In this day and age, violence and War appear to be as prominent as they’ve ever been; as forces that are both used by people and used upon them. There have been many events in our species history that have brought greater understanding of the way things are. Violence and war have been among those events. That being acknowledged, they have long been outdated and unnecessary for the progress of our species.
Because of this, I would like to present the following thoughts - some of my thoughts - on the topics of violence, War and communication.
On Willful Violence
Uncle Sam, Ares, Mars, Kali, Apis, Shango. There are a thousand names, but all of them suggest that War is indeed a public figure. Violence has become so prominent that it demands its own presence. It is claimed that violence and, thus, War, is "inevitable," or that it's "necessary." So, it stands that in our current world, violence is a success, to say the least.
Our species started in ignorance. Adapting to the ever transforming terrestrial environment, we became something else. We, along with many other living things, began thinking. Then our species transformed thinking into thought, thought into speech and speech into language. We are a highly evolved communicating species, in theory. Yet, more often than not, it seems that we favor violent actions above communicative actions. Regardless of this, our future is destined to require a great deal of communication. Thus, we must become better communicators. As it stands and as a species, we are not unique in carrying out violent actions; nor are we particularly masterful at it. Creative, certainly. But, left with only what we were born with, we are low on the threat scale. Lions, sharks, crocodiles and wolves are all better equipped - in their natural state - to threaten and carry out violence.
So, then, what of all this superfluous violence and War? Superfluous violence I consider to be pretty much everything outside of the realm of direct self defense and the purposeful slaughtering of animals. (Keeping in mind that self defense would be unnecessary if people just didn’t attack or threaten one another). War, I will speak on more later. Both, however, have an adverse effect on the species because they interfere with communication. Violence and, in particular, War, blocks effective communication from being consistently carried between the parties involved. Both get in the way of learning to effectively communicate,
"Well, we're never going to arrive at an answer to this so why don't we just commit violence against them?"
During the hardest struggles in our species' history, most individuals have opted to resort to violence and not to communicate. Not having often communicated about our greatest hardships, we all carry them on, like the burdens they most certainly are. Yet War and violence are still painted as just (when preferred) and even gallant and brave. To put it bluntly, violence and War are still considered achievements.
When I “speak” of war, I am categorizing it as large scale violence, whether concentrated in one area or widespread. (You may find it interesting to know, as I did, that War and Worse are derived from the same origin words - even the ancients knew what it was).
Keeping abreast of current and historical events, it is painfully obvious that War and violence have finagled their way into the "necessary" reactions of our species. Over time, they have even cemented themselves as qualifiers for well-rounded leadership and intelligence. Individuals in power who emphasize communicating, or who do not have a history in war/army/guard efforts, are popularly presented as weak, immobile, slow, or scared. War has become so legitimized within society that a person will wonder why an individual would never opt to put themself in a situation where they may be faced with the choice of taking another's life.
Death is not naturally welcomed in society and yet violence is. Few are comfortable with the events of aging, dying or death. Yet, observation shows many would be willing to result to violence, even killing, if provoked, conditioned or persuaded.
By justifying War and violence, we simply encourage individuals in our societies to be less effective communicators. We rally around violence in the place of understanding by declaring that War is "inevitable," when it is actually a matter of will. With our actions we say, "when you can't communicate what you mean towards an understanding, use violence." Many of us, those who aren't actually equipped with bombs and guns - or who are restricted from such weapons, wage War with our sentiments.
We legislate our fears into law rather than our understanding of what actually takes place. We manipulate our language to create offensive tactics. More times than not, as a species, our aggressive language has bolstered itself into aggressive action.
Our species has become stifled and limited by societal ideals and practices built upon and around ineffective communicative avenues. Ineffective communication fosters ineffective understanding, and ineffective understanding appears to lead to violence.
Violence is defined as physical (or outer) force used to hurt, damage or kill someone or something. In origin it is related to the word Vehement. Clearly, by definition, violence covers a lot of territory.
For starters, violence, unlike War, is fostered from the inside out. Violence is summoned and evoked from within. Violence is something that must be personally willed into action. It is not a typical resting state. Very few people are naturally violent. Meaning, very few people maintain violence as a regular emotional state. Violence is called upon and brought forth. In this vein, War is just one of the greater (higher spectrum) manifestations of violence; and violence (or perceived violence) of some kind always precedes it.
So we commit violence and War today and we've been doing so for a long time. Yet, as we've become less ignorant and brutal, and more aware and social over time, shouldn't it follow that we fight less Wars and wage more debates? Further, what's to be said about a species that purposefully and prematurely kills itself?
Too many of us have confused a failure to communicate effectively for a failing that intrinsically prevents the species from communicating overall.
