I'm sure for most people the thought of violence to advocate social change is as alien as it is reprehensible, and I include myself among that group; but that does not mean I can't see how it could happen.
Have you ever been in a restaurant trying to get service and the waitress seems to be ignoring you? You've done everything possible to catch her eye save for standing up and shouting, and that begins to seem like a perfectly reasonable choice no matter what decorum or social mores say. In fact, sending up a flare might all of a sudden look good.
Now suppose that, day in and day out, you work to try and relieve poverty and crime in a poor neighbourhood. Day after day you beat your head against the door of politicians and bureaucrats who don't do anything. For the most part they even deny there is anything wrong in world. Nobody is willing to meet your eye and does their best to ignore you and the problems you want to tell them about.
You try screaming and shouting and letter writing campaigns, and still another child joins a gang instead of going to school, another person dies of a drug overdose, and another single mother has to choose between feeding her child or paying to keep the electricity on in her apartment.
And nobody listens.
How big a noise do you have to make to get anybody's attention? What will it take to make people hear the information you have? There are people eating dog food while others pay three million dollars on interior design and nobody seems to think there's anything wrong.
What does it take to be noticed? How can you get past the I-Pods and cell phones to make them aware? The government uses violence when they want to solve things: the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, The War on Terror, The War on Drugs, and capital punishment is how they answer their need to be heard. So why not follow their example?
Article comments
1 - Elvira Black
Great piece, Richard. This puts me in mind of a book called "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin deBecker (if memory serves)--one of the leading experts in stalkers, serial killers, et. al. In order for him to get inside the mind of even the most depraved criminal, he has to be able to imagine the world through the killer's eyes. This kind of empathy, if you will, is a positive force, though it "embraces" an evil one.
The author also challenges readers to think of the most horrible things one person could do to another--and then says if you can imagine it, there is someone out there who has done it--and worse. The point being we all have the capacity to think violent thoughts, as well as commit therm--but only some of us have the empathy and insight to turn that terrible knowledge into something constructive and positive--despite the horrific frustrations.