Society on the macro or micro scale has diseases, just as individuals do. A bodily disease is a disturbance of organismic function, such that some goals are no longer reached and smooth and harmonious performance is no longer maintained.
A society too has goals, a performance to be maintained, and values to be realized. Diseases of the social organism are denials of values – of truth, freedom, justice, peace, and love.
The greatest of these diseases of society is violence, which in the extreme case is a denial of life itself – the seedbed from which all other values grow. Violence, the supreme denial, grows often out of the denial of other values – by ourselves and by others, to ourselves and others. For example, false propaganda is a denial of truth, alienation is a denial of community, coercion is a denial of freedom, exploitation is a denial of justice, conflict is a denial of harmony, hate is a denial of love. Violence is often the result of these multiple denials.
Violence, whose extreme form is infliction of physical harm, even death, can be generalized as deliberate infliction of pain, including psychological or mental pain. This can be done for instrumental reasons (for person or group X to attain a goal incompatible with the goal of Y) or for expressive reasons, as an explosive emotional outburst.
Violence is not the same as conflict, but it can result from conflict. Conflict can be creative when it brings into the open hidden grievances or contradictions, so that they can be resolved or reconciled or accommodated. How could one reconcile what one does not know or acknowledge? Social conflict can, if it is creative, move society to higher justice or higher freedom or higher harmony or higher order. However, even creative conflict is painful, like teething or growing pains or labour pains – none of them a symptom of disease, but a manifestation of the life process. Conflict can be non-violent, with no intentional harm inflicted, though pain will still exist.
Unlike conflict, violence is always destructive. Some try to justify violence on various grounds: to attain or maintain other values (e.g. freedom or justice). The real reason, however, may actually be a deadly sin like pride, greed, envy or jealousy, though the justification or rationalization is made to sound high-minded. And we get to truly believe our justifications, and kill and maim for the sake of truth, freedom, justice, or even love.
As selfless fanatics for high-minded causes, we are far more dangerous than selfish grabbers of power or riches, because our conscience (which we personify as the voice of God) is then on our side, and no moral inhibitions hold us back from even the most horrendous atrocities. Right-wing fanatics will fight for law and order, for traditions, for God and country. Left-wing fanatics will fight for freedom and justice, equality and liberation, progress and social change. Each thinks that the infliction of pain is temporary, instrumental, lasting only until the goals are achieved, after which everyone will live happily ever after in a new Utopia. That is, everyone except the traitors and heretics and unbelievers – but these are not seen as fully human, which is what makes it possible to kill them.
But the perceived need for violence keeps returning, like the craving for an addictive drug, and the “happily ever after” recedes into the future, forever just beyond our reach, like the end of the rainbow.
The result of violence, beyond the immediate death and destruction, is the oppression and domination and exploitation which follows the surrender of one side. The losing side is at the victor’s mercy and experiences the long-term “structural violence” which follows, in the form of slavery or colonialism, marginalization and loss of land and livelihood. This has been the historical experience, and it continues to this day.
“Structural violence” means the shortening of the natural lifespan as a result of preventable illness or deprivation, quite often in the form of infant and child death because of malnutrition and disease. Structural violence also means a deterioration of the quality of life, e.g. by protein shortage during perinatal life causing permanent brain damage and mental retardation.
Direct (intentional) violence and structural violence are convertible into each other, like kinetic and potential energy during the swing of a pendulum. At the top of its swing, the pendulum has only potential and no kinetic energy; at the bottom, when the rod is vertical, there is only kinetic and no potential energy; at intermediate positions, there is some of each. Similarly, in periods of (negative) peace after a conquest, there is only structural violence and no direct violence; in a period of active warfare (for example a liberation struggle), there is mainly direct violence. Each side tries to achieve victory, i.e. end up as dominator instead of dominated, predator rather than prey; i.e. to avoid structural violence to itself while able to inflict it on the other.
Similarly, in establishing the “pecking order” among barnyard chickens, direct violence (pecking) is practised until it becomes clear who is the dominator over whom and who is dominated by whom. When the domination hierarchy has been established, there is no more need for direct violence, i.e. active pecking. There is hierarchical order, there is negative peace. But the underdog (under-chicken?) gets less food and suffers from chronic anxiety; it is less healthy and probably finds no mates to reproduce. The poor creature at the lowest rung of the social ladder suffers from “potential” violence, expecting to be pecked at any time; and this potential violence is like the potential energy in the pendulum metaphor.
Peace research, as part of human betterment research (K. Boulding’s term), is like medical science, which tries to cure or prevent diseases. The disease which peace research tries to cure or prevent is violence at all levels, not only war between nations; though priority must be given to the prevention of all-out nuclear war which might be totally destructive. Other parts of human betterment research would be justice research, freedom research, etc.
The aims of peace research are: (1) To understand violence and conflict. (2) To predict their occurrence or their likelihood from preceding (usually multiple) causes. (3) To treat or cure or ameliorate the symptoms and after-effects of violence when it has occurred. (4) To prevent violence from occurring, on the basis of the understanding gained and the predictions made.
Thus the aim is to falsify one’s own predictions, as happened to Jonah in Niniveh in the Bible story, when he warned the people of Niniveh that the Lord will destroy their city unless they repent. They did repent and reformed, and the city was spared. This made Jonah a false prophet in the sense of predicting the future, but a huge success as a social change agent. Peace researchers basically try to follow Jonah’s example.
