The Two Types of Violence
The Two Types of Violence
Thirty-three people in Blacksburg, 230 in one day in Baghdad. Though residents of the United States and Iraq measure hurt on different scales, last week seemed off the chart in both places.There is neither physical nor moral equivalence between the carnage at Virginia Tech and the latest explosions in the US-sparked Sunni-Shi'ite civil war, yet such outbreaks draw attention to an underlying force that has taken both nations hostage: violence. At a time like this, it is necessary to step back from politics and grief to think about violence as such.
"Violence is by nature instrumental," the political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote. "Like all means, it always stands in need of guidance and justification through the end it pursues." By "instrumental," Arendt essentially means "aimed at accomplishing something." Clausewitz had taken such purposefulness for granted when he defined war as "an act of violence to compel the opponent to do as we wish." Such violence, however much to be regretted, or even opposed, can claim to be both rational and right.
But Arendt's assumption about violence as "by nature instrumental" seems undercut by the violence that, however differently, shook both America and Iraq last week. It was very clear that Seung-Hui Cho was not engaged in "instrumental" violence. He committed grotesque acts for the sake not of power or dominance, but of their grotesquery. His was violence for its own sake, period. In destroying innocent lives, Cho was concerned not with those lives or with any others, but only with himself.
As the video package he sent to NBC showed, Cho's was an act of what might be called "expressive" violence. Cho's murders, that is, were a form of communication, and their perversity adhered in the way in which he succeeded in conscripting the contemporary communications industry, centered on television news. He killed, and by the nation's stopping and taking note of his having killed, the purest form of expressive violence was achieved. In making accomplices not only of the broadcast media, but of all who viewed it, Cho got what he wanted.
The murdered victims of such violence are mere symbols in the killer's self-communication, and it makes no difference whether that expression is a scream of rage or a cry for help. Such violence for its own sake lands on the vulnerable like typewriter keys on paper, but persons are not to be used as ciphers in someone else's message. That conviction explains the universal repugnance felt at Cho's actions, even if repugnance comes tinged with a broad feeling of complicity. A moral principle suggests itself: Expressive violence is always wrong. A corollary follows: Responsible media should censor it.
But instrumental violence is different, and may or may not be wrong, depending on how means and ends are measured. The move to this level of abstraction prepares for the more difficult moral and political question: What about the American war in Iraq? Even those of us who opposed the war from the start must acknowledge that, in the beginning, the Bush administration's violence toward the Iraq of Saddam Hussein was instrumental. Regime change was the purpose, and whether one opposed or supported it, the war's violence could be defended as aimed at something beyond itself.
But where is the purpose now? If war is violence "to compel the opponent do as we wish," what, actually, do we wish at this point? Obviously, everyone wishes the killing to stop, the Sunnis wish to regain some measure of power over Iraq and its resources, the Shi'ites wish to assert the control proper to their superior numbers, and varied factions want the American occupiers out. But what, actually, does George W. Bush want?
Last week marked the dawning of a horrible American question: Has our once-instrumental violence become merely expressive? Since our purpose no longer has to do with Iraq (no regime change, no democracy, no connection to global terror, not even oil), does it have to do now only with ourselves (maintaining "credibility," avoiding catastrophic defeat, denying that more than 3,300 US soldiers died in vain)?
American violence is the condition within which Iraqi violence explodes. The removal of American violence may or may not dampen Iraqi violence. But Iraqi violence of various stripes still aims for power, control, or, at minimum, revenge. Iraqi violence is purposeful. Last week puts its hard question to Americans: What is the purpose of ours?
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
© Copyright 2007 The Boston Globe
11 Comments so far
Show Allhybridoma2001 April 23rd, 2007 9:16 pm
"....how can you say that our purpose for remaining in Iraq is not related to oil? Of course it is. It was always the reason we invaded. How can you pretend to be so naïve? The only things that were protected during the invasion of Iraq were anything having to do with oil."
Ditto! Mr. Carroll's comment about this came as a surprise.
"....does it have to do now only with ourselves (maintaining "credibility," avoiding catastrophic defeat, denying that more than 3,300 US soldiers died in vain)?"
Who is "ourselves"? This "self" has believed all along that our soldiers and Iraqis have been dying in vain; that U.S. credibility is lost, and that, as Ray McGovern has said, defeat is not an option - it's a certainty.
You ask: "But what, actually, does George W. Bush want?"
Uninterrupted oil flow from Iraq to the U.S. with U.S oil companies in control.
Has everyone forgotten the Nuremberg Trails? To paraphrase here, war contains the sum of all evils. It also states that no country shall invade another country unless said country was seen as an imminent threat. Everyone; especially Hans Blix, who was on the ground was almost shouting that there was no evidence of Suddam reinstituting his nuclear program. They also asked for a couple of more weeks to finish with their work. But Bush didn't wait because he knew the truth all along.
I was also surprised to read James Carrol write that our purpose in Iraq was regime change! I was told we were invading Iraq because it possessed weapons of mass destruction; in violation of the UN Security Council. I think regime change a little later; somewhere between bringing Democracy to the Middle East and "He's just got to be hiding something." You know, somewhere North or South or East or West of Baghdad.
