Violence

There's no canonical definition of the word 'violence'. Most people only consider physical force attacking a human or animal being, and its verbal form 'violate' implies that the actor is taking the initiative. On the other hand, violation of some stupid law or privilege is hardly considered violence by anyone.

The Golden Rule says you must treat others like you want others to treat you. If you don't treat them so, you are being violent. (What if I'm a masochist?) However, the old testament says you must do this to your neighbour and not your enemy. This matters: the neighbour is an unknown neutral fellow citizen, not your mother-in-law. The love of your enemy was introduced by Jesus and his contemporaries: they were referring to the more or less average citizens of belligerent nations who really don't have much to do with the whole situation or they really don't know what they're doing. All this is common sense for the enlightened man of today. Back then it was not, but today it is. Today we need new wisdom in order to cope with our new problems, but the people often seem unwilling or unprepared to accept new stuff, so we try to play around with the old stuff instead, which is really quite uncool.

What is violence?

Alright, let's just come up with a definiton at last!  Violence is an act of limiting or destroying someone's options to pursue happiness (i.e. his freedom) against his will. This statement is general and reasonable enough to go on with it.

Violence is tragic. It is not a good thing in itself. It's a bad thing, but still the whole world is full of violence and we always find an excuse to create some more. It is our instinct to strive for the greatest amount of happiness, but the resources we employ in this pursuit are usually limited, so we have to compete for them. Thus comes violence...

Here I must definitely stop and talk about a very important misconception becoming wildly popular in our decadent society obsessed with individualism: the survival of the fittest. To put it short and concise, this is plain rubbish. For sure it's not a scientific observation, this I can tell you. It was introduced by a well-known ultra-libertarian asshole called Herbert Spencer after he finished reading Charles Darwin's book. Spencer was considered a biologist by his peers, but so was the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin who made some completely different statements after observing nature in Eastern Siberia, that is, not after reading a book. He observed that animals are just full of solidarity and altruism and their societies are always egalitarian. His findings were later vindicated by modern science.

So there is solidarity and altruism, but still there's a competition for resources which is not abolished but only mitigated and regulated by these things. We usually strive for the control of resources and not the resources themselves, so we can decide what to give and what to take. This is why rich people want to do charity instead of paying taxes. They just want to go back to the good old days of feudalism. And there is also the factor of submission to the control of others which is a very important and not always undesirable factor. You can figure that someone has to lead your group and you are not the fittest for the job, so you leave it to someone you can trust.


Non-violence vs Pacifism

It is important to distinguish non-violence as a means from non-violence as an end. The former is sometimes called active non-violence, the latter is simply called pacifism. Active non-violence does not deny the merits of violence but it highlights the merits of non-violent direct action, including blockades and sabotage. There can be a definition of violence vs non-violence which is philosophically sound and it permits these two things. Active non-violence is basically okay.

Pacifism, on the other hand, is not!

The idea of pacifism is usually based on the assumption that violence is caused by violence. It is always regarded as a kind of distinct satanic substance which keeps boiling in our hearts and infesting other people. This metaphor is just a piece of nonsense. Come on! It's not that some dudes in the stone age have cooked up the primordial essence of violence which keeps growing and spreading on and on! This is stupid! Violence is a behaviour and not a substance. It doesn't persist.

No, it's not just stupid: It's evil! Pacifism, that is. The way how it simply denies and disavows crucially important features of the human mind, this is in every sense against the paradigm of humanism. I note this because the folks who preach pacifism with the greatest fervor have a tendency to call themselves humanists. Just to let them know, they are not! They might be philanthropists but they are certainly not humanists. They love the human being but they hate the human mind. Pacifism is an evil and senseless right-wing utopia.

Violence does not persist. If the enemy offers you peace and new opportunities to pursue happiness, you will probably stop hating him after a while. There are many examples of this pattern, but the best one is probably the second world war. In this great and inconceivably atrocious war, the Germans have killed millions of Allies and the Allies have killed millions of Germans as well. Everything went as bad as you can possibly imagine. After the war, however, the victorious Allies made peace and they let them rebuild the country, so the Germans didn't seek revenge. It was the same story with the Japs. You see, everything's fine if the ending is fine! God bless America :D

It is the ideology of exploitation which persists and not the violence. Every exploitation is violence but not every violence is exploitation! Always keep this in mind! The ruling elite has to re-create violence because the workers simply hate being exploited. If there's no exploitation, there's no need to re-create violence. It's that simple. In the Soviet Union, violence persisted because the ruling ideology has degenerated into Stalinism from which it could never fully regenerate. This happened not because of bolshevik violence but because of several other circumstances, most importantly the failures of foreign revolutions. These failures have made the Russian workers lose their revolutionary enthusiasm.


The conservative lie

Conservatives love to preach that the world is unjust because the human being is so frail, imperfect, sinful, whatever. This is the cornerstone of conservative ideology from which all the bullshit is inferred. In the old days it was inferred from the Bible, today it is inferred from 19th century pseudo-science. This bitter misanthropy of conservatives is always inspired by the fact that working people do not like being exploited. They just cannot accept the fact that their oppression is unjustifiable, so they always have to rationalize it somehow. Rationalizing oppression is a basic conservative instinct.

