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After tedious preparation we are now ready to face some visible manifestations of the problem. Those elements of the problem that cause us suffering and despair will now take the central position in this discussion. It is necessary to adequately prepare the mind for engagement with such emotional subjects with an affirmed commitment to testing the hypothesis within the hypothetical framework of the problem. In this way one avoids the distraction that can occur when facing the multi-faceted topography of the threat by reinforcing the solidity of one’s primary purpose; to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Later we will refer to this as maintaining the object. For the purposes of clarity the object we are maintaining is the simplicity of the problem and its correlation with inequity and the hypothesis is that progress is possible.
One of the most visible expressions of inequality is brutality or violence. To take advantage of another’s weakness by virtue of the social construct is cruel and can often escalate into violence and brutality. To exploit the inequality of nature is a primitive instinct. I have argued, and will continue to argue tirelessly, that the abuse of one’s own species does not, in any way, benefit the species or the individual. So to explain violence and brutality I will not present it functionally or structurally, searching for some payoff to behavior. Rather, I will address acts of violence as dysfunction, further evidence of the threatening affects of social inequality. I assume therefore that violence is a form of mental illness, especially when it is habitual. Working toward destruction, whether it be the destruction of others or of oneself, is a psychologically unsound activity. There is in violence and brutality a type of frustration of the perpetrator, commonly found in sufferers of addiction, where the sufferer is trapped in a moral downward spiral. Escape is bound on all sides by ever-escalating levels of shame. Most adults find, in order to live sanely in addictively violent surroundings, that they must develop certain radical forms of tolerance and compassion. These resultant paradigms help individuals cope in an environment of organized cruelty.
Most often the process by which we develop these paradigms includes an encouraged analysis of the perpetrator’s motivation for the purposes of gaining understanding and compassion. As I processed the violence inflicted upon me during my childhood I was led to answer the why’s and how’s of each circumstance. I estimated, as was suggested, that similar cruelties and abuses were inflicted upon these perpetrators. I used these hypotheses to nurture forgiveness. It was within the construct of forgiveness that I was first able to develop a detached relationship with the violent forces that operate in our society. Many who experience this, the purity of forgiveness and absolution, are content with this as the destination of their journey; so powerful is the feeling of freedom from resentment. Most assume that further investigation is without purpose; afraid that focusing on these traumas might threaten the lightness of a forgiving spirit. However, what if these changes in perspective allow for a new understanding of the original stimuli. Certainly, it is important to view our abusers as having motives that are not related to us so that we can empathize somewhat with the frustration that caused them to inflict the pain that we are grappling with. But, what if our understanding of the original experience undergoes some kind of transformation after the forgiveness has come into the foreground of consciousness? If that does in fact occur our contentment with the joyful freedom of absolution would threaten to distract us from double-checking the results against the original hypothesis. Perhaps what most are experiencing in their search for coping mechanisms are false positives.
What if, after forgiving the perpetrators in our lives and in our world, we ask ourselves further, with the objectivity of detachment, what it was that drove these men and women to inflict such pain. Might this process grant us a purer variety of evidence in our efforts at higher understanding since we are free from emotional distortion of events? It is essential to our exercise of reason that we practice some redundancy and doubt so that the driving force of our understanding remains true.
Some might say that going back into the traumas that caused my neuroses is a form of ingratitude. They might also say that to re-investigate is to undermine the power of forgiveness. I will be accused by some of lacking faith. However, the proof is in the pudding. When viewing old experiences with new eyes one can gain greater insights into the nature of reality. But more importantly, to reissue our attention to these conflicts is to seek the source of the problem. To seek that source is to expand our exercise of forgiveness. The more I look for the structural causes of my abuse and work to correct them, the more I work to uplift my abusers. It is an act of love to look objectively at our enemies and seek solutions to their problems. A simpler way of expressing this, for those unable to embrace romantic approaches to violent experiences, is that the objectivity gained in compassionate forgiveness allows the serious mind to dig deep into the root of experience for higher yields of knowledge or wisdom.
