Why Violence? Part I

September 11, 1966
Plainfield

Why Violence? Part I

Do you know any poet who could write today, "God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world?" The bloody violence of this summer of discontent cannot be made glorious by mild remedies or bland hopes that the progress of mankind is onward and upward forever. Of course, violence always has been part of the human story. But if my own feelings are any indication, and if the fears of many others are at all representative, we should seek understanding of the increasing violence by human persons to other human persons.

When violent deaths occur to eight nurses in Chicago or fifteen persons in Austin, Texas, the emotional impact is more disturbing than many are willing to admit. In Dayton, Ohio, an innocent man, sweeping his sidewalk was killed by a shotgun blast from an automobile; street troubles erupt; the National Guard moves in. Did the white men in that automobile kill out of irrational, murderous, unplanned impulse or did they anticipate that the act would have riotous consequences? Not many months ago, a
State Trooper was wantonly killed on the N J Turnpike; a few days ago a policeman killed in Fort Lee; this week the head of a government assassinated. Read any newspaper, dial any news broadcast and supply other instances. Why do human beings strike out so violently, murderously against others, against themselves?

To say that our age may anticipate marvelous advances for the human family, if the human family can survive its own violence, is to repeat a cliché. But the formidable problem strains the mind and tests the values of anyone who thinks on these things.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, w» were all going direct the other way...."

When Dickens wrote that now famous first line of A TALE OF TWO CITIES, he was writing the impressions of his times as he perceived them. His view was neither fully optimistic nor wholly pessimistic. But we would have to stretch today to mix that amount of optimism into any appraisal of our times. We seem to be able to find workable formulas for almost all problems except decent human survival and the practical achievement of our boasted national ideals.

Almost a year ago, when the late Ed Powell and I were talking, he gave me some notes of his on the subject, "Why Violence?" together with an article from the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. His comments led me to accumulate other materials throughout the year. Then this summer’s lightning strokes of violence led to my announcing this subject for today. In putting together notes and ideas, because there are differing factors and circumstances involved when searching for causes and consequences of such violence to individuals as the nurses in Chicago, the people on the campus at Austin, and the man on the sidewalk in Dayton, when compared to the war in Vietnam and other violence between notions that I must divide the subject into two presentations. The second section will be an attempt to deal with international conflict and violence. This will be prepared for presentation in a few weeks.

However, because this is my last opportunity before the primary, next Tuesday, the 13th, to announce a moral conviction, which also happens to point to political decision, I must again avow my conviction that our national course of war and escalation in Vietnam is and has been wrong. I know of nothing that I said in my sermon of May 15 that has been demonstrated to be false. (Some copies are still available at the literature rack.) David Frost is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Senate. I shall vote for him. His central motive and the paramount issue is the need for much more discussion and wider participation by the people to bring proper influence on Congress and President to de-escalate the war and bring peace. If you can vote in the primary, I plead with you to consider seriously how important your vote for David Frost may be in helping communicate the vast doubts that I believe many persons have about present official foreign policy.

Furthermore, [in] the nature of the struggle for equal opportunity for all persons, what we call the "civil rights struggle," new language is emerging, "power." Certainly it deserves a more closely-focused view in measuring whether we are in a period of either quickening morality or deepening morass. This too is a subject in itself which will receive early attention.

Why violence? Violence may be defined as the "exercise of physical force so as to inflict injury on or damage to persons or property owned by another."

Is there something about people in these times that pushes some persons to irrational, meaningless killing? The accused killer of the eight nurses in Chicago, Richard Speck, has tattooed on his arm the words, "born to raise hell." Is this ominous omen of his destiny representative of human nature generally?

In the agonized speculation about the inner turmoil that motivated Charles Whitman to kill 15 persons and wound many more in Austin, there was considerable talk about the existence of a brain tumor. Because this brain tumor exerted some abnormal effect – pain, distortion of values, or what have you – some raised the question that the cause for Whitman's spasm of slaughter was physical. Much more frequent exposures of all of us to the batteries of tests which might disclose brain tumors would be beneficial, although the logistics of medical feasibility would seem to be too formidable for our culture. Most of us never are examined for possible brain tumors unless some indicative symptoms point the way. Furthermore, many, many unfortunate persons are afflicted with brain tumors, but never become violent killers.

