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I would love to say that violence should be avoided at all costs but that is impossible.*** (check below for explanation) Instead, violence should be minimized at all cost, which sometimes means using violence to prevent more violence.
As a society we have already made this choice. By having a police force and making things illegal, we allow for small violence in arrests and in prison so criminals will not create more violence on innocent victims. Still, who decides what violence to use? Can 435 elected representatives and 100 senators truly represent the wishes of 303,998,204 people? I don’t think so. I don’t think its right to arrest people for using drugs. They have not hurt anyone yet we hurt them. How is that justice?
I think the best way to minimize violence is to minimize government power. Governments have a history of funneling tax money into armies, which promote more violence. The US government tells us they spend 20% of our income tax on defense, but in reality it’s closer to 50%.
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http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp
China more or less exchanges weapons for oil in Sudan, exacerbating the human rights crisis. The greatest violence throughout history has only been possible by centralizing power into governmental organizations. When religions become political forces of control, they become violent. It’s pretty hard to research and buy weapons of mass destruction without a ton of money, and it’s pretty hard to justify spending that money without a fanatical ideology that supports it.
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The problem behind governments at our current state of consciousness is that people desire more and more power. Until the world becomes more conscious and our egos become more inclusive, less power will lead to less violence. We need to give individuals and smaller groups greater control over their lives and their communities.
In the meantime, we can use our current government to reduce violence while trying to change it – call your representatives and tell them we want out of Iraq immediately. Tell them you’re pissed that our money is funding torture and brutality. (Texans click here: http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/) Tell them to spend it elsewhere – or better yet tell them to let you keep it and you can decide where to spend it. You can help your own community and help fund things you personally believe in.
We can also work to eliminate the violence we create in our lives by expanding our consciousness. As babies we start out thinking only about ourselves, but as time goes on our “self” becomes more inclusive. As a five year old I didn’t have the mental capacity to sacrifice something of mine for someone else’s benefit– it was all about me. My sister hit me with a Barbie (it really hurt), so I hit her back. As I grew older I became more willing to give up personal gain to help my family. If my sister hit me at age twelve, I’d probably be really confused and just cry. By including my family as an extension of myself, I would never do violence to them. The people I am willing to make sacrifices for continues to grow as I move from an egocentric worldview to an ethnocentric, worldcentric, and hopefully one day kosmocentric sense of self. As a result, I am less and less inclined to violence against these beings. I now only eat free range meat because I can’t stand the way animals are treated before they’re killed. I am willing to make small dietary sacrifices for the benefit of animals that I’ve never known and will never come in contact with. I’m willing to take a few extra seconds to recycle to prune the violence pollution and excess waste might cause in the future. I’m also now able to see how some violence can curtail greater violence. As I continue to grow, I will become more conscious of how my actions cause violence to others and will be more motivated to lessen that impact. I also hope to help make this happen on a massive scale, to keep violence at a minimum.
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Why complete non-violence is impossible:
***Someone is about to throw a grenade into your house, where your entire extended family is happily enjoying a Thanksgiving meal. You’ve been yelling at him to stop as you run towards him, and you have a gun in your hand. You shoot in the air to let him know you’re serious, but he doesn’t care. He’s mad. He pulls the pin, and he rears back to throw. Do you shoot him to save your family? Do you resort to violence to prevent greater injustice?
I think the obvious answer is yes. Can you see any other way to save their lives? This situation may seem completely unreasonable, but it metaphorically happens all the time. If we have actual intelligence about key Al- Qaeda officials in Pakistan (they’re about to throw the grenade!) and President Musharraf is unwilling to act against them, should we throw some bombs their way? Senator Obama recommends it. Do we use force to stop genocide in Northern Uganda, or Sudan? Did we have a right to attack Afghanistan or Iraq? The question becomes, when do we decide to use violence? Who gets to decide whether we drop the A-bomb on the Japanese or wage another war on the ground?
