On Love And Violence

The language of violence is dehumanization, the language of love is compassion. Anything under compassionate witnessing is transformed into beauty and wisdom, but when we are divorced from our ability to either witness compassionately or be witnessed compassionately, all that is left is pain, fear and disconnection.

Love heals, violence wounds, and wounds that are not loved continue to wound. Viciousness is cyclical, and so is kindness. In systems thinking this is called “feedback loops,” where the outputs of a system become the inputs, forming a self-reinforcing cycle. Violence begets violence, love begets love.

I don’t believe we’re meant to cope with violence and destruction. It’s meant to break us down and to be intolerably painful, so that we might interrupt it out of desperation for relief. Unfortunately, some obtain that respite by ignoring harm, numbing themselves and/or denying humanity. The unloved or the witness of the unloved experience a kind of violence or discomfort that is so excruciating that they either check out or perpetuate the violence, often both.

As a cycle-breaker and one who seeks to refuse to deny either humanity or pain, I found the violence of my household and culture to be so unbearable that I’ve been running away from it for as long as I can remember. Anyone who isn’t in denial, numbing out and/or perpetrating violence are likely doing the same. Running. Searching desperately for the love, becoming it, creating it.

The violence that lodged its way into my heart was a disease I almost destroyed myself many times to be rid of. Fighting fire with fire never works, though. The violence I witnessed became a part of me. My violence against the violence within just created more violence. I had to witness it compassionately, love it into transformation.

I had to look deeply at the broken, twisted, hateful, disturbing parts of myself and find the fearful child underneath them and embrace it, reminding myself that those are all reflections of love, because I am love, we are all love, everything that is is love, doing whatever it thinks it has to do to stay safe. Plants grow thorns for a reason.

Freedom fighters have always been seen as terrorists by their oppressors. Trying to see the reason for violence under that fighting is fear, fear of being harmed, exploited, extinguished. It’s defensive. Looking into the greater power dynamics of the world, the colonized have tried to fight back against colonization, some succeeding, many destroyed. War profiteering and the greater scheme of colonization makes greed and corruption an intrinsic part of violence.

Witnessing this battle between me love and violence play out on such a large scale with Israel committing genocide on Palestine less than a century after the holocaust. “Violence begets violence” reverberates at a deafening, haunting level.

I can’t help but think of my parents. Any act of criticism, any fight for freedom from their harmful actions, no matter how “unethical” was met with what felt like a carpet bombing of abusive language. All I could do to save myself from it is stay silent or run away. I look at the Palestinians, whose real human lives are being murdered mercilessly in the hundreds between just days and I’m awestruck by their fight. The desperation they must have, the horrors of their situation, if they would risk all of their lives to defy their oppression. They will not run away, they will not stay silent, even if it means they will be killed.

…

It’s demoralizing to think of spaces without love that have descended into violence. There is only dehumanization, the prerequisite for violence. To attack someone or something, you must first see them as inhuman or monstrous, see your offense as defense. To end a cycle of violence, it takes love. Unfortunately, sometimes people will be unwilling and unable to love, and all we have left is violence to see who will survive.

I feel hope when I think of Nelson Mandela. I was brought to tears when I first read about his life. He fought for equality, peacefully, and even as he and countless others were being imprisoned, abused and oppressed, he chose forgiveness rather than violence. He did not fight for a reversal of oppression, he fought for equality. Even in the face of such violence, he saw the humanity of those who refused to recognize his.

The part that is the most difficult to hold is when violence can’t or won’t be moved by love. We can love people, but that love doesn’t promise our safety. Forgiveness doesn’t always prevent violence. Unfortunately, sometimes it gives way for that violence to continue. Sometimes all we can do is fight or run, and that’s what adds despair to my tears.

Some of us are extremely lucky and privileged to have the ability to step out of the line of fire, whether we had to escape it or if our perpetrators lowered their weapons. Being able to choose love, peace and joy is a blessing I am grateful for each and every day. I feel despair thinking of all those out there that are still fighting or trying to escape.

It’s a never ending process, trying to get all to remember our oneness in separation. I like to think that it is how the value of love is taught; its absence is so horrific and painful that we are all being influenced towards the bliss of being in right relationship with each other and the world, being rewarded for finding better, more effective ways to love and be loved.

At the Thailand Art and Culture Center, I observed an exhibition of documentary photographer James Nachteway. His ethos in capturing the horrors and wrongdoings of this world was to humanize those who may simply just be seen as statistics or are dehumanized by political jargon. His photos were shocking and disturbing, heart- wrenching and tear-jerking because you were faced with such pain, and couldn’t help but want to reach into the photograph and sooth that soul, that fellow human. It’s overwhelming to think of each person of eight billion, not even counting the animals and ecosystems as well, that if we looked that closely at each of their suffering without fear of our own suffering, we might see that it is all one common suffering, one common existence, one common being.

When we are able to see others as no different from ourselves, we immediately recognize the importance of their safety and well-being. It also has a beneficial impact on us and the world when others are safe and well. I can only think that violence is perpetrated and perpetuated through a cycle of dehumanization. Only when one’s humanity and unity is forgotten can they not see the humanity and unity of others, can they feel nothing, or even contempt, retribution or pleasure at the pain of another.

“Dehumanized” doesn’t feel precise enough a word, because “dehumanizing” animals and nature (that are irrevocably part of the unity that we all constitute) is also violence, and our mistreatment of them has caused immense damage and pain, as well.

I’ve had to learn the ways that it is safe or unsafe to love. I know that love is always present, limitless in its abundance, and thus it doesn’t have to be distributed economically, but at the same time, actively loving the people that hurt you isn’t always safe. Sometimes you have to passively love them as you fight for freedom. I wish I had the courage to love even if that means risking my safety, but I’m also glad I have the self-preservation and self-love not to.

Love and violence is tragic in this way. Sometimes love becomes violence when you need to fight tooth and nail for the safety and well being of yourself, those you love and what you love. Sometimes love isn’t powerful enough to stop violence. Sometimes love is walking away. We have no control over the violence in other people’s hearts and minds, only our own. Therefore I just continue to do what is in my power to embody love, to choose it and create it wherever I can. It’s a skill I’m building and learning, slowly but surely, and all I know is that anyone can do the same if they do choose to.

James Nachteway wrote:

“Change is empowered when public consciousness evolves into a shared sense of conscience, which in turn becomes a call to action.

The process is never ending. Indifference and despair solve nothing, and turning our backs is nothing more than a form of acceptance.

If people are afraid, it does not mean they lack courage. If people are suffering, it does not mean they lack dignity. Overcoming fear is the definition of courage. The struggle to live, in the face of tragedy and suffering, is an expression of hope.

I’ve seen people with absolutely nothing left but their will to live. They have not given up hope. Why should anyone else give up hope for them?”