Sherry Darling
New Yorker
I read an amazing book last term called Violence by Dr. James Gilligan (MD, not PhD). He was for much of his career the director of mental health for the MA prison system, and spent his career working with violent men who had committed the worst imaginable types of crimes--rape, muder, mutilation. You get the picture, and if you don't, see "Silence of the Lambs". He kept asking WHY? Why do men (and it was 99.9% of the time men) do this? And why so much more in America than in any other developed nation in the world? I was fascinated by his thoughts on violence, and so I'm sharing them with ya'll to discuss?
A few quotes:
Violence, he argues, is a search for justice (however ineffective, irrational): “All violence is an attempt to achieve justice” (11)
”’Condemning’ violence is as irrelevant as it would be to ‘condemn’ cancer or heart disease” (25) This is because determining if the crime was "right" or "wrong" is useless. Of course it's wrong. The useful question, WHY did it happen and how to prevent it.
“I am convinced that violent behavior, even at its most apparently senseless, incomprehensible, and psychotic, is an understandable response to an identifiable, specifiable set of conditions; and that even when it seems motivated by “rational” self-interest, it is the end product of a series of irrational, self-destructive, and unconscious motives that can be studied, identified and understood” (102)
›”Downward social mobility, unemployment, and homelessness are among the most potent stimuli of shame, and are a key to the politics of violence” (67)
›“….a perceived threat to the integrity of a person’s culture is perceived as a threat to the integrity and survival of the individual’s personality or character, and to the viability of one’s ethical value system which is a central and essential component of both personality and culture, and is what most intimately links the self and its culture, the culture and its selves. That is why the death of one’s culture is tantamount to the death of one’s self” (97)
“If one adds to all those the deaths cause by structural violence…which produces far more deaths than all of the previously mentioned categories combined, one begins to see why any theory of violence, if it is to deal at all with the medical reality involved, cannot limit itself to the subject matter of criminology” (101) (FYI, structural violence is, for example, when a kid somewhere dies, but there was food to feed him. It results from unjust economic systems.)
“Violence is primarily men’s work; it is carried out more frequently against men, and it is about the maintenance of ‘manhood’….The role of women has often been that of trying to restrain all this violence of males against males” (16-17)
And finally, Gilligan writes that violence is higher in America than other industrialized nations due to it's shaming economic conditions, (remember, for him, shame is THE trigger for violence, and I agree) which are maintained by the ruling elite who actually NEED the violence in our society to maintain the status quo and keep the middle class afraid of the (naturally criminal) lower class
"…by lulling the middle class into accepting its subordination, and exploitation by the upper class, by giving the middle class a class to subordinate itself (the lower class) which it can exploit, and to whom it can feel superior, thus distracting the middle class from the resentment it might otherwise feel and express toward the upper class” (185).
(This last quote is taken from a whole chapter in which he outlines--and supports well--his arguement but I ain't typing all that. I can find a few more quotes on the economic part of his arguement if ya'll would like.)
Ok, so this is a lot of homework. That's enough for now. Discuss.
A few quotes:
Violence, he argues, is a search for justice (however ineffective, irrational): “All violence is an attempt to achieve justice” (11)
”’Condemning’ violence is as irrelevant as it would be to ‘condemn’ cancer or heart disease” (25) This is because determining if the crime was "right" or "wrong" is useless. Of course it's wrong. The useful question, WHY did it happen and how to prevent it.
“I am convinced that violent behavior, even at its most apparently senseless, incomprehensible, and psychotic, is an understandable response to an identifiable, specifiable set of conditions; and that even when it seems motivated by “rational” self-interest, it is the end product of a series of irrational, self-destructive, and unconscious motives that can be studied, identified and understood” (102)
›”Downward social mobility, unemployment, and homelessness are among the most potent stimuli of shame, and are a key to the politics of violence” (67)
›“….a perceived threat to the integrity of a person’s culture is perceived as a threat to the integrity and survival of the individual’s personality or character, and to the viability of one’s ethical value system which is a central and essential component of both personality and culture, and is what most intimately links the self and its culture, the culture and its selves. That is why the death of one’s culture is tantamount to the death of one’s self” (97)
“If one adds to all those the deaths cause by structural violence…which produces far more deaths than all of the previously mentioned categories combined, one begins to see why any theory of violence, if it is to deal at all with the medical reality involved, cannot limit itself to the subject matter of criminology” (101) (FYI, structural violence is, for example, when a kid somewhere dies, but there was food to feed him. It results from unjust economic systems.)
“Violence is primarily men’s work; it is carried out more frequently against men, and it is about the maintenance of ‘manhood’….The role of women has often been that of trying to restrain all this violence of males against males” (16-17)
And finally, Gilligan writes that violence is higher in America than other industrialized nations due to it's shaming economic conditions, (remember, for him, shame is THE trigger for violence, and I agree) which are maintained by the ruling elite who actually NEED the violence in our society to maintain the status quo and keep the middle class afraid of the (naturally criminal) lower class
"…by lulling the middle class into accepting its subordination, and exploitation by the upper class, by giving the middle class a class to subordinate itself (the lower class) which it can exploit, and to whom it can feel superior, thus distracting the middle class from the resentment it might otherwise feel and express toward the upper class” (185).
(This last quote is taken from a whole chapter in which he outlines--and supports well--his arguement but I ain't typing all that. I can find a few more quotes on the economic part of his arguement if ya'll would like.)
Ok, so this is a lot of homework. That's enough for now. Discuss.