Other explanations of violence have been advanced – climate, for example. Some persons have worried about the "long, hot summers," particularly in the steaming cities, and connected the incidents of violence to the oppressive heat that frays nerves and increases frustration to the point where feelings explode in violence. But the explanation is not good enough. For how does one account for the millions of persons confined to dead-end ghettos and oppressed by summer heat who do NOT riot?

Again and again, one hears another explanations: We live in a culture which continuously portrays violence, encourages aggression and cultivates violent behavior. Did you hear about the little boy who was watching a Western movie on TV? His mother was known for her strong opposition to drinking. She entered the room at the moment the TV hero was on his way into a saloon. The little boy said, "Don't worry, Mom, he isn't going to drink anything. He's just going in there to kill a man."

[Are these] the cultural patterns we teach through the most effective teaching machine man has devised? Many thoughtful people are worried about the cultural patterns that form because of the appetite which has been created for situations in which the ultimate problems are solved by the heroic gunfighter, the hard-fisted private eye or the suavely brutal secret agent. One of the runaway bestsellers in recent months has been Truman Capote's retelling of the shocking murder of the members of the Clutter family, IN COLD BLOOD. It seems to me that one of the points this skilled writer gets across is that the Clutter family were among the least likely people to be murdered, as little destined to be the victims of such a horrible crime as your family or my family. If it is so that one of the central disclosures that stands out in the novel, that not only the Clatter family but also their killers were examples of our living culture, then perhaps there is something terribly amiss in our ways of living. Maybe we’d better stop congratulating ourselves on our affluence and status and begin taking a more candid look at what is happening in our culture.

But to look for the explanation of violence only in cultural patterns would be to take a too limited view of why there is violence.

In THE TEMPEST, Shakespeare has the innocent Miranda say to her father when the shipwrecked survivors come to the mysterious island,

"How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world
That has such people in't."

And Prospero, her father, out of his experience with man's falsity, replies “’Tis new to thee."

To understand the violence of human beings, we must be more candid about the human condition than we liberals are sometimes prone to be.

The novelist, Joseph Conrad, once used a haunting metaphor, "heart of darkness" to describe the submerged feelings that Freud named the Id. Below the consciousness there are forces that can break through our sophisticated controls or conscience causing our behavior to regress to a time when there were no political institutions or moral taboos or religious commandments to form acceptable ways of behaving socially. Whether these buried feelings which are usually, but not always under control, are described as Freudian, [poetic, or religious, it] should not prevent recognition that the feelings exist; the difficulties of solving the problems these subconscious feelings create should not deter us from acquiring as much understanding as it is possible to achieve.

In seeking understanding of the human condition, I am limited in offering comprehensive recommendations because I am not a specialized professional in any one field in the science of human behavior, whether anthropologist, psychologist, biologist, Freudian psycho-analysis, or what have you. On the other hand, just as you, as a seeker for understanding, I can rove across several scientific disciplines, taking from each discoveries and theories which deepen my understanding of the urges, hopes, fears and guilt which make the human experience mysterious and disturbing as well as clear and wonderful.

Freud’s revolutionary discoveries about human nature are accepted, generally, although later students and specialists have proposed many refinements and modifications about the experiences we repress but cannot remove.

Freud proposed that the human being "has an active instinct for hatred and destruction." In one summary of his views, Freud distinguished between two kinds of instincts, those that conserve and unify, and secondly the instincts to destroy and kill. In other writings he described these basic forces as Love and Hate; and also as the Life Instinct and the Death instinct.

Recognizing that the specialized nature of Freudian psychoanalysis and the highly technical vocabulary used creates difficulty for the layman, it is helpful to recognize some of his foundation premises even at this level of presentation.

The second source of insight into the nature of aggressive violence is a direction I was led by Ed Powell’s notes and the article he gave me. In that course I came across the writing of Konrad Lorentz, one of the world’s famous naturalists. Translated into English in 1966, his book ON AGGRESSION is both amazing in its wealth of material and helpful in the illumination it reflects on the human condition.