The Argument
I would not waste your time or mine by restating the obvious. What is being constructed in this chapter is not another plea for the recognition of the immorality of violence. I assume that to be a given. As I talk about places where violence and brutality are learned I am not claiming that these tendencies originate there. The argument that is being built with the accumulation of the following ideas is that violence and brutality have forms of expression and more importantly vehicles of promotion. That is what is meant by the advertisement of brutality. Warfare, murder and destructive living find their way into our lives as a result of a type of advertisement, the repetitive barrage of imagery and thematic defense. Just as soap finds its way into our homes via the commercial expression of its value, so too do destructive things have an artistic form of representation. The seduction of violence is its relative ease. It is a more time-efficient means of conflict resolution than loving compromise and its efficiency, in our capitalist society, is exploited toward specific ends, already alluded to in our discussions of wealth and power. This short-term approach to tension resolution has catastrophic affects on us as a species since it works against our social contract. The advertisement and promotion of violence takes place in the media, in the schools, in literature, film and the arts, all of the cultural organs that reflect a society’s spiritual health. As the ease of reactionary living is expressed so it is also ingested, thus is the nature of an idea’s life force.
Before I move on to a discussion of violence in the classroom I wish to continue this discussion on the nature of ideas in order to illustrate more clearly how institutions can degrade. Just as matter survives, exists until acted upon by some force so too do ideas struggle for survival. Ideas, feelings, notions, all nouns are innately striving to not only survive and continue to exist, but they also struggle to grow. Ideas especially have a life-like quality to them, feeding off of the energy and effort of the human beings within which they exist. They are symbiotic or parasitic entities like virus’s, bacteria or enzymes, sometimes helpful to the life of the host, sometimes fatal. And so all human institutions are susceptible to an overgrowth or bloom of singular ideas such as greed, rage or ignorance. It is important to note that other ideas such as community, love and peace can be cultivated in similar ways. Because of the life-like quality of ideas sometimes the overgrowth happens so slowly that the obscuring of essential elements goes unnoticed.
The Classroom
The corruption found in the modern American classroom is due to an overgrowth of certain destructive ideas. Being a structural problem that is mostly unconscious a work such as this must exist written by someone sensitive to undue suffering and apathy. It is consistent with the argument that most officiates of contemporary modes of thinking will not know the damage that they are helping to foster and therefore will reject these notions hoping to hold onto tradition, what I might call a fatal form of nostalgia. They are patriots of long-dead dissent. I strongly encourage you to look deeply at the following themes to be found in American historical thinking and ask yourself if it leans in one of two directions; love or hate.
Before I move onto that discussion let me first address quickly the other forms of knowledge for what is found in history as clear evidence of the moral direction of our society can also be found in the sciences, mathematics and the arts. However, what is most insidious about modern education is that these fields are taught mostly as crafts to be used in industry toward specific aims. Very little philosophical background is provided that would imply the mystery of the cosmos, the abstraction of math or the infinite potential of creative intuition. The collision of science and religion is only apparent when one begins to address some of the existential aspects of mathematical thinking, evolutionary theory and the creative urge. It is this collision that our society is working day after day to avoid. Teachers strip the awe so completely away from the arts and sciences that most of us experience these things as dry, useless and impractical topics. They do this mostly because of their inability to maintain control of large numbers of children while addressing such loaded and subtle topics. The structure of the modern classroom is designed to squelch inspiration in the service ofobedience. The great majority of paid teachers are still struggling to come to terms personally with these issues and the relationship of those questions to their chosen field. Specialization also plays its role in limiting a student’s ability to experiment in any rich way; it is this confinement of the arts and sciences that has turned them into crafts. Those that, in light of all these limitations, choose to maintain their involvement with the arts and sciences often exhibit an almost autistic relationship with it finding poetry in minutiae. Now I will discuss modern historical thinking and how that serves as the answer to children’s natural questions concerning life’s purpose.
