We Get What We Prepare For

We prepare for violence and war as responses to violence and war.

We don’t prepare for peace.

Is it any mystery, then, that violence is increasing and peace is decreasing?

As we prepare for more violent responses to violent actions, the level of violence reliably increases as the level of peace reliably decreases.

How could we prepare for peace?

Technical Advances Intensify Violence

Our societies produce the technology and machinery for violence in a way and at a level that goes almost beyond comprehension.  Each new mastery of technology leads to more powerful weapons and a corresponding increase in violence.

Our mastery of metalworking produced improved farming tools – and swords and armor.

Our mastery of internal combustion led to tractors on farms and airplanes for transportation and exploration – and fighter planes, bombers, tanks, and warships on battle fronts.

Our mastery of computing leads to increased productivity in the workplace – and to remotely controlled drone weapons that kill from across the planet.

Nuclear energy can power a city – or destroy it.

Every side produces more and more weapons, and more and more powerful weapons.

After spending all that money for weapons, why would anyone let them sit around unused?

If there is a weapon delivery system hanging over the mantle, it will go off before the end of the story.  This seems to be true in life as well as in fiction.

Violence is a Natural Response; Our Culture Encourages Violence

We seem to be hard-wired for violence.

When we get hit, adrenaline dumps into our system and we are ready to hit back (or run away).

Currently our entertainment conditions us over and over and over to hit back.  To hit back with superiority.

Superior violent responses are preeminently shown to be supremely satisfying.

That is what we want.

It is so good to hit back really hard.  So hard that the other side should want to give up.  Just to roll over and give up.  Shock and awe, baby, shock and awe.

The Myth of Superior Violence

When someone hits us, hitting back seems so much like the right thing to do.  It makes so much sense.  It seems to be so reasonable.

Let’s show them that violence doesn’t pay, that it doesn’t work.  Let’s respond with superior violence in order to defeat and overwhelm these violent people.  That will teach them that violence doesn’t work out, that it doesn’t pay off.

Defeating someone by the use of superior violence doesn’t demonstrate that violent action doesn’t work, doesn’t pay off, doesn’t get me my way.

It just shows that inferior violence doesn’t work, pay off, or get me my way.

Your defeating me by the use of superior violence doesn’t make me think that violence doesn’t work.  It teaches me that superior violence wins the day.

Now what do I want?

Peace?

No.

I want superior violence, just like you had. I want to rule the day, just like you did, through superior violence.

If I can’t beat you head to head, toe to toe, I won’t give up fighting.  I will try hitting you from the side (asymmetrical warfare) where you won’t expect it.  That’s what the American patriots did.  That’s what Al Qeda and the Taliban are doing right now.  If someone forces us to say “Uncle” through superior force, we don’t give up.  After we say “Uncle” we look for ways to defeat them other than facing their superior force head on.  It is a natural human response.

The police try to overrule criminals by having superior strength and numbers and weapons.  So what have criminals done?  They buy the most powerful weapons they can.  The police scramble to catch up.  In more and more cases the military is being called in because the police are outgunned.  What will this lead to?  The criminals giving up?  No.  It will lead to the criminals gearing up to match the military.  The news reports that the more successful drug gangs in Mexico hire former members of the military special forces.

It is so very contrary to the human spirit to accept anything that is forced on us.

A man convinced against his will remains unconvinced still.

Superior violence might force a person or a group of people to accept what someone else wants . . . for a time.  Their spirit will continually work against the ones imposing their will.

Today that work seems to express itself almost exclusively in violence.

Asymmetrical warfare is the response of a people who will not be subjugated against their wills in the face of superior firepower.

Asymmetrical warfare undermines the principle of “Peace through superior firepower.”

Asymmetrical warfare is not more admirable than is superior firepower.  It is the same response with a different style – and it leads to the same response in return.

Violence leads to more violence.

While superior violence may, from time to time, issue a pause in violence before violence resumes, asymmetrical warfare leaves no pause.

We want more than a pause in violence.

We want violence to stop.

Building more and better weapons only necessarily  increases violence because they are, by nature, violent themselves, which increases violence, and they prompt violent responses.

So that is not the answer.

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This image is one of the woodcuts from the Bartoli book on surveying that we are using for illustrations in Violence or Peace.

It shows a man in a tower sighting a reading from a surveying instrument.

We would have to be able to read the Italian text from the book to know why. 🙂