What are some of the causes or roots of violence? We can divide them into two broad classes: individual (psychological or biological) and social (political, economic, or ethical). Interpersonal or inter-group violence can be caused by any of these, or all of these, or any combination. Single causes are far less likely than multiple causes. Most “causes” are only contributing factors; hardly any are either sufficient or necessary, let alone both sufficient and necessary. Violence usually results from a confluence of contributing factors – pictured as a convergence of arrows from many sides. This can be modelled as mutual-reinforcement cascades of positive (amplifying) feedback; in other words, a (vicious) synergy.
However, wars are different in some respects from interpersonal and inter-group violence. Although in a sense wars are a translation of generalized violence to the top societal level, new emergent qualities come to light in this elevation of levels, as is so often the case in general systems. Wars, whether civil or international or a mix, are defined as ORGANIZED MASS VIOLENCE, and those two modifiers make this type of violence into a new phenomenon.
Wars are much more likely to be due to social than to individual causes; in fact, one could almost rule out individual causes altogether, except for some rare cases of crazy leaders. The human aggressive instinct (if it indeed exists) or anger/rage resulting from frustration are singularly unconvincing as the causes of anything more than spontaneous individual outbreaks – neither “organized” nor “mass”.
The soldier in the battlefield does not fight because he is angry (though he may get angry later when he sees his buddies killed or injured); he fights because he is ordered to fight by his superiors. Conformity or compliant aggression, as exemplified in the famous Milgram experiment (many subjects obey when instructed to give painful electric shocks to others with whom they have no quarrel), is a very convincing cause of war-like behaviour of soldiers under battlefield conditions. It is not so much the fear of punishment for disobeying orders, as the simple habit of blind obedience, inculcated by long periods of “basic training” and bayonet practice and the like, that is operating here. Obedience is also the main cause of that one-sided war called genocide.
However, the explanation of obedience or conformity does involve psychological mechanisms, though not of the “aggressive instinct” type. The whole complex of the authoritarian or compulsive personality is involved, as explained in detail by William Eckhardt in his book “Compassion”.
Such a personality develops from a childhood upbringing which is too restrictive, punitive, unloving, neurotic, or inconsistent. This style (or styles) of upbringing leads to a lack of self-esteem in the child, which the child then projects unto others in the form of misanthropy and distrust. (“If I am no good, other people are no good as well.”) Later, in the adult, this attitude is rationalized as a theory of human nature as depraved and basically evil, whether by “original sin” theories of fundamentalist Christians or “aggressive instinct” theories of the followers of Konrad Lorentz and Robert Ardrey.
From these theories then follows the belief that human behaviour must be strictly controlled, through threat of punishment or actual punishment – in other words, fear. We must all live under the threat system (cf. K. Boulding), not the exchange (reciprocity) system or integrative system, of which (we are convinced, if we are authoritarian personalities) we are incapable. While perfect love casts out fear (a part of the Bible which the fundamentalists do not seem to read), the perception of the need for fear casts out love – makes it an outcast. We fear God, rather than love God.
The resultant attitudinal complex contains authoritarianism, dogmatism, militarism, nationalism, conservatism, anti-hedonism, and conventional religiosity. Such a person will obey orders to hurt or kill others, especially if these “others” have been dehumanized by propaganda as either evil or sub-human. This tendency is reinforced if the situation is one of extreme stress (as in a crisis), but it can be manifested even in situations of calm. The tendency can also be accentuated if the issues in conflict are seen as highly salient or vital, i.e. if zeal and fanaticism is present; but again, this is not wholly necessary for such obedience to occur. This is, indeed, a picture of the converging arrows of contributing factors, neither of them quite sufficient or quite necessary, but together a witches’ brew of a malevolent explosion.
Thus, without the benefit of brain tumours, extra Y chromosomes, aggressive instincts, testosterone overdose, or individual frustration, we can get such explosions of mass violence as Belsen, My Lai, Hamburg, and Hiroshima, and whatever else the unmerciful future may bring.
The remedy? (We did say that peace research aims to prevent, not only predict, the ravages of disease.) First, the bringing up of children in a loving, caringly permissive, and consistent moral environment, in which adults set good examples rather than merely preaching about right conduct and character.
Secondly, avoiding propaganda attempts to dehumanize anyone, even if it at first sight some individual leaders seem to deserve it; and resisting mentally the influence of such propaganda if it is beamed at us. (“The truth shall set you free”, says the Bible.)
Thirdly, never performing acts that we are ordered to do without first measuring them against the yardstick of our moral conscience, regardless of the exalted or superior social positions of the person ordering it. This may involve active civil disobedience at times, even at great personal danger; but we are obliged to do it under the higher law of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal’s precepts.
Fourthly, trying to prevent crises or stressful situations or mutual frustrations; this may involve international (United Nations) mechanisms of preventive diplomacy or preventive peace-keeping.
Fifthly, staying away from fanatical beliefs of any kind; never claiming absolute truth for which we must fight, perhaps even giving up on the Utopia of a future perfect world. Leonard Cohen (“The Future”) warns us: “Forget your perfect offering…There is a crack in everything…that’s how the light gets in.”