Our shared story
One of the only places where a student finds some kind of wholeness is in the history classroom, where all of these subjects are so intertwined that the teacher is bound to address some aspects of the spirit. History has always been a practice of tradition. Many have tried to give it a more scientific quality, incorporating sociological approaches, anthropology and psychology. However, the general themes are often considered sacrosanct and immovable as the backdrops for the exercise of these analytical arts.
The story I remember of human history is a recollection of wars and territorial disputes. The victories were often painted as a picture where progress is born through the birth canal of bloody conflict. The resolution of most crises in history is found in violent exchange of power. The brutal execution of power is central to the rhythm of our shared history. That execution of power, being so closely tied to progress, receives a type of advertisement or promotion by virtue of this form of instruction that one might claim acts as a morality tale. However, proof of any causality existing between warfare and progress has yet to be found. What is being taught dogmatically in the classroom as a subtext for every historical picture is merely a theory of origin and its capital position, mere theory, is what I am arguing against. There are some, like myself, who might argue that violence and brutality are the biggest obstacles to progress, that warfare and aggression work against our natural tendencies for learning and generosity. A scientific history of cooperation and peace might demand at least half of the airtime to be found in children’s history lessons whereby they would learn how, in spite of warfare and violence, human beings learned how to not only cope but to thrive and rejoice in brotherhood. I find that the theory of cooperation, egalitarianism and pacifism are equally viable theories and their subjugation in the classroom is evidence of insidious bias. Like I said, this bias might not be conscious but regardless of this, it has moral consequences, the affects of which are beyond our comprehension.
The repetitive barrage of warfare upon the imagination with its subsequent visualization of violence and brutality are traumatizing to a young mind, so much so that to make an argument such as mine requires mammoth efforts to break the barriers to progress and rational thinking.
What is it that is being advertised? The suggestion that violence is innate to human beings, that it is an inescapable, unmanageable aspect of our character – that is being suggested. Furthermore, it is implied that to live comfortably in the world one must be strong, defend his/her interests with a willingness to die at the hands of an enemy. Has this been proven? Is it merely a coincidence to find this kind of perspective in a capitalist republic? There is a religious aspect to this understanding of history, a fervor that some might label as fanatical.
I believe so strongly in the truth and power of pacifist egalitarian theory that I would be willing to give up half of the class to warfare history, but not more than half. More than half implies that we as a society have decided that one theory swings more closely to the truth and I find no evidence to suggest that. As I am arguing that our survival depends upon change in this direction I do not think that the relationship between these two theories is academic. The consequences of continuing to support the traditions of my society, in regards to education, are dire. Let these two theories of history engage with one another. Let us acknowledge the difference if only to allow children to make an informed choice. It is the lack of this choice that I wish to draw your attention to in my efforts to highlight the relationship between violence and inequity. The bias is a clear indication that education, as an institution, is corrupted, subjectively serving our self-destructive tendencies toward polarization.
Am I wrong to see schooling as one of the sources for the violence and brutality that I experienced? Most would agree that a period of 12 years in the life of a child where he/she receives about 40 mandatory hours of training per week is not a variable to be ignored. Further, a heightened concentration of competition combined with a historical perspective centered on warfare creates the type of environment where one might suspect brutality and violence to be born.
History is, of course, peppered with the occasional flavor of peace and true progress. These moments are usually due to the work of a great teacher, leader or thinker that had the combination of wisdom and courage that led to a communal inspiration toward love and cooperation. It is obligatory in the process of one’s socialization, thankfully, to take time our youth to study these types of human beings. The public school system, charged with the task of educating our nation’s youth, are bound by tradition to address this part of a child’s education. As I argue for the acknowledgment of the promotional power of the public school system I am suggesting that when great teachers of love and understanding are addressed that certain directions can be taken in that presentation that might undermine the value of this obligation. The very heart of the message that these great thinkers of history gave to us is often perverted, subjugated for the further promotion of violence and brutality. This is done by over-emphasizing the violent ends that have been met in the service of progress rather than engaging, in any meaningful way, with the processes by which an individual achieves such personal fortitude.
