Some Assumptions About Violence

1. Some Assumptions About Violence An act is violent only when someone is physically harmed. A violent act is always intentional. Some kinds of violence are acceptable. Violence is something done to someone else. Violence is only done to people or animals.

2. How does any one of these assumptions affect our actions?

3. Does intention play a role in defining an action as violent or not violent? If so, in what way? • What if the intention is good, but clearly the act is violent ? – say physically hurting someone. Does that make a difference? Does it make it a different kind of violence? • Are some types of violence acceptable where others are not? If so how do we decide which is which?

4. Violence is any physical, emotional, verbal, institutional, structural, or spiritual behavior, attitude, policy, or condition that diminishes, dominates, or destroys ourselves or others.

5. What motivates violence?

6. Some facts about violence: • Violence is often motivated by fear, unrestrained anger, or greed to increase domination or power over others. • It can also be motivated by a desire for justice in the face of injustice; to overcome an imbalance of power, to end victimization or oppression. • Violence often provokes new violence.

7. 3 Types of Violence: • Direct violence - refers to physical acts of violence • Structural violence – the violence built into the very social, political and economic systems that govern societies, states and the world (like an iceberg, this is the 90% hidden from view; we only see the 10%). • Cultural violence – includes those aspects of culture that legitimize violence and make violence seem like an acceptable means of responding to conflict (often supports of sense of superiority over others).

8. Gandhi’s Principles of Nonviolence • All life is one. • We each have a piece of the truth and the un-truth. • Human beings are more than the evil they sometimes commit. • The means must be consistent with the ends. • We are called to celebrate both our differences and our fundamental unity with others. • We reaffirm our unity with others when we transform “us” versus “them” thinking and doing. • Our oneness calls us to wait, and to work for, the well-being of all. • The nonviolent journey is a process of becoming increasingly free from fear.

9. By yourself (meditation); then dyad - • What did you reflect upon? • Identify a time when you were either violent to someone or someone was violent to you.

11. 3 common ways we respondto violence: 1. Avoiding violence 2. Accommodating violence (living with violence) 3. Counter-Violence: responding to violence with violence

12. and finally… 4. Active Nonviolence !!

13. 3 Forms of Power • Power-over – sees humans and the world as objects, made up of separated, isolated parts; no inherent worth motive = fear HAVES HAVE - NOTS • Power-from-within – sees humans and the world as living beings, dynamic, integrated; individualistic, artistic motive = creativity (erotic in that it drives us to experience/share pleasure).

14. 3. Power-with – bridges the value systems of power-from- within and power-over. Sees the world as a pattern of relationships, but its interest is in how that pattern can be shaped, molded, shifted. Values beings and people re: how they affect others. HAVES HAVE-NOTS

15. Structural Violence fuses Prejudice + Power-over any examples?? racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia