By: Ian Christie

Ian Christie — Sun, 29 Mar 2015 12:31:19 +0000

Very thoughtful and useful analysis: thanks. I saw SELMA recently and consider it a nearly great film, marred by the misrepresentation of LBJ, who for all his brutish ways and mistakes over Vietnam was probably the best President since FDR.
You’ve picked out some brilliant analysts, especially Camara and Graeber. I’d add a couple of others. First, there is `Steven Pinker, in THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE, who argues for a long historical process of piecemeal pacification in modern societies as a result of a hyper-complex interaction of factors: mass education, economic growth, etc. This is very contested, and Pinker lacks a convincing framework of analysis that would account for the data he presents. As a secular scientist, he rejects any teleology in the process of long-range pacification of societies, and admits at one point that there seems to be something almost mystical going on as deeply entrenched modes of violence face challenge and rejection.
One body of work Pinker fails to mention is that of the French cultural theorist Rene Girard and his followers. Girard argues that violence is essentially a process of imitative escalation, and is intrinsic to groupish primates struggling over limited resources. Contests for goods – whether physical or social – point to violence. Girard argues that scapegoating of marginal individuals and groups evolved as a means of ‘pharmacological’ use of violence to nip escalation in the bud: limited violence prevents mass killing and disorder, and is presented as a sacred and legitimising process of ensuring the continuation of the community. From this foundation, all hierarchical power and legitimation of violence follows. This is controversial enough, but Girard goes further and argues that in Judaism and Christianity teachings emerged (and are echoed in other faith traditions) that preach non-violent resistance to the hierarchies founded on legitimised violence. Furthermore, the global diffusion of the story of Christ, the self-sacrificing preacher of a radically new sense of the sacred, has gradually helped expose all the powers claiming to be justified in using violence to sustain themselves. Christ is the revelation of the injustice behind all recourse to violence in the name of what is deemed to be the sacred. In Girard’s system, this both generates more goodness (non-violent community) and more violence (growing risks of escalation as powers need to use more force to achieve their goals. There is a lot to criticise in Girard’s body of work, but interestingly it provides a framework which fits very well with Pinker’s analysis. It also speaks to the methods, arguments and guiding values of many protest movements, whether or not they are Christian.
One implication of Pinker’s work, and of that of some Girardians, and also of postwar European history, is that economic growth, by eliminating many forms of material and social scarcity and precariousness, has been instrumental in long-term declines in violence in the West. For environmentalists such as myself, who doubt that growth and ecological sustainability are compatible in the long run, this is an uncomfortable idea. One implication of the return of material scarcities, and of rising competition for positional goods and dwindling resources in a much more populous and constrained world, is that violence will grow in societies where it has been contained for decades. On this analysis, states and corporations will use more force to maintain their interests; will experience more escalation of contests for resources to extremes of violence; will resort to more scapegoating of minorities and enemy groups to deflect violent frustrations building up in society; and will face more violence from opponents. Powerful communities of non-violent protest and witness are the only antidote.

Comments on: The working of non-violence

By: Ian Christie