The well-intentioned heralds of this type of education will argue that the brutal death of a great teacher is central to the teaching; that it serves to highlight their courage and willingness to do the right thing. I argue here that their greatest lesson is not to be found in how they died but in how they avoided death for so long, in their survival, in their life. The avoidance of death at the hands of evil gets very little focus in the classroom. Rather we study again and again the victory of evil, the destruction of light. What would it look like if we began to study those that survived the social crises, how they lived peacefully with the world, yet in confrontation with it? In the modern classroom, the history of peace and human harmony is a repetitive tragic tale of perpetual martyrdom with no hope, no internalization, and no suggestive direction. It is a requiem for the divine spirit. It is, yet again, an advertisement of brutality, a trauma for the imagination.
While the instructors of the public school system hold these dead idols up to the class as examples of courage they fail to indicate what it is that they were courageous in doing. They take it for granted that the students will assume “it” to be the right thing at the same time excusing themselves from teaching what the right thing is. The over-emphasis of martyrdom is avoidance of that part of the story where great efforts were made to avoid the bitter end. Preparation for death gets no promotion. Rather, the brutal reward for egalitarian leadership takes center stage. The message, it seems, is that to disrupt the system you must be willing to be brutally murdered. That message is not without bias. In fact, one might see it as a threat, an advertisement of the power that holds us all down. In that way the schools become the instruments of inequity’s expression. Who is out there that says survive, thrive and also rebel against injustice?
Other Forums for the Advertisement of Brutality
Certainly when one is looking for a source for the violence and brutality to be found in one’s community, the public school system seems, after the previous segment, to be a viable candidate. But when one is constructing a science that seeks to get to the root of things, in order to work toward a comprehensive solution, they cannot allow themselves to be satisfied finding one source. If they do, if they commit their lives to changing the school system, they would be avoiding an important question. Is the school system receiving help from other agencies in this promotional effort? Is our battle against inequity to be found on many fronts? If so, if other entities are affecting young minds, then they might spring from another common source, being branches of a common root. That root is inequality, as we have already discussed. Material differentiation is the foundation on top of which the house of bloodshed and suffering is built. I am merely describing a few of its walls, as you might encounter them on your quest toward progress and it will be helpful to understand their familial structure so that you do not fall victim to the belief that any one of these elements is responsible for the other. They meet at their corners.
As I took myself away from the school system I asked myself what children were doing when not at school. Television is the most common activity outside school along with the ever-increasing influence of the internet. Visual media is a gargantuan entity in the lives of children concurrent with the dramatic decrease of community-based activities. Whether or not one caused the other is not my interest right now, as I am engaged in a discussion of content. I have already argued that violent imagery can have a traumatic affect on the young mind. Most simply stated, the great majority of children in our culture learn at a very young age that it is possible for them to be destroyed by one of their fellow human beings. That is a profound thing. Murder is advertised to them very early as a reality. Without such promotion we might ask ourselves how a child would discover such an idea; perhaps in the childish tendency toward killing bugs or animals. But we are unable to tell if that tendency is natural or if it is merely an expression of the brutality that has already taken root.
Movies, comic books, the music industry, television are all filled with stories of warfare, gang violence, domestic homicide, serial killers, cop brutality, mass destruction, trauma after trauma is how a young human being is welcomed to God’s earth. One wonders if there are better ways to provide entry into this world.
The public school system was addressed because they have an explicit purpose. And in pursuing that purpose they must provide a framework whereby they can defend the value of what is being taught in terms of living happily in the world. The utter lack of enlightenment to be found among the masses makes the schools and easy target of criticism as culprits in the brutalizing of our culture. However, when one looks at the time people spend away from school we are faced with the problem of freewill, as much of what is consumed is done so under the context of choice. In the next chapter I will discuss those choices and how they relate to the dysfunctional aspects of violence and brutality. In this way I hope to amalgamate this theory, the advertisement of violence and brutality, considering these institutions, education and the media as the two arms of propaganda that cultivate the polarization of human inequity.
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