Lorenz defines aggression as the "fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species." (ix)

In the incredible reaches of evolutionary time, the aggressive instinct serves the goals of natural selection because this process breeds the best fighters for combat with enemies of different species. Dr. Lorentz, through his prolonged studies, discovered that many birds and animals have found ritualized ways of behavior which prevents animals of the same species from killing each other, by diverting aggressive drives into channels harmless to members of the same species. One example (of many cited) is the behavior of wolf toward wolf. When two wolves fight, the combat stops short of death when the beaten wolf exposes his throat in submission, because the stronger wolf has a built-in behavior reflex which inhibits it from killing the defeated wolf. The fight is over, both survive.

But man is a mammal who attacks and kills his own species. To quote Dr. Lorentz,

“I believe – and human psychologists, particularly psychoanalysts, should test this – that present-day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive. It is more than probable that the evil effects of the human aggressive drives explained by Sigmund Freud as the result of a special death wish, simply derived from the fact that in pre-historic times intra-specific selection bred into man a measure of aggression drive for which in the social order of today he finds no adequate outlet."

And again,

"No selection pressure arose in the prehistory of mankind to breed inhibitory mechanisms preventing the killing of conspecifics until, all of a sudden, invention of artificial weapons upset the equilibrium of killing potential and social inhibitions." (241)

So in the mythology of mankind, Cain killed Abel. There were no built-in physical conditionings to halt the swing of Cain's arm. The myth makes more sense as a myth of natural selection than of theological illustration. Today with the weapons now stockpiled, all life on the planet could be wiped out in one tick of the evolutionary clock. Cartoon character Dennis the Menace appropriately characterized our devilish charms when with black eye and fists upraised, confronting a disheveled opponent, says to the peace-making teacher, "Okay, I'll shake hands and I'll be friends. But I’m STILL gonna knock his block off."

What can we do? Give up to quiet pessimism? One author does, writing, "man's capacity for making weapons, plus his inward propensity for fighting insures extinction."

Indulge in wishful thinking? There are lines from Homers Iliad, (18th book, quoted NY Times book review, 9/4/66),

"Why I wish that strife would vanish away from among gods and mortals,
And gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind,
That gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man’s heart
And becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping honey."

Harry Stack Sullivan, a modern psychiatrist wrote, "It is more comfortable to feel angry than anxious."

Just two or three days ago, a panel of psychologists and psychiatrists convened in Texas and discussed violence in general and the implications of the brain tumor found in Charles Whitman. Not only was the necessity urged for expanded research on the causes and consequences of violence but also the apparent increasing violence was noted as well as the possibility of de-conditioning military personnel who had been trained and conditioned for violence and aggression. Their concerns need to be supported by us when the opportunity comes to add our voices and support to programs which will deal with the causes of emotional disturbance and ways of restoring mental health.

Then there is an attitude toward other persons that is so basically involved in interpersonal violence that to be insensitive to it is to ignore one of the oldest insights of religion.

Consider that ancient myth of man's first murder. Cain killed his brother, Abel. Think of the reason for violence expressed in the old scripture, "In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard." A considerable amount of discussion can center around the cultural transitions implicit in the myth, but the explicit insight into human response should be obvious: "The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard." Perhaps primitive ideas of Cod may block our full understanding. So change the phrasing, "because Cain was not respected for himself and for what he could contribute to society he killed Abel."

Why violence? Then and now, the nature of the human personality demands respect. When respect is withheld there is a rupture of human controls. When dignity is subtracted from personality the result is violence. More frequently today it is violence inflicted upon the dispossessed, the disrespected, but the insight is still valid. The illustrations are so numerous from the treatment of the ill, the troubled, the disenfranchised, the oppressed that I need not cite chapter and verse. What can we do about violence? We can prevent much of it by extending to other persons the dignity, freedom and equal chance that should be a primary obligation on us all. In current issues of course, this translates into the need not to falter in the struggle to remove the barriers to an equal chance in housing, employment, education, political power.

