Defining Violence: Part IV

At the beginning of this debate I sought to define violence, questioning whether violence is defined entirely by that which is done with malice or if it doesn’t extend to the whole of human suffering. It is my personal believe that the later compels us to acknowledge all the infractions of our forbears against the truths we have come to view as self evident. Since we lack empirical data to juxtapose the 20th century to any proceeding century, we must formulate our opinions based a upon accounts of the period; documenting the conditions of factory labor, domestic violence, political oppression, disease, and famine. In exploring the evidence I have found no reason to question my original position. Despite the violence evident in the wars and conflict of the last century, peoples around the world liberated themselves form segregation, and colonial oppression in a largely peaceful manner. Labor unions helped to improve working conditions for many people. Suffragists helped to create laws protecting women and children against domestic violence, and assault. Medical advancements helped to constrain diseases which before had destroyed civilizations. In this way the violence under which many people had long suffered was uprooted. It is my hope that we will continue to see such progress.

Defining Violence: Part III

What makes the 20th century unique from those previous is the event of globalization, the rise of nationalistic aspirations, and the development of increasingly “sophisticated” weapons. Yet these events represented the culmination of human ambition and ideology, which was conceived upon the dawn of civilization. Throughout the early modern period oppression occurred in a disturbingly intimate context. After the fall of the Roman empire feudal kings imposed their rule over small provinces, established laws and levied taxes over the subject population with absolute authority.

Such rulers persecuted resident minorities which commonly included pagans, gypsies, homosexuals, individuals suffering from disease or deformity, as well as people of differing faiths and ethnicities within their kingdom with immunity. Each ruler acted upon varying ideologies thus the persecution of a given subset differed greatly from region to region. The rise of Christianity during this period led to the genocidal killing and forced conversion of all the pagan people of Europe. Even among Christians, Protestants and Catholics fought bitterly and the rise of one faction or another to power often led to the slaughter of the deposed party. It is difficult to know how many people were killed because of the zealotry of individual leaders. The extermination of innumerable people throughout Europe and even the Middle East during the early modern period, although not as systematic as what occurred during WWII, was considerably more pervasive and there for more deadly.

In these agrarian societies peasants were legally bound to the land as serfs, land itself being owned entirely by the king. Under this system laborers turned the entity of their production over to the ruling authority, which divided the surplus among the urban population, before returning a small percentage of the share to the peasants themselves. These small returns were often not a enough to subsist upon, and serfs often died of starvation even as their labor fed the kingdom they were subservient to. Without birth certificates or proper medical records it is impossible to determine how many people died in this manner. We are aware through various accounts that the peasantry from England to the Ottoman empire suffered beneath such a feudal and indifferent system. Thus the collectivization of the agriculture within the Soviet Union was not only reminiscent of such a feudal system, it resurrected the feudal order within the ideology of Communism.

What is notable about the genocide committed during WWII, or the starvation of rural populations under Stalin, is that they were in contrast to much of the rest of the world. Such things no longer being common in our society made them atrocities. The manipulation of national aspirations, as well as the employment of new technologies, allowed for the full infliction of suffering as was in mans nature. Prior to the 20th century man only lacked the capacity for such violence yet the will to power was forever present.

Defining Violence: Part II

In the last century the moral composition of much of the world has changed dramatically. What we are willing to tolerate as global citizens has come to bear on such critical issues as corporal punishment, women’s rights, and treatment of minority groups. But these truths which we hold to be self evident today were not always recognized by our predecessors. We are, I believe, bound by all such truths to define violence as the violation thereof and in doing so, acknowledged the inadequacies and inconstancies of our forbearers in this discussion.

The information provided was indeed very compelling and deeply upsetting. It is disconcerting to see how so many innocent people can be eradicated because of their race, sex, orientation, religious beliefs or simply to further the interest of the ruling political party. The notion that, to spite all the advancements of civilization, genocide and other atrocities still go on through out much of the world is truly frighting. Unfortunately such things are no new development nor have they reached any new level of barbarism within the last century. Countries, kings, even the forces of nature, have driven the people they govern to do inconceivably cruel things. The Holly Wars, the 30 Years War, the Reformation, the Inquisition, the Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars, this nation’s Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, the American Border Wars, the Trail of Tears, as well as countless other events bear testament to this.

Public executions were carried out in Europe in order to discourage disobedience more then to enact justice, which was somewhat distorted to support the absolute authority of the monarchy. Bodies of “criminals” were often hung throughout the city, and about palaces, and prisons. Many times men would be hanged before they were put on display to the public, but other times they where hoisted up in iron cages where they would hang immobile before the public in their own blood, sweat, and defecation to die slowly of starvation and exposure. Prior to the twentieth century people suffering from disease and deformities where pushed to the fringes of society, viewed as “dangerous and morally corrupt,” and forced to fend for them selves. Those suffering from various mental conditions were often treated the same or else confined to asylums which resembled prisons more then hospitals. Those confined to such establishments were subjected to such “treatments” as dunking (a form of simulated drowning) designed to “shock them out of their condition,” as well as a number of other “experimental medical procedures.” During the winter of 1609-1610 early American colonialists compelled by starvation began to cannibalizing one another to stay alive. Diseases brought to the Americas by Europeans intentionally or unintentionally killed or crippled Native Americans all along the Eastern shores during the 1700s. Natives in South America were drafted into forced labor by their Spanish and Portuguese conquerors and were killed in such great number that in less in a hundred years Europeans began to import slaves from Africa to support their economic enterprises in the Americans. Slavery was yet another cruel and inhuman evil, which plagued most of the world up until the twentieth century. Puritans viewed the mortification of the flesh an integral part of the salvation of the soul and carried out public floggings, as well as more unique forms of punishment, on those they believed transgressed upon the faith. For most of modern history man’s “right” to beat his wife and children, was not only protected under the law, it was often encouraged by authorities as a way to “maintain order in the household.” During the Industrial Revolution men, women, and children labored under appalling conditions in factories through out the developed world. Many contracted crippling illnesses because of the poor work environment. Others -often children- were crushed, or mutilated by the machines they worked on. All in the interest of producing wealth for a small minority.

These things can not be classified as genocide -in the widely excepted sense- nor did they occur during or because of a war. They happen -they were allowed to happen- because the publics’ moral composition was very different then our own. That being the case such things have been rendered no less violent by the passage of time for being condoned during their occurrence. I believe that in saying that the brutality of life in earlier modern times bears great weight on this discussion, for it represents no small part of what violence humanity has inflicted upon itself prior to the twentieth century.