Political Violence
Political Violence
Understandably, people are anxiously and angrily discussing the causes of our current spate of political violence. Is it caused by being of one political persuasion rather than another, as it might be right-wing political ideology? Well, do right-wing people from other countries exhibit the same levels of political violence? Evidently not. Same for left-wing people. The answer is obviously that America is an unusually violent country, especially given its state of economic development. This is not explained by there being a large number of mentally disturbed people in the country compared to other countries. So, what is it? We need to ask what gives rise to violent behavior in the first place and see whether there is a lot of that in America. Again, the answer is not far to seek: violence is generally committed by nasty, unintelligent, morally deficient people—violent types. It is not generally committed by kind, gentle, compassionate, intelligent people. Therefore, America has an unusually large number of nasty, unintelligent, morally deficient people—proportionately larger. The people here are worse than other people on average. But why are they worse? Now things get murky, but we can be confident that history, culture, and education (in the broadest sense) play a causal role. The violent past, the competitive ruthless capitalist culture, the lack of proper education. In other words, America has a violent psychology. I have seen this even in philosophy: nasty competitive stupid people (I could names names). It is obvious just from watching people arguing on cable news. The problem is general not confined to politics. The average American’s idea of a good person is one who kills bad people, where badness is a floating commodity and a matter of taste. So, the solution to our current political violence is to change the American psyche. Good luck with that! I have a sneaking suspicion that Americans secretly love violence: they love to hear about it on TV and practice it in their own lives (one way another—bullying, verbal attacks, legal violence, etc.). They can’t live without it. They enjoy a good hanging (they still have capital punishment in many places). It’s in their DNA (not literally). Political violence is just a special case. Americans need to start by looking into their own souls.
“Again, the answer is not far to seek: violence is generally committed by nasty, unintelligent, morally deficient people—violent types. It is not generally committed by kind, gentle, compassionate, intelligent people. Therefore, America has an unusually large number of nasty, unintelligent, morally deficient people—proportionately larger.”
Could it be that the US is among the most heavily indoctrinated societies in the world, as Chomsky has emphasized in his writings on society? When the entire system of indoctrination is designed to undermine people’s capacity to intelligently participate in public life, this is what you get – building off of what your insight that the essence of stupidity is to resort to violence to resolve problems, and the essence of intelligence is to seek rational, non-violent means to solve problems.
That may be part of it. But the indoctrination is diffuse rather than government-organized.