One thing more, and this is another insight from Dr. Konrad Lorenz: Present-day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive... "Intra-specific selection bred into man a measure of aggression for which in the social order today he finds no adequate outlet." (243)

To recognize the need for outlets for our aggressive drives is to know ourselves. There are better ways of aggressive outlet than violent attack on other persons. At best, we can use that deep-seated energy as the power to activate us in morally responsible actions which do not do violence to persons, but act so as to solve problems.

A less superior way is to redirect the aggressive impulses to a substitute object (Lorenz, p. 278 ff). It is better to throw a dish against the wall that at your spouse. It is better to kick a rubbish can than a cocker spaniel. It is better to participate vicariously in the TV football game than throw stones at the new neighbor. Lorentz comments that participation in sports not only keeps people healthy, but also aids in "the cathartic discharge of aggressive urge." (p. 280) He makes an observation which although quite obvious had never registered on me, "The Olympic Games are virtually the only
occasion on which the anthem of one nation can be played without arousing any hostility against another.... The team spirit inherent in all international sport gives scope to a number of truly valuable patterns of social behavior which are essentially motivated by aggression and which, in all probability, evolved under the selective pressure of tribal warfare at the very dawn of culture." (281)

What can one say in conclusion when what has been advanced represents some amalgam of science, of guess, of religious prophecy? How [should we] confront the grim reality that the human venture may not endure as long as the dinosaur did? Last year I happened to run across a novel which never made any bestseller list, but which had great fascination for me. THE WINTER PEOPLE, by Gilbert Phelps, (Simon and Schuster, 1964) could be catalogued in differing ways. Depending on one’s inclinations, it could be termed anthropological science-fiction, archaeological fantasy or primitive- utopianism. But as I have re-read portions now and again, it seems more like a parable of the universal and persisting conditions of the human ventures with which we must all grapple. Better yet, it seems at times like sacred scripture in that it holds forth the best visions of an enlightened family of man while not overlooking the instincts and customs which seemingly condemn man to a deplorable, self-inflicted end. This story is also the transition to Part II, Why Violence, scheduled for a later date.

One gripping chapter deals with the way two tribes deal with their aggressive feelings in an isolated, remote land in the high Andes. When the time comes for war with the enemy – the enemy is the other tribe – the young men become instinctively charged with feeling of blood lust and hatred. This happens in both villages. Whereas the blacksmith had been fashioning hoes for cultivating; now he beats the metal in swords and axes for combat. The young men begin a prolonged, hypnotic war-dance, chanting, "kill, kill, kill; the other people are our enemies." The visitor from our culture tries to stop these steps toward war attempting persuasion and personal intercession, but his efforts are entirely fruitless.

The tribes confront each other at a point between the two villages on a plateau overlooking a pit. The two lines of warriors confront each other, working up a frenzy of hate as they brandish weapons, shouting curses and insults at each other. In the distance, as a bell tolls, warriors pair off approaching each other with uplifted swords. But before the blows fall, they turn, and side by side throw their weapons into the pit, which deep though it is, is almost half filled with swords, spears, axes, maces, layered so deeply that it is obvious that for many centuries the violent impulses of tribe against tribe have been expressed and ended this very way, without killing or blood-letting.

"They had learned to deal with hatred and violence without spilling A Single drop of blood." Whether we can learn this in time, the next few months or years will disclose.

The fictional tale may have correspondence to facts which are a ground for hope. It is of considerable significance to me that we are now in conflict with nations with whom we have not established a ritual violence that is bloodless. Certain historical events are significant. I have been thinking of the U.N. this way: Khrushchev pounding with his shoe; Stevenson launching his cutting replies; the Cuban delegate attacking us verbally. Ceremonial walkouts and unabashed invective have been patterns which have been deplored, but rather than deploring such acts we should have rejoiced that aggression found a bloodless expression. At present we have no way for a ritual violence with China, North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front. The issues for which so many thousands are dying or suffering are exceedingly difficult; but if we and the opponents had ways of expressive, aggressive gestures which killed no villagers or airmen or soldiers or marines, the whole course of events might turn to a different tack. We might be able to walk unharmed back to our villages after ritual violence and symbolic aggression had satisfied those built-in emotional demands which are still part of the emotional responsive structure of the human creature. Then perhaps we could talk together, plan together, hope together.