Nonviolence Just Got Harder

Among the many things that have kept me busy the past few weeks—including something resembling a social life, which is very strange for me—I have been working on an online class in religious literacy.  (I highly recommend it; it is out of Harvard and free to audit; see here for details.)  The first module is an introduction to the method that will be used to explore the five major world religions in more detail in the following months.  Part of that method is Johan Galtung’s typology of violence, which describes three kinds of violence found in society today.  There is direct violence, which is the kind we think of when we hear that term: behaviors that threaten life or safety, or else deny or restrict basic human needs.  Murder, assault, rape, bullying, and emotional manipulation all fall into this category.

There’s more, though.  The second form of violence Galtung lays out is structural violence, which is violence of a different kind, enacted on people by the systems of authority in the world.  These can include legal strictures such as apartheid or the Jim Crow laws, or they can be less official, such as the restriction of healthcare for certain groups.  Galtung submits that these laws are an act of violence in that they keep certain people from meeting their most basic needs.

Most worrying for me, though, is the third form of violence: cultural violence.  This is the most subtle and most pervasive form.  It is defined as social norms that make structural or direct violence seem acceptable.  My reading for the class lists the old belief that Africans were intellectually inferior to Caucasians as its example, and it’s a good example—even Abolitionists used this thinking in trying to help slaves, saying terrible things and thinking them nothing but the truth.  But I can name a few more examples, most of them coming from an outspoken man behind a campaign podium.  He’s not prejudiced against immigrants or refugees, he’s just trying to protect the American people.  This kind of excusing cruelty is, in itself, a form of violence.

I’m not trying to make a political statement here; I just want us to take a look around and see whether we’re guilty of violence more often than we realize.  Sure, you may have never hit someone in the face or harassed them into tears, but have you ever supported a law that might hurt someone else?  Do your own opinions narrow your views so that you might not see how much someone near you is hurt by what you say?  When you tell your children your thoughts on what is happening in the world, are your ideas really worth passing on?  Or might they be taken in a way that you don’t intend, a way that might make something wrong seem normal and fine?

This is a hard, violent world, and cruelty is spread in many different ways.  It will take many open-minded and careful people to change that, and I hope I am always one of those people.  I hope you are, too.