Beyond that, choosing to be limited in our methods of communication hides a deeper rejection of understanding. As a species that has evolved because of our pursuit of understanding through language, I can think of no greater crime we commit against ourselves than our refusal to communicate. War is a crime against every individual on Earth. Violence is a threat against every individual on Earth. Every individual on Earth is responsible for contributing to the survival of the entire species. Every unnatural, premeditated death undermines our potential to grow and adapt as a species.
A species needs to be diverse and robust if it's going to remain highly adaptable, after all. And, we're certainly not helping variety by accepting 64.2 million deaths here (Indigenous Americans), 6 million deaths there (Holocaust) and 1 million deaths over there (Rwanda).
The Earth is a globe. A single and whole, impressively diverse organism. We live on said Earth and its well-being is directly connected to our well-being. Like any other diverse and systematic organism (such as a human body, for instance), the Earth and its “counterparts” must account for and accommodate each other in order to maintain functioning in concord.
Let’s imagine the human body as a smaller scale representation of the Earth. For the human body to maintain functioning in concord, no particular part of the body (the liver, the lungs, the kidneys, the heart) should be overtaxing (abusing) itself, attacking itself or killing itself off in order for the entire human body to maintain functioning in concord. Typically, when such a thing happens, we call it an injury, cancer, disease, etc.
Now, let’s imagine the Earth as a systematic and diverse organism not unlike the human body. Like any anatomic aspect of the human body, human beings are just one anatomic aspect of the Earth. We are not the entire organism, but we play an influential part. By this logic, basic protocols for our functioning in concord would include not fighting ourselves and killing ourselves off prematurely and without reservation. In the greater organism that we are a part of, we have a part to play beyond our own functioning. Furthermore, we only function in accordance with, and because of, all of the other supporting parts of the Earth that allow for us to be here: one another, drinkable water, clean air, food that grows and lives, things that grow and form to provide shelter and support, the planets as they are, etc..
Like it or not, our species is one huge, diverse, dispersed community. Each of us, singularly and collectively, a part of the overall functioning of our species in accordance with all other parts of the Earth. Each of us unique in and of ourselves, but alike in our experience of being incarnated on Earth as human beings born into ignorance.
Similarly, we all die. We live in an organism of cycles and we have a cycle that operates with or without our will. Aging and dying are as natural to us as anything else. And, much like becoming alive, dying isn’t an aspect of existence that requires our consent in order to operate. Which makes violence and War, and the death they so often cause, even more confounding. We do not need violence or War to come to an end. We simply choose to either enact or allow premature and unreasonable death to be set upon humankind by our very selves.
I find this confounding not only because it is supremely unnecessary, but also because it is unhelpful to our progress as a highly diverse, adaptive species.
With every unnatural demise, for me an unanswered question remains: How many ideas are cut short with every death?
We kill the potential for ideas when we allow unnatural or premeditated deaths to remain rooted within conceptions of normalcy. To ensure the existence of our species is long(er)term, we must invest equally in the sustaining of our bodies and the development of our ideas - or knowledge.
Language was an idea; the computer, too; the table; clothes; books; society. The list goes on and on into infinity. Literally. That is why ideas, in particular, are so invaluable. There is no known "cap" to ideas. Ideas are perhaps the most populous species on Earth. And because idea-making, for our species, takes place as a function of the physical body on Earth; when you kill a person it follows that you are also killing off all the potential ideas they might have uniquely expressed while alive. By killing a person, you are also obstructing the potential proliferation of a great deal of other ideas made possible by association, connectivity or resistance.
Ideas are necessary for the prolongation of our species because they allow us to create in more than a physical way (i.e. breeding). By continuously creating and maintaining systems of knowledge, we further our preservation. Existence has laid open a variety of ways for our species to both understand and express (create) our being aware. It is an amazing byproduct of our functionality in life that we express ourselves through the creation of things. We all perceive our own worlds from inside our individual consciousness’, and project that world into the public domain via the unique expression of ourselves. This is an amazing thing!
Violence and War are in direct opposition to such creative work. Concordantly, we are depriving ourselves of knowledge, of understanding, and of a global awareness by accepting unnatural, premeditated deaths as reasonable or “necessary.”
When it comes to the prolonging of the human race and the viability of it sustaining on for generations, premeditated murder inherently and unequivocally undermines our species’ existence.
Mark my words, DEATH DOES NOT NEED OUR HELP. It’s got us, whenever and however it wants us. Natural deaths happen in abundance. Natural aging, naturally occurring diseases, natural disasters and true accidents are all agents of Death that can and will take each of us.
Leaving each other be, when it comes to violence, and communicating towards an understanding serves our species desire for self-preservation far better than killing each other does. Generations of self-perpetuated murder should have already taught us the following:
NO War has ever stopped War from happening again. If the point of War is to eliminate conflict, it fails miserably at itself.
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