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<address><em><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://derrickjensen.org/endgame/categories-of-violence/">https://derrickjensen.org/endgame/categories-of-violence/</a></em></address>
<p><em>Excerpt from Endgame<br>
</em></p>
<p><em>Categories of Violence</em></p>
<p><em><br>
</em></p>
<p><em>From chapter "Violence"</em> </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.” </p>
<p>I asked, “What types of violence are you against?”</p>
<p>“All types.”</p>
<p>“How do you eat? And do you defecate? From the perspective of
carrots and intestinal flora, respectively, those actions are very
violent.”</p>
<p>“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “You know what I mean.”</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?
</p>
<p>Which of course leads to the other thing I’ve been thinking
about: categories of violence. If we don’t mind being a bit <i>ad
hoc</i>, 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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.” </p>
<p>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.</p>
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