I have read quite a bit of Hannah Arendt and I respect her as a thinker and philosopher. But being a Radical Emperisist as was William James, I think that philosophy should translate into something meaningful in our daily existence. As to what the man who killed so many in Virginia did, his purpose was simply indiscriminate killing after he murdered a girl he wanted and her lover. What I would call our initial and afterward behavior in Iraq as indiscriminate killing as well. Have you ever handled white phosphorous Mr. Carroll? If you don't get to the shower in the lab as quickly as possible while others find a chemical which will stop the reaction with white phosphorous and protein, you will find that this chemical does not stop reacting until it encounters bone matter. Does Falluja qualify as indiscriminate killing?
My final words are these: how can you say that our purpose for remaining in Iraq is not related to oil? Of course it is. It was always the reason we invaded. How can you pretend to be so naïve? The only things that were protected during the invasion of Iraq were anything having to do with oil. Please Mr. Carroll, I have always enjoyed reading your view on differing matters but this is the first time I'm aware of that you are ignoring some truths here.
Hannah Arendt posits that there are two types of violence. That may be so. There's unmediated and pre-meditated murder. But in this empirical world, violence has only one meaning – to do harm to others.
What violence? We're the good guys, haven't you heard? We don't do violence - we do democracy, we do humanitarian, we do liberty, we do freedom, we do WMD removal - but violence?
Nope, not America. It's not our fault the rest of the world is so ungrateful...
James Carroll seems to be comparing the Iraqi indiscriminant violence with the "instrumental violence" of the US occupation, as if there is some justification to "instrumental violence". How pathetic. This kind of moral failure has its consequences, obviously.
Do you want universal justice and peace on earth? If so, you have to be very explicit and say very carefully that violence is NEVER justified except in self-defense against imminent attack.
Responsible principles regarding where to draw the line on violence are embedded in the laws that were broken by the criminal perpetrators of that war.
We have alternatives to violence. Does anyone remember? James Carroll seems to have forgotten. How did this happen, Mr. Carroll? And we're still waiting for the Boston Tea Party boycott against King George. Tick tock tick tock.
Strangely enough, I did not feel horror when I first learn about Virginia Tech and I still don't. Instead, I tried to put myself into that Korean boy's shoes and imagine him being totally rejected by almost everybody: girls and boys as well. I even venture to suggest his feelings about American soldiers with all their bravado and sense of superiority driving in and out of the base in the very center of Seoul, Imagine, how would we all be horrified if the same was happening in Midtown Manhattan. Then I think about all those killed on campus by loose individual, whose actions were certainly abnormal. And then I think that were those innocents were safer if they were drafted into army and were dispatched to Baghdad instead, as they most likely would if they did not buy their life in peace at the expense of somebody else's life?
Somebody on this site compared our situation on this planet with the rise and collapse of bacterial culture in the petry dish. Evolution of human culture might be not that much different from bacterial for any evolution is driven by the same algorithm. So concentration on such details like mental health of particular sociopath will miss the whole picture. Sociopaths are always present in each and every society as well as pathogens are always present in each and every living organism. Only when organism is weakened by age, malnutrition or other reason, pathogen will cause sickness. Only when people are too crowded, pathogens may cause epidemic. In short, only when conditions are right, pathogens and sociopaths create a problem.
So, instead of making correct diagnosis in order to plan for real treatment, our attention is diverted to apply next Tylenol to our societal problems. Cho Seung-Hui is no more responsible for Virginia Tech massacre than George W Bush for Baghdad one: both are mere symptoms of societal decease.
I fault Carroll for forgetting that many neocons have admitted that the attack on Iraq was in no small part a means of communication, and that the message was "All those who defy the will of the Bush administration, beware!"
Violence is the eruption of an out of control possessive ego; seeking to take recklessly that which it does not deserve or have a right to by force. An ego, unchecked by the inner guidance of wisdom and understanding, at the mercy of religious dogma and zealotry, is a ship without a compass.
The Roman emperor Caligula's, affectionately know to his mother as Little Boots, reckless ego was multiplied by his delusional claim to divinity, insisting that his horse be allowed a seat at the Senate meetings.
Today, they are bombing for Jesus!
Peace, Best Wishes and Hope
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk1vEuhBuEU
Insanity is by definition a loss of control. The pre-meditated mass murder by governments is a crime by those in control. It can and must be prevented. The perpetrators and those complicit can and must be held accoutable.
I believe insanity is the inability to distinguish fantasy from reality. Ronald Reagan continually compared political problems with roles he had played in movies.
George lives in a fantasy world even more profound (playing dress-up on the deck of an aircraft carrier to announce the end of the war that is worse now than ever). I have never seen a man more easily confused.
The definition "compel the opponent to do as we wish" is adequate if and only if two of the terms themselves can be defined. "Compel" is pretty straightforward, but we don't really know who the "opponent" is and we don't know quite what we "wish" for them to do. We don't have a case of insanity here so much as horribly muddled thinking and an huge failure of the intellect.
Nonetheless, I can't help think Nietzche above is correct about our fearless leader's tenuous grip on reality.
This cartoon tells why:
http://isbushantichrist.blogspot.com/