[D66] Categories of Violence

[R.O.]

/https://derrickjensen.org/endgame/categories-of-violence//

/Excerpt from Endgame
/

/Categories of Violence/

/
/

/From chapter "Violence"/

I do think we need more words in English for violence. It’s absurd that 
the same word is used to describe someone raping, torturing, mutilating, 
and killing a child; and someone stopping that perpetrator by shooting 
him in the head. The same word used to describe a mountain lion killing 
a deer by one quick bite to the spinal column is used to describe a 
civilized human playing smackyface with a suspect’s child, or vaporizing 
a family with a daisy cutter. The same word often used to describe 
breaking a window is used to describe killing a CEO and used to describe 
that CEO producing toxins that give people cancer the world over. Check 
that: the latter isn’t called violence, it’s called production.

Sometimes people say to me they’re against all forms of violence. A few 
weeks ago, I got a call from a pacifist activist who said, “Violence 
never accomplishes anything, and besides, it’s really stupid.”

I asked, “What types of violence are you against?”

“All types.”

“How do you eat? And do you defecate? From the perspective of carrots 
and intestinal flora, respectively, those actions are very violent.”

“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “You know what I mean.”

Actually I didn’t. The definitions of violence we normally use are 
impossibly squishy, especially for such an emotionally laden, morally 
charged, existentially vital, and politically important word. This 
squishiness makes our discourse surrounding violence even more 
meaningless than it would otherwise be, which is saying a lot.

The conversation with the pacifist really got me thinking, first about 
definitions of violence, and second about categories. So far as the 
former, there are those who point out, rightly, the relationship between 
the words violence and violate, and say that because a mountain lion 
isn’t violating a deer but simply killing the deer to eat, that this 
would not actually be violence. Similarly a human who killed a deer 
would not be committing an act of violence, so long as the predator, in 
this case the human, did not violate the fundamental predator/prey 
relationship: in other words, so long as the predator then assumed 
responsibility for the continuation of the other’s community. The 
violation, and thus violence, would come only with the breaking of that 
bond. I like that definition a lot.

Here’s another definition I like, for different reasons: “An act of 
violence would be any act that inflicts physical or psychological harm 
on another.”I like this one because its inclusiveness reminds us of the 
ubiquity of violence, and thus I think demystifies violence a bit. So, 
you say you oppose violence? Well, in that case you oppose life. You 
oppose all change. The important question becomes: What types of 
violence do you oppose?

Which of course leads to the other thing I’ve been thinking about: 
categories of violence. If we don’t mind being a bit /ad hoc/, we can 
pretty easily break violence into different types. There is, for 
example, the distinction between unintentional and intentional violence: 
the difference between accidentally stepping on a snail and doing so on 
purpose. Then there would be the category of unintentional but fully 
expected violence: whenever I drive a car I can fully expect to smash 
insects on the windshield (to kill this or that particular moth is an 
accident, but the deaths of some moths are inevitable considering what 
I’m doing). There would be the distinction between direct violence, that 
I do myself, and violence that I order done. Presumably, George W. Bush 
hasn’t personally throttled any Iraqi children, but he has ordered their 
deaths by ordering an invasion of their country (the death of this or 
that Iraqi child may be an accident, but the deaths of some children are 
inevitable considering what he is ordering to be done). Another kind of 
violence would be systematic, and therefore often hidden: I’ve long 
known that the manufacture of the hard drive on my computer is an 
extremely toxic process, and gives cancer to women in Thailand and 
elsewhere who assemble them, but until today I didn’t know that the 
manufacture of the average computer takes about two tons of raw 
materials (520 pounds of fossil fuels, 48 pounds of chemicals, and 3,600 
pounds of water; 4 pounds of fossil fuels and chemicals and 70 pounds of 
water are used to make just a single two gram memory chip).My purchase 
of the computer carries with it those hidden forms of violence.

There is also violence by omission: By not following the example of 
Georg Elser and attempting to remove Hitler, good Germans were culpable 
for the effects Hitler had on the world. By not removing dams I am 
culpable for their effects on my landbase.

There is violence by silence. I will tell you something I did, or rather 
didn’t do, that causes me more shame than almost anything I have ever 
done or not done in my life. I was walking one night several years ago 
out of a grocery store. A man who was clearly homeless and just as 
clearly alcoholic (and inebriated) approached me and asked for money. I 
told him, honestly, that I had no change. He respectfully thanked me 
anyway, and wished me a good evening. I walked on. I heard the man say 
something to whomever was behind me. Then I heard another man’s voice 
say, “Get the f*** away from me!” followed by the thud of fist striking 
flesh. Turning back, I saw a youngish man with slick-backed black hair 
and wearing a business suit pummeling the homeless man’s face. I took a 
step toward them. And then? I did nothing. I watched the businessman 
strike twice more, wipe the back of his hand on his pants, then walk 
away, shoulders squared, to his car. I took another step toward the 
homeless man. He turned to face me. His eyes showed he felt nothing. I 
didn’t say a word. I went home.

If I had to do it again, I would not have committed this violence by 
inaction and by silence. I would have stepped between, and I would have 
said to the man perpetrating the direct violence, “If you want to hit 
someone, at least hit someone who will hit you back.”

There is violence by lying. A few pages ago I mentioned that journalist 
Julius Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg for his role in fomenting the 
Nazi Holocaust. Here is what one of the prosecutors said about him: “It 
may be that this defendant is less directly involved in the physical 
commission of crimes against Jews. The submission of the prosecution is 
that his crime is no less the worse for that reason. No government in 
the world . . . could have embarked upon and put into effect a policy of 
mass extermination without having a people who would back them and 
support them. It was to the task of educating people, producing 
murderers, educating and poisoning them with hate, that Streicher set 
himself. In the early days he was preaching persecution. As persecution 
took place he preached extermination and annihilation. . . . [T]hese 
crimes . . . could never have happened had it not been for him and for 
those like him. Without him, the Kaltenbrunners, the Himmlers . . . 
would have had nobody to carry out their orders.”The same is true of 
course today for the role of the corporate press in atrocities committed 
by governments and corporations, insofar as there is a meaningful 
difference.


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