Sunday, May 3, 2009

Violence

For most of us, if we can change the world as we like or if we are capable of ending something in the world, the first thing we would like to change or end is the state of violence in this world. Depend on our state of mind and angle of view we see violence almost everywhere. Whenever we perceive violence, we will go to the peak of anger yet due to our inability to counter that violence we accept it and proceed on our way. If we like to end the violence around us, like any other quality, we need to understand violence. Without understanding violence, there is no possibility to end it.

Our general idea about violence is about physical abuse. Terrorism, war, gang war, killing or physically abusing people for some cause (Whatever be the cause) are generally considered as violence. These activities take place when the idea of a person or group is not accepted by the other person or group, and the first person or group enforce the ideas over second person or group by means of physical abuse. The physical violence takes place when the second group is physically capable of resisting the enforcement of first group. If the second group is physically incapable and psychologically also week, they just accept the idea of first group for their survival or forced to accept the ideology of other group. In this case there is no physical abuse. But the idea of one group is enforced on the other group. Is it not violence? We generally do not consider this as violence as it does not get the attention of larger population and silently accepted.

If we analyze the cause of any sort of violence, whether it is violence at the level of society or at the level of individuals, the starting point is that one side wanted conformity for its ideology from the other side. The other side either refuses this idea and in that case physical violence takes place or accept that idea but suffer psychologically due to the inability to resist that idea, which is against their own ideology.

Based on the above discussion, violence can be defined as want/need of acceptance of one’s ideology by others, whether it happens at physical level or psychological level.

If we do not want somebody to do certain action towards us, first up all we should be restrained ourselves from doing similar action. Otherwise it is foolishness and arrogant to expect others should restrain from such action. If we are in a group and we want the group to maintain silence, first we need to maintain silence. This is understandable to everybody. Similarly, if we want the world to be free from violence, we should make sure that we are not infusing any violence to anybody.

Let us make an honest assessment of ourselves with respect to violence. Are we not subjected to violence multiple times a day by almost everyone we encounter? Are we not subjecting violence to almost everyone we encounter? If we see honestly, we constantly subjected to violence by others and constantly subjecting violence over others. The irony is that all our life we are undergoing this fact and we are now so insensitive to violence, unless it happens in physical level. One aspect of change we need to have within us, to change the world as we like, is to bring back the lost sensitivity to ourselves.

We want our wives/husbands to live as per our idea and enforce our ideas over them. We want our parents/children to live as per our idea and enforce our idea over them. We want our friends to accept our ideas and enforce our ideas over them. We want our subordinates to accept our idea and enforce it over them. We want everyone related to us to accept certain ideas of ours and we try to enforce that idea to them. We are also a husband/wife of somebody. We are also parent/child of somebody. We are also friend of somebody. We are also subordinate of somebody. Hence we are constantly subjected to violence and subjecting violence over others. The intensity of violence depend on the intensity of attachment/possessiveness with the relationship.

Unless we end these phenomena within us, we are not in a position to end the violence in the world. If our reaction to this statement is that this is the way of life, then we have to accept everything, as this is the way of world; and then why should we worried about the violence we are seeing in the world. If we want to end the violence in the world without ending the violence within ourselves is exactly same as wanting the group to maintain silence, but we make noise even as we are part of that group.

Another aspect of violence is violence towards one self. It is the need of forcing oneself to behave certain way or perform certain action for the purpose of conformity towards certain values or belief system or cultural compulsion, or to gain social respectability. Most of us are knowingly or unknowingly indulging into this violence. We do not want to perform certain action, but for the purpose of survival we do that action. It is violence to oneself. There are many such actions in our day-to-day life, which we are forced to perform by ourselves to maintain the social respectability even though we are against performing that action within ourselves. This self-violence is more dangerous than physical violence and psychological violence towards others. The violence towards oneself will destroy or dampen the possibility of evolution of that person.

Unless we attempt to end the violence we are indulging to ourselves, we will not be able to end the violence towards others. Unless we end all our violence within ourselves, there will not be any possibility of ending the violence of humanity. Hence if we want the world to be free from violence, we ourselves must be free from all sort of violence.

3 comments:

Deepak said...

"Change" [sorry, you've kept your name very anonymous all along! :)]

I really appreciate the fact that you're looking into each aspect of life as deeply as you are. I think very few people do that.

I actually would like to remark bit by bit throughout the entire post - but it is a very large post :)

But your very last sentence gets to the crux of the matter very easily. Yes, that is true. Any change that is being proposed must start with the proposer. The world will change only if individuals change.

Please keep posting. I want to read through your entire blog during my spare time. You've written a lot!

அக மாற்றம் said...

Deepak,

Thanks for reading this blog and for your comments.

I intend to continue this blogging till the time I have some thing to write. It is with a selfish motive. As you may be aware, whenever we see, for example a chain email with motivational content, if the content is against what is in our thoughts and memory, we just ignore them. In case it is in-line with our thought process we appreciate the content of that chain email and take a vow to follow the content of that mail and we stops there. We never follow what is said in that email. In either case, it does not serve any purpose for us except burdening our brain with few more memories and hence few more thoughts. When we decide to follow what is said in the chain email, we lack intensity and hence we never follow.

This blog is just the recording of what I see as the change required with in every human being including me. By writing in this blog, I am trying to see the change with renewed intensity. This intensity is not brought in by means of mechanical repetition, but actually seeing/perceiving the change with in myself, each time from a different dimension and new frame of reference. And I can see that change takes place with in me……

Like the chain email, this blog does not serve any purpose to the reader, if he/she merely reject or accept/appreciate the content of this blog. Both of them are almost equal, and as per me, rejection is better than mere acceptance/appreciation as rejection brings in fewer thoughts than acceptance with in the reader.

This blog has some meaning to the reader if and only if the reader analyze the content with minimum biasing, with the understanding of his/her conditioning by his belief systems. This is because the reader analyze only with his/her mind with the help of memory, which is nothing but his conditioning. If one analyze with out the understanding of this conditioning, there is absolutely no meaning whether one reject or accept certain idea.

Hope you understand what I mean here.

Deepak said...

Totally! This was JK's entire life work!

Please keep writing. These posts are great reminders to live life with more awareness.