Monday, December 30, 2013

The Fragile Peace

The ideliable image of overturned police cars at Little India has been etched into the annals of history. The rosy picture of peace as painted by politicians has been rudely rescinded. Noticeably, the target of the violence was the inanimate vehicles, not the human occupiers.

Violence need not be directly interpersonal, as in a clear case of one person hitting another person. Author Jack Eller has plenty of examples of the latter. From religious Crusaders proselytizing with a sword, to warring factions fixated on ethnic cleansing, humans always had an excuse to eradicate other humans. Even godly men were not spared by Communist fanatics in Russia, China and other Marxist systems in the early/mid-twentieth century. Stalin forbade any religious activities or instruction beyond basic religious services in sanctioned church buildings, and a 1931 five-year plan stipulated that the very notion of God will be expunged as a survival of the Middle Ages and an instrument of "holding down the masses". Marx fully expected religions would disappear; with humanity's material needs fufilled, people would no longer need a "pie in the sky" a.k.a. the "opium of the people".

Structural violence refers to less direct, more pervasive, and sometimes even intentional or at least"invisible" harm caused by the very arrangements and institutions of society. Paul Farmer takes the concept of structural violence to be:
"sinful social structures characterized by poverty and steep grades of social inequality, including racism and gender inequality. Structural violence is violence exerted systematically - that is, indirectly - by everyone who belongs to a certain social order: hence the discomfort these ideas provoke in a moral economy still geared to pinning praise or blame on individual actors. In short, the concept of structural violence is intended to inform the study of the social machinery of oppression."
(Paul Farmer,"An Anthropology of Structural Violence," Current Anthropology 45, no.3 (2004): 307)

Victims of structural violence can be patient for only so long. Even Gandhi's nonviolent movement saw some cracked heads. Kenneth Boulding (" Stable Peace", Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), an expert of violence and nonviolence, explains that nonviolence has both positive and negative sides. Negative nonviolence is merely the cessation of violence: I am hitting you and I stop hitting you, we are now in a state of nonviolence, although you will still be in pain, neither of us may be happy, and no problems may have been resolved. Positive nonviolence is much more; he describes it as "a condition of good management, orderly resolution of conflict, harmony associated with mature relations, gentleness and love." Let's see what prevails in the coming year.

11 comments:

  1. No prizes for guessing which form of violence will prevail.The stick it in your hide mentality is very much in evidence and is not likely to disappear ini the coming year. What with the kee-chiu general, touted as the next PM, declaring war "everywhere, including street corners" against the citizens? There will be more pain(negative violence).

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    1. If the heir apparent Kee Chiu doesn't learn to bite his tongue, he will bite the dust in 2016. This rookie, never battle tested, in a real war or at the polls, talks as though he is a veteran. If he wins any battle at all, it will probably be in the battle of the mouth. He shows his violence by wanting to bring back the old fart's knuckle duster and hatchet. Ugh.

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    2. Let's vote kee chiu out in ge 2016.
      Fix him first before he fixes all of us.

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  2. Detaining someone without trial for over 3 decades ... what kind of animal will resort to that kind of violence?

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    1. Revisionist historians, and people of conscience in a more open society under another ruling party, will answer your question.

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  3. Yes, war has been declared
    and
    Singaporeans have to be mindful
    of it.

    patriot

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  4. Curse of a benevolent dictator.

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    1. Benevolent dictator? How so? Two eggs for him and one for you?

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    2. Ya loh.

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  5. Well, we are inviting the "problems" into Singapore...and of course, who will suffer the most ..the locals whilst the elites will have the SOC to protect them..and of course..with the two seater fighter jets..and the new submarine ...or maybe in the years to come...an AIRCRAFT CARRIER...

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    1. Got plenty ball carriers.

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