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| Views on violence | |
| By Leo | ||||||||||||||||
| 07 June 2006 | ||||||||||||||||
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I'm putting my serious cap on for a minute. I would welcome any comments. When I posted ‘Marie’s the name, of his latest flame’, I was really pleased by the numbers of you that took the time out to post a comment. When I was reading through them, there was one thing that struck me, and that was the number of you that felt Ray deserved his comeuppance. This demonstrates a fundamental truth, and that is that whilst violence is undignified, brutal, chaotic, immoral and unlawful, it is not pointless. Just to clarify a point before we continue. Violence can be defined as ‘behaviour with the potential to cause harm. Therefore it is not just a physical act. Yes it has physical forms; punching, kicking, biting etc, but it also has non-physical forms; sabotage, abuse, threats and intimidation. As I was saying, violence is not pointless. It is an example of what is called ‘functional’ behaviour. This is behaviour that is used by an individual to get what they want, or to provide them with some tangible benefit. Social scientists have identified the three main ‘functions’ of violence:
In respect of ‘restoring justice’, this is when violence is used to punish a wrongdoer. Violence and justice have been inextricably linked, right back to prehistoric times. In the bible it talks about taking ‘an eye for an eye’. Ask yourself a question; do you think that it’s right to smack a naughty child? Or, let’s put it another way, what would you do if you saw a young thug punch a little old lady and steal her pension book? This highlights another fundamental truth; we all have the capacity for violence, every single one of us. When you are taking about ‘controlling the behaviour of others’ you are talking about two types of control. One is that which is used for ‘material gain’. Violence here is used to make the other person give you want you want; cash, drugs or information. A mugger uses the threat of violence to force the victim to hand over their valuables, an irate customer uses aggression to obtain a refund and a parent uses the threat of a smack to get the child to admit that they were bunking of school. The other form of behavioural control is what is known as ‘demand avoidance’. In this instance violence is used by a person to make other people go away, or leave them alone. A resident in a care home may not wish to go swimming or join in with group activities. They use violence to communicate their wishes. Staff then back off and ‘…let Leo do his own thing…’ Thirdly and finally there is the use of violence to ‘assert and protect identity’. There seems to be a huge number of people, mainly but not exclusively men, who yearn for some form of status or standing. They need to define themselves. They don’t or are unable to achieve this through other, more civilised or appropriate means. But they realise they are able to achieve this by demonstrating the willingness to utilise violence. Look in W.H.Smith’s at the profusion of books that glorify ‘tough guys’ or ‘hard men’. These are guys who have ‘respect’. Go into any pub in any town centre and you will witness such posturing. Increasingly the need to ‘be a man’ is something that is trickling down to younger and younger generations. Read the newspapers and you will see teenager gang members performing quite horrendous acts of violence. All of these explanations can be scaled up to societies and nations. One nation punishes another for wrongdoing, one nation bully’s another to obtain precious resources and yet another nation flexes it’s military muscles to demonstrate that is a force to be reckoned with. I digress. Getting back to interpersonal violence, there are three manifestations of violence; planned, spontaneous and involuntary violence. The planned type of violence is fairly self-explanatory; the robber is going to hold up the off-license and the use of the violence is a strategy he will employ to dominate and control the situation. Involuntary violence is the type of violence displayed by patients coming out from under anaesthetic, lashing out as they come round. The last type of violence, and by far the most common, is the spontaneous variety. In this instance, the person chooses violence in the heat of the moment because they believe that no other strategy will enable them to get what they want. In this type of situation there are three mitigating factors that will increase the likelihood of the individual choosing violence; drink, drugs and derangement. You will forgive me for using the term ‘derangement’, I realise that it is not one that everyone is entirely comfortable with. In this instance I am only using it to refer to the presence of certain specific mental health disorders and acute stress. In all three cases the reason violence becomes more likely, is because the brain is not functioning effectively. The ability of the individual in question to make a rational, considered decision is impaired. Their ability to complete a cost/benefit analysis is absent. They don’t appreciate the risks, because they are focused on meeting their immediate needs; justice, money, power or status etc. now, we are led to believe that alcohol consumption, drug use and stress levels are increasing. So is it little wonder that levels of violence follow suit. Furthermore we live in a society, where a ‘culture of entitlement’ prevails, where for a long time we have been telling our children to go out and take what’s rightfully theirs. Maybe somewhere along the way the true message has been lost. As I close, I’d like to mention the fact that when I’m not on the Great Writing Website, pouring over the great works that have been posted, I am occasionally to be found at cheese and wine parties. It’s here that I am content to have a natter over a cocktail sausage. Often the conversation settles on the levels of violence in society. My dinner guest will say something like ‘wouldn’t the world be a better place if there was less violence? Whilst I nod and agree, indeed it would, inside my personal feeling is not so much ‘why is there so much violence in the world?’, it’s ‘why isn’t there more?’. The sad truth of the matter is that violence, in the short term at least, provides results.
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