Attitudes and Values Regarding Violence and Non-Violence

Roy Davis

Gonzaga University

ORGL 520, A2: Negotiation and Conflict Resolution [Fall 2014]

Instructor: Timothy Keator PhD

August 15, 2014

                                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                         

I’ve known violence for as long as I can remember.  Indeed, my earliest memories are episodic and violent.  As I now reach back into my earliest recollections, I find two occasions stand out, both near three years of age.  The first memory, while seemingly a minor thing, took place at the orphanage where I had lived for about six months.  Though my memory is indelibly imprinted as a preserved film short, there are no credits to remind me of the actors.  What I remember is this:

 

Another child of the home and I were downstairs in the basement.  This is where the laundry room was.  The people had hung bed sheets up in the basement, whether to dry or as partitions.  I do not know.  The young boy I was playing with was running through the basement screaming and tearing down all the hung white sheets.  I stood and watched him do it, while all the time thinking this boy must have something wrong with him.  The boy took down the last sheet then quickly ran up the stairs.  In seconds a woman came down the stairs to find me standing amongst all her white sheets.  I do not remember what she said, just the screaming and the punishment.  I do know that I did not tell on the other boy, what seems to me now like idiocy.

 

Within a couple months a man and woman had come to the home to see my older brother and me.  They brought us toys.  We had never had toys, so the little cowboy, Indian, and army figures were amazing.  The next time we saw the man and woman, they took us home.  Home, the place of my very next memory.

 

I was in the kitchen of my new house.  I sat in a tall red-painted metal high chair with lots of shiny chrome.  It was a real beauty.  My new mamma said, “You have such pretty blue eyes.  Now, what color eyes do you have?”  I said, “My eyes are red!”  She replied very calmly, “No. Your eyes are blue.  Now, what color eyes do you have?”  I said, “My eyes are red!”  Again, “No. Your eyes are blue.  If you tell me one more time that your eyes are red, I am going to knock you right off that chair!  Now, what color are your eyes?”  While still held captive by the shiny chrome tray of the pretty red high chair, I struck the kitchen’s linoleum floor with a single thought – “Remember this…”

 

Looking back, I understand that just as I really did not know that those toys were actually cowboys or Indians or army figures, I also did not know what “blue” was.  I knew what “red” was, and “red” was pretty….just like that high chair.  She told me that my eyes were pretty.

 

I tell this story because when we discuss our “own attitudes and values regarding violence and non-violence,” we interpret those words based on our own historical perspective.  My mamma thought she could communicate better through violence, as her being kind and sweet just was not doing the trick.  However, as I and my chair lay on that linoleum floor, that I had “blue” eyes was not my edification.  My message was clearly to fear this woman, never like her, and certainly never to love her.

 

The violence I experienced at the orphanage was received and processed quite differently.  I knew that the boy had told a lie – told the woman that it was me who tore down all the white sheets.  My young mind quickly connected other people’s deceit to the violence handed to me.  That little boy violated the ignorance of my trust in a way I could never have then comprehended.  The only memory I have of the mislaid punishment received is not directed toward the woman but aimed directly at the boy.  Conversely, I now know that I had unconsciously imprinted a rule of deception – that, I had first always to consider the pain my deception would inflict upon others.

 

Returning to speak to the “fear” bred by the actions of my new mamma, I read the words of a wise man who told us that “fear is mastered by love” (King, 1969, p.96).  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also said that “fear is mastered by faith.  Without faith we are orphans cast into the immensities of space in a universe that is without purpose or intelligence” (King, 1969, p.96).  I had not been introduced to the kind of faith that Reverend King spoke of and was most certainly too young to have comprehended his meaning.  The love he spoke of was lost, or perhaps stolen, in its infancy and would never be reclaimed.  So, for most of my early childhood, I learned by violence and was controlled by fear, an orphan…without purpose or intelligence. 

 

“At what point does our own struggle become part of what we are trying to resist, or the very things we oppose when done to us by others? (Brand-Jacobsen, p.1)  My values regarding violence and non-violence took many years to recreate.  Bringing back non-violence from the depths of my infancy has not been an easy task.  I am familiar with the cool of linoleum, the heel of a boot, and of the cut of the quirt whip and hemp rope.  The transformation has been a life-long work in progress.  We that know violence may say we have not become part of what we are trying to resist, but at some point that drilled instruction to mirror violence with violence becomes more of a visceral than a reasoned response. 

 

Galtung (1996) notes that in determining causality “violence/peace originates in one place” (p.37).  I agree with this hypothesis.  The Seville statement on violence takes origin one step further in stating that “while genes are co-involved in establishing our behavioural capacities, they do not by themselves specify the outcome” (1986).  I find great weight in this co-involved gene theory.  While my older brother found, with full and determined diligence, that violence must be met with violence: even to an extent that, casual violence was a necessary method for achieving all goals.  While on the other hand, I found violence essential for the physical protection of myself and for others.  The worst beatings I ever took as child, outside of those delivered by mamma and daddy, were for protecting my brother and friends.  What is notable is that I did find violence essential for survival.

 

How does my personal history combined with Galtung’s hypothesis of origin relate to my world view regarding violence and non-violence?  How do those of us who have known violence look at the rest of the world?  Differently, I suppose - differently than those who have not and even more differently than those others who have.  What I would like is the dream Dr. King spoke of but what I see is found in the imagination of men like Walt Disney.  Disney said that you may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you (Walt Disney).  Disney was talking about life changing experiences and how they are unique to the response of the recipient.  He was not, however, speaking to a violence that endures as long as our memories endure or violence that repeats itself throughout decades and centuries.  His was a more finite violence, not committed but received, finding resolution through imagination and cessation of violence through love.  What a wonderful world it would be.

 

Decades after Disney, another man, Desmond Tutu, did more than merely dream of a wonderful world filled with joy and love.  Tutu sought to create this culture through forgiveness of the atrocities committed against his people.  Concerning the apartheid, Tutu said this, “Our experiment is going to succeed because God wants us to succeed, not for glory and aggrandizement but for the sake of God’s world.  God wants to show that there is life after conflict and repression—that because of forgiveness there is a future” (Tutu, 1999, p.282).  Tutu was able to bring imagination and love into his world of infinite violence.  He called this new world an “experiment” in forgiveness. 

 

Now, I am asked what are my attitudes and values regarding violence and non-violence.  I too believe that where there is forgiveness there is a future of non-violence.  Unfortunately, forced forgiveness is not a viable option when there are so many people in this world that cannot forgive those that they feel have wronged them.  Even for me, when I ask myself if I have forgiven mamma and daddy, my only answer is that I have moved on.  Perhaps forgiveness means something different to us all.

 

 

Resources:

 

Brand-Jacobsen, K. F. (2005). No fist is big enough to hide the sky: The power of nonviolence. The Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR): Author. Retrieved on January 10th, 2010

 

Galtung, J. (1996) Peace by peaceful means: Peace and conflict, development and civilization. Oslo: International Peace Research Institute; London; Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications.

 

King, C. S. (1969). My life with Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

 

Seville statement on violence. (1986). Retrieved on January 13, 2010 from http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=3247&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

 

Tutu, D. (1999). No future without forgiveness. New York: Doubleday.

 

Walt Disney. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved September 14, 2014, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waltdisney103807.html