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Violence, Change and Growing Pains
Thomas Kuhn, the young mathematician from Harvard who first codified the idea of paradigm shifts, described some basic characteristics that I have found incredibly useful in my own growth as a human being. One of the most important is people tend to be very protective of the prevailing paradigm. Indeed, most people will go to enromous lengths to defend their existing set of underlying assumptions, because those assumptions define the framework of their existence. Very few are comforatable with the idea that everything they know just might be wrong.
Today we (think) we know that the world is round, that the sun is in the center of the solar system, that germs carry disease, etc., etc., But several hundred, or even thousands of years ago, people held different beliefs, and believed them with just as much conviction as we hold our own belief systems today.
12-step programs teach that an addict of any kind MUST reach the very bottom of his or her own particular barrel of woes -- that place from which there is truly "no place to go but up." The overwhelming weight of evidence must deny the prevailing paradigm (that drugs make you feel good and don't hurt anyone, or that you can 'handle" just one drink, or that one beating is ok, etc., etc.). We've learned, over the years, that cushioning anyone from that personal bottom does not in fact help them, but simply delays the inevitable, making it that much more difficult when it finally does arrive. We have a name for that now -- it's called codependence. Codependence is a concept that very much needs to be extrapolated onto the wider sociopolitical global arena.
We have also learned that there is enormous power in the bottom of that barrel. Sun Tzu said that "The warrior who is already dead upon entering the battlefield is invincible." He was right. When your underlying assumptions no-longer drive you, ANYTHING is possible.
We have to give up a lot to achieve a new paradigm. What we have, what we know, what we believe, simply has to stop working before people will look "outside the box" for new answers. The good news is that the answers are always there, just waiting for us. It's not the world or the universe around us that has to change. Kuhn made a big point of explaining that it is our PERCEPTION of reality that alters -- not reality itself. I had a professor who used to describe such moments as "blinding glimpses of the obvious" (Thanks Jeffrey!).
So what does that have to do with violence? Violence indicates that something drastic is changing and someone or someones don't want it to. They find their validation in the old way of doing and perceiving and do not realize that the new paradigm has room for them as well. Those comitting violent acts are often defending ways of life that are no longer supportable. The more they realize they are fighting a losing battle, the more desparate that battle becomes--the powerful final throws of a dying ideology.
From a microcosmic viewpoint, violence is awful and causes great pain to individuals. But from a macrocosmic perspective, violence foments change. We can continue on with spit-and-chewing gum solutions, glomming new laws and regulations on to already topheavy and cumbersome codes. We can treat the symptoms forever without addressing a single cause. But introducing, perceiving, really SHIFTING into a new paradigm -- that takes a lot more. Sometimes things just have to break before they can be replaced with something totally new and better.
posted by
frodo
on November 18, 2003 at 10:16 AM
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Incidentally...
...for what it's worth, Switzerland actually has a violence-filled history. A reading of its time line is shocking in its intensity, filled with "David vs. Golliath" fortitude.
posted by
arGee
on October 2, 2003 at 8:03 AM
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posted by
arGee
on October 2, 2003 at 8:00 AM
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Well, They Do Say...
...that in 500 years of chaos, uprisings, violence and coups, Italy produced the Cistine Chapel, Da Vinci, Michelangelo and some superb architecture.
On the other hand, in 500 years of calm and tranquility, with barely a murmur of civil unrest, Switzerland produced....the cuckoo clock.
D
posted by
DamonLeigh
on October 2, 2003 at 7:55 AM
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Yes (surprise, surprise) I agree with you
that underlying assumptions are dangerous things. I said something similar in a post I made earlier today about writing and have said it here before today. I think it is better to start researching and writing something as if from the position of knowing nothing about it.
posted by
beachbelle
on October 2, 2003 at 7:15 AM
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