Last time I described my disagreement with Pinker's proposal about the decrease of violence in society, and how Johan Galtung helped me to see why I objected to Pinker's proposal. Galtung is well-known for describing three forms of violence—as well as their alternative forms of peace. The forms of violence are:
1. Personal or direct violence—in which the violence is perpetrated by an actor, upon another person. This is the type of violence that usually comes to mind when we think of physical force or brutality. Examples are killing, murder, and physical assaults such as battery, bullying, and rape. Direct violence is the kind that Pinker primarily addresses in Better Angels.
2. Structural or indirect violence—in which there is no specific actor but occurs because it is built into the structure of a society. This form of violence prevents people from achieving their full potential, often through laws and institutions. It results in inequalities of both power and income—exhibited in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Structural violence can be as deadly as personal violence, but it is usually not as obvious, because it's part of our social and political world. It often even insidiously seems to be normal or acceptable to many people.
3. Cultural violence—which is the beliefs and behaviors of a culture that undergird and perpetuate the other two forms of violence; especially structural violence. Cultural violence can even cause people to view the first two forms of violence as permissible. It warps morals to the point that personal and structural violence are sometimes not even seen as violent.
Galtung went on to describe three kinds of peace that oppose these three forms of violence. Direct peace is, of course, the absence of killing, bullying, and rape. Structural peace gives us a vision that violence can be eliminated, when we discover pockets of equality here and there. And finally, cultural peace can come about when we promote conflict resolution and change society's beliefs and behaviors. Ideals of cultural peace can be found in various documents and proclamations written by nations and organizations—although they too often remain lofty intentions recorded in praiseworthy documents, rather than seen in practice.
I believe that Galtung has helped me to clarify my objections to Pinker's thesis that the human world has experienced gradual and significant reductions in violence, and thus we should feel good about where we are and where we're headed. Indeed, personal and direct violence can be shown to be on the decline, as his prodigious statistics demonstrate. He shows that violence perpetrated by an actor upon another person—whether murder or mass war—has indeed been significantly reduced.
Yet I feel that both structural and cultural violence remain a major factor in society. They may not account for large body counts, but they sure cause much misery. And as Galtung points out, these types of violence are not nearly as obvious; they too often can become accepted as normal or even tolerable—they are almost invisible to many people, who have come to see them as either inevitable or natural.
In the last few years we have seen a large increase in intolerance. Polarization and social media feed the problem. It has become acceptable to attack others online and even in confrontational public displays of contentiousness and fanaticism. We have a president in the US—as well as an increasing number of autocrats around the world—who proclaim and tweet polemical accusations. Their actions embolden prejudice and bigotry. These are not Pinker's direct forms of violence, but the cultural and structural types of vehemence and savagery they exhibit often promote and condone direct violence.
While Pinker casts his glance over centuries of human conflict, I am addressing here current events. It may turn out that we are witnessing a temporary spike in structural and cultural violence and that soon things will calm down and continue inexorably toward peaceful times, when our “better angels” wield their beneficial influence. Maybe so. I hope so, but I still think Pinker is missing the terrible impact of the less conspicuous forms of structural and cultural violence.
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