There are many philosophical and sociological essays written by eminent conservative assholes like Edmund Burke, Thomas Hobbes or Gustave le Bon, and they all try to somehow prove the same lie: that elitism and exploitation is somehow natural. This is simply not the case! Exploitation is not natural under any circumstances! It may indeed occur in nature, but it's not a beneficial pattern: it always hinders the long-term evolutionary goal of any biological system.

Thomas Hobbes, in his magnum opus called Leviathan, tries to argue that the natural state of the human mind is selfish arrogance, and so we always submit ourselves under authority because we are afraid of each other. This is bollocks. We are not afraid of each other! We are a co-operative species. Authoritarian rule is established when our desired evolution towards egalitarian order gets corrupted to such a degree that the human mind succumbs to moral panic. Society becomes so saturated with immorality that you just don't care about the means presented to rectify it being totally immoral as well. This is the emergence of Fascism.


The other definition

Considering that the evolutionary imperative of human society is always egalitarian co-operation, violence can be defined as the violation of this imperative: greed, selfishness, tyranny, egoism, imperialism, exploitation, etcetera. Fighting against these things by any means, including punishments and terror, is not to be considered unethical or evil from this point of view. We can introduce the concept of proactive vs reactive violence and only fight against the proactive stuff. This is absolutely necessary when we preach and practice active non-violence. We must always distinguish!


The problem with spirituality

Spirituality is a wonderful hobby which can make you feel really good. It is always useful for an individual person to become spiritual. I mean, it's is still the opium of the people, but fortunately there's been a lot of development in the opium industry lately. Just like in the case of real pharmaceuticals, things are becoming cheaper with less and less side effects. You can get your daily fix from nice and friendly chaps who don't ask for anything in return, or you can even grow it yourself! Spirituality without religion, that's something most commendable! It fosters critical thinking. You don't believe the stuff because other people believe it, but you keep thinking and make your own ethical judgements. You can even find out new doctrines and discuss them with your friends or publish them on the internet.

So what's the problem? The problem is not with spirituality itself, but the things people believe it can achieve. Spirituality is certainly good for you, but not for anyone else. You're not going to heal the world with your super awesome spiritual consciousness. I mean, really! You're not gonna make it

Consciousness is always shaped by material existence! There's a certain level of spirituality which you cannot surpass when your material life is full of shit. Buddha was raised in a huge royal palace, that's why he became such a big player. Jesus lived in an extremely rich and vibrant cultural atmosphere with a relatively decent livelihood. He had nice and loving parents who really cared for his needs. Besides, his teaching was quite simple and down-to-earth stuff. He was much more of a political activist than a spiritual grandmaster. (For good!)


Passive violence

There's a huge amount of passive violence going on in our civilized Western world. No one is physically attacking you or even threatening to do so, but nonetheless you get your options to pursue happiness systematically destroyed. Passive violence is not committed by acting against the victim but by refusing to act in her favour. Because of the sophisticated division of labour, not doing things in someone's favour can make him suffer or even die. This phenomenon is an unavoidable by-product of civilization.

Money is the medium of passive violence in the world of today: you can force people to obedience either by withholding money from their goods and services or by withholding goods and services from their money. This is how Capitalism actually works! This is why labour unions become more powerful after a general strike (and also why Karl Marx said workers of the world should unite).


Collective intelligence and moral warfare

You cannot always treat others like you want to be treated because these others are simply different. Every human being requires a different treatment! The neighbour, however, is an unknown person: you must treat him like yourself because you don't know what kind of person he actually is. Jesus commands you to love strangers!

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Even Jesus said it's easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle than for the rich man to enter heaven, and he said this with a damn good reason. In order to understand why violence is unavoidable, you have to think in terms of classes and not individuals! A class is not just a collection of human beings: it is a vast superorganism with a collective intelligence which emerges from the co-operation of its members. In this sense, human beings are pretty much like the ants. The individual ant is totally stupid but the hive as a whole is very intelligent. The rich person may be very nice and benevolent, but his class as a whole is very evil. He always does a few things which result in the existence of an extremely evil collective intelligence known as the ruling class. Ideology is where the individual ends and the collective begins. The superego does not belong to the individual.

The goal of revolutionary violence is the destruction of this collective consciousness, not necessarily its members. The best way to destroy a collective consciousness is the creation of splits and divisions among its members. This is what Gandhi has called moral warfare. In fact, this is what the ruling class keeps doing in order to prevent the collective action of the working class. Racism, nationalism, liberalism, pacifism and religion - they all serve the purpose of breaking the class consciousness of working people!


Conclusion: Virtue and Terror!

"Virtue without terror is impotent, terror without virtue is blind."

This is what Robespierre once said or wrote, and he was so right! It's the greatest piece of wisdom I've ever heard. Humanism is the marriage of virtue and terror.

Terror is not to be confused with violence. The true objective of revolutionary terror is not violence itself, but the submission of the old ruling class under the authority of the working class. It is not necessarily achieved with mass murder. Today it can only be achieved by a combination of active non-violence and low intensity warfare. Revolutionary terror must be as peaceful as possible, as long as the ruling class gets terrorized into complete submission. If they do not completely submit themselves, the revolution will fail.

Progress can only be achieved with terror.