A prayer against violence

I will break my sabbatical because there is much on my mind, and hopefully much on yours, too.

A likely innocent man may be killed by the state today, or tomorrow, or the day after. How does that make you feel?

It is very easy for us to resort to violence to act against violence. It is easy because we do not have to think. If we somehow claim that we are being "just" in our violence, all that remains then is to find the best way, the most effective way to be violent. The violence itself is never questioned. And so we end up with guns dotting our streets, bombs demolishing other parts of the world, and the arrogance to think that we are the supreme gift of the world. The mindlessness with which people cheer violence, as evinced by a recent Tea Party debate, and the calmness with which we accept violence as a form of entertainment on movie and television screens says much about this perverted culture. We can condone the killing of the innocent, by basically saying, "Whatever." All of this in the name of a system of benefits to some, at the expense of others. I cannot get away from this, or stress enough how this mindset pervades every choice we make.

This violence does not stop there. It doesn't end with the physical killing of someone, or some place. It diffuses into our being and our psyche, to surface when we are exasperated, or when we feel that revenge is needed. And so we see it fit to act violently against people and nature; we degrade and debase people's environments, and we degrade and debase the lives of the people dependent on those environments.

It is clear that here, violence isn't the erratic behaviour of a few; it is deeply ingrained in everything we as a collective do, from the way we war, from the way we make money off of war, from the way we divide people, from the way we oppress them and silence them. Violence that is this culturally ingrained isn't stopped by denying previous criminals firearm licenses, or by locking them up in jail. Violence is dealt with by freeing ourselves from the culture that creates and condones it. It should not be acceptable to show someone being blown up on television. If the skin of humans cannot be shown without offending some people, which is understandable, how can we condone the depiction of acts that denigrate and debase our humanity? Or is that what humanity is?

I saw a National Rifle Association bumper sticker a few years ago on North Campus that read:

Guns don't kill people. People kill people. 

I can see their point to an extent. But it is impossible to deny that a culture of guns is necessarily one of violence. Nothing about guns, a technology influenced by social norms and construction, is peaceful, nothing from where the metal came from to the processing of the metals to the intention of a gun. A gun serves as a deterrent by instilling fear in someone, and we all know what fear leads to. When we look at and make objects themselves with capacity to harm, we are compelled to pull a trigger or push a button that will blow someone or some place up. As long as these objects and thoughts and intentions exist, they present themselves as options in debate, they present themselves as options in action.

Violence is a deep manifestation of our insecurities. Because violence is overtly forceful, it gives us a sense of domination, and of power. We can bulldoze lands, blow the tops off of mountains, frack rocks for natural gas, or electrocute someone for a crime with no remorse. All of these actions in no way preserve the sanctity of life (which many death penalty loving people love to talk about), or speak highly of us as ethical and moral agents. Violence for peace makes no sense. Peace, on the other hand, is decidedly peaceful. There can be no violence in peace. Peace may be forceful, steadfast, determined, resolute, and intentional, but in no way can it be violent.

On practicality, reality and idealism

(This post is inspired by The loss of the future, an essay in The Long-Legged House by Wendell Berry.)

As I have written about previously (1, 2, 3), trash is borne out of convenience. Trash can in fact be viewed as an outcome of "solutions" to "problems" like decomposing food and cracked computer screens. Without trash, we would be unable to enjoy getting to places like the top of Mt. Everest (1, 2), we would be unable to transport food to famine-stricken areas of the world, and we would be unable to perform medical procedures on people. Depending on how we weigh the outcomes, positive and negative, of what we do, trash is a natural outcome of solutions to problems, which may be ill-defined. I use the word natural because the way we currently think makes it close to impossible to do anything without degradation, waste and trash. As a society, we claim to think "practically." We do not address problems if the solutions are "impractical." Or, put another way, the only solutions we come up with are those that are "practical." What does "practical" mean in today's world? It means doing something that will, at the most, only slightly nudge the status quo. If a few people will lose their jobs, or funding for a program will get cut, or the vast machine of the US military will be affected, a solution will be deemed "impractical" - impractical because the people you will have to convince to change their ways of being are members of the National Rifle Association, or because they sleep with the board of directors of large oil corporations, or because they claim to advance US interests abroad. Concisely, such solutions are "impractical" because those that need to be convinced wield power - the power of money and the power of violent force. Also, people are not ready to "spend the money" that it would take to make biodegradable materials, or less harmful products, unless it is "economically viable," and unless China will do it, too. What is lost in this "practical" way of thinking is the idealism that needs to be incorporated into our thoughts. An idealism that will address the reality of the situation - of ecological degradation, of social and environmental injustice - is badly needed now. It is easy to lose faith in "practicality," and I have. Indeed, it was "practicality" - of time - that led to the BP-Macondo well blowout (1, 2, 3, 4). "Practicality" has held back climate change talks for more than a decade now. "Practicality" has inflicted serious harm on the nature that feeds us.