels to constrain it, to let it flood our minds and hearts with passion that sparks the wildest dreams. Then one must grasp these dreams and from them hone a weapon with which to attack this reality, a passionate rebellious reason capable of formulating projects aimed at the destruction of that which exists and the realization of our most marvelous desires. For those of us who want to make our lives our own, anything less would be unrealistic.”

To us then has fallen the challenge of taking back the power of imagination, of dreaming beyond ourselves and beyond America.