Marshall Rosenberg is a psychologist and author who made a name for himself in nonviolent communication. His bibliography is long, but I have read little of it. In my reading about pacifism, violence, and nonviolence, he has come up many times. He gets quoted a lot by thinkers in this area. One book of Rosenberg’s that I did read, though did not finish, is Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. It was not my cup of tea, but he did produce one quote that I added to my personal anthology of quotes. He wrote, “All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.”
I think this gets close to how I am thinking of violence. Rosenberg is identifying a sort of innate awareness that violence comes from some place. Whether it is, as Rosenberg suggests, an external force imposed upon us or an artifact of human nature, I’m not sure. But I think it is worth exploring and is certain to shed light on the place of violence in human activity.
Because the nature of violence is an offence to most people’s sensibilities, we tend to deal with it in stories, narratives that allow us a measure of distance from its horrors. Fiction has a way of permitting us to witness violence, in all its detestable iterations, while keeping the reality of it just out of reach of our souls. I’m sure you can identify some literary violence that devastated you. If you’ve read Cormac Mc Carthy, I’m certain there are a few moments you can put your finger on that gave you a knot in your stomach. But violence in fiction permits another, more pernicious, unsettling experience. We get to relish violence. I can think of many fictional acts of violence that have given me great pleasure. When King Joffrey meets his end, I think I might have wept with joy. Violence presents a paradox. We can detest it and relish it all at the same time and there is nothing unnatural or inhumane about it.
I recently finished reading Mc Carthy’s Blood Meridian. I don’t believe I have read a more beautiful and horrifying novel. Mc Carthy’s sprawling, florid descriptions of the desert Southwest put you in a space that feels violent, even before you populate it with degenerate humans. The book follows a teenager from Tennessee who falls in with a crew of vigilantes, led by Judge Holden. There are no noble characters. Nothing good occurs in the course of the story’s prose. Judge Holden is a personification of violence, at times reasonable and coherent. Think Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. He opines, “War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
For Mc Carthy, the brutal landscape of the Southwest is brutal, unforgiving, violent. It lies in stark contrast to the more refined, verdant spaces of the Midwest and Eastern U.S. When men move into that bleak space, violence awaits them and compels them to act in accordance with some violent law. For this band of vigilantes, brutal murder, rape, and infanticide are the order of the day. Every day. They take to it so naturally and Mc Carthy’s emotionless portrayal of scalping and disembowelment made me feel like it was no big deal. And that is the offense that this book commits. It suggests that the world is a violent place, and humans take to it all too easily.
I also recently read Ursula Le Guin’s, The Word for World is Forest. It is part of her Hainish Cycle of novels that includes The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Le Guin builds worlds and creates races with spectacular detail. In the world of science fiction, authors tend to write humans as either do-goody masters of outer space, or, in the case of Bradbury and Le Guin, as colonizing brutes. The novels in the Hainish Cycle depict humans as colonizing brutes who are trying to be do-gooders. In The Word for World is Forest, humans have begun colonizing the faraway planet Athshe. They are logging it for lumber that is being sent back to Earth (Terra). Athshe is inhabited by a peaceful race of furry humanoids who the humans press into slavery. These Athsheans, called “creechies” by the Terrans, are so peaceful that they have no concept of things like rape, assault, or murder. But the Terran humans introduce these things to the Athsheans and eventually they rebel in a spectacular way, killing many of the Terrans. For the Athsheans, violence is not something that is endemic to their society or environment. Violence exists outside, as a sort of tool. After years of experiencing violence at the hands of the Terrans, they see violence as their only option for freeing themselves from the Terran oppression.
These two stories, Blood Meridian and The Word for World is Forest, demonstrate the struggle I am having with violence. In Blood, humans take to violence so naturally. The Judge observes, “[War] endures because young men love it, and old men love it in them.” Humans do love war. We love to fight. We have always glorified it. The world is enormous, and we are small, fragile creatures. Feeling helpless in an immense and unforgiving space compels us to fight for our place in it. But humans come to relish violence for its own sake and that is the part that terrifies me. I get it. I worry that if I was to be forced into a violent life, I would come to enjoy it.
Le Guin’s Forest plays out what happens when peaceful people determine that peace is impossible. I am a peaceful person, but I recognize that I could be brutally violent if someone made peace impossible.
In both stories, violence is situated in space outside the characters. But there was something inside the characters that resonated with the violence outside. The butchers in Blood and the creechies in Forest yield to some primal instinct that recognizes that tool of violence, the implement for control.
Because our relationship with violence may be unsettling, it is reasonable to deduce that violence, if it is situated anywhere, it is outside of us. Violence is irreverent and transgressive to a people who have been taught that peace is a virtue. But sometimes, as in Forest, peace is impossible. And the ugly truth is that, as in Blood, peace is impractical.
As someone who LOVES combat sports, I often wonder about this idea of relishing violence and those who partake in it as a livelihood. It seems to me that there is something innate about many of us (human beings in general) that wants to seek physical domination over others, be capable of it, or at the very least witness those who are best at it though we fear and loathe the results of it. I think about fighters who deliver a brutal knockout and immediately bow to their opponents or even begin praying for them in the ring. Many times they seem visibly concerned by what they have done. It is a tricky business to be a part of, it seems.
I wonder, too, about Matthew 11:12, "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and men of violence take it by force."
Very interesting! Much to think about!