Lourens Minnema
Moving from Violence to Healing
Context,
Experience and Response
My biographical context has never made me undergo substantial
violence. The Netherlands is a peaceful country, the area in Amsterdam where I live is non-violent, my parents never beat me.
I grew up in a protected environment, without suffering,
discrimination or unequal opportunities. The violence I am exposed to
is neither physical nor psychological nor structural; it is visual violence,
violence seen on TV during the news or in documentaries.
If one is a visually sensitive person like
I happen to be, watching violence on TV can be an extremely disturbing
experience. The most disturbing part of
it, for me, is the injustice inherent in it. Injustice in the sense
that people are not treated as they should be, as they would be if they were respected. To do someone justice is, in my understanding,
the opposite of violating a person's right to flourish, and to use violence
against someone often means actively committing injustice. (I do not
deny the right of a legitimate state to use force.)
Watching the use
of violence as a form of injustice triggers strong emotions in me. These
emotions are a mix of indignation, sympathy with the victims, anger
against the violent party, feelings of powerlessness, fantasies about
revenge, a desire to also use violence, and a wish to militantly join
the suffering party in the conflict.
This mix of strong
emotions disturbs me as a person because it turns me into a violent
person myself. I happen to have difficulty taking social and psychic
disharmony for granted and I happen to have difficulty accepting myself
as a violent person. One way of escaping this psychic disharmony and
this self-image is by focusing on the object of my indignation
and by deciding that I am on the side of
the victims, of the just and of the right party. My self-image
may be restored by this strategy of mine, but it does not restore my
internal balance. The disturbance of my psychic disharmony triggered
by social disharmony may even increase if I focus on the object of my
indignation because I feel powerless and, worse, because a scene of
brute violence threatens the life line to my central nervous system,
i.e. to my sense of beauty and goodness in life. I run the risk of losing
touch with the very source of my inner happiness and of my `courage
to be.' I may start to fantasize about committing suicide if I were
the victim involved. My aggression against the aggressor tends to turn
into a depression, destroying my inner world instead of my outer world.
Criteria
Having become violent myself, against myself,
the outer violence has spilled over and contaminated its observer. How
do I keep the damage limited? Which cleansing ritual is to be recommended?
Is a breakthrough possible? Having become violent myself, what use is
the distinction between the violent offender and the violent victim?
How can I be so sure that I am the victim (since I identify with the
victim) if I am also violent in my response and easily,start
on fire? How can I be so sure that I could not be a violent aggressor
myself? Suppose I could, wouldn't that supposition trigger, if only
for the duration of a split second, the hypothetical thought that maybe
my criteria for distinguishing between right and wrong, between good
and evil are only convincing if my framework of reference excludes beforehand
the voice of outsiders, in this case the voice of the aggressor?
Christians have a story in their tradition
(Acts, Chapter 9) about a man called Saul who is eager to persecute
Christians. On his mission from Jerusalem to Damascus, suddenly, in a split second, it occurs
to him that he cannot know for sure whether he is fighting on the right
side of the borderline between good and evil. Doubt
about his criteria, about his convictions, about his self-righteous
self-image penetrate his mind. He loses sight of his clear-cut
views. It feels like having gone blind. In the story, the experience
is presented as a miracle from heaven, and as a conversion to Christ
and Christianity. Indeed, it is definitely a miracle if someone who
usually has strong convictions allows doubts about them to enter his
mind. It is also a conversion because Saul behaves differently afterwards.
He does not just behave differently but he behaves like a different
person. This person is known under a different theological label, ‘the
new man'.
What does the difference between Saul and
Paul consist of? The conversion is one from faith, despair and hate
into faith, hope and love. Both Saul and Paul are believers, but their
faith is qualified by the vices and virtues that nurture it. That is
to say, the crucial difference is not about converting from Judaism
to Christianity, although it is partly presented as such in the story.
What use is it to convert from one religion to another? The shift is
from one set of values or virtues to a different set of values or virtues.
These virtues are the real criteria for distinguishing between good
and evil.
Healing
If one religion cannot be experienced by a specific
person as allowing that person to make the transition from hatred to
love, that person should listen to other messages as well. Maybe, they
have something worth listening to. In the Christian story, the transition
from hatred to love is presented as a miracle from heaven. To some,
that may sound like 'waiting for Godot', a
way of discrediting the very virtue of hope, and hardly helpful in practical
terms either. For them, Buddhism has much to offer in terms of cultivating
virtues that can heal our feelings of hatred. Not by turning aggression
into depression, or by turning depression into aggression but by cultivating
its antidote. We are, after all, dealing with poison spilling over into
our hearts and minds, and healing them is no luxury. I don't have a
lot of choice if I wish to keep in touch with my sense of beauty and
goodness in life, social life in particular. And if this sense of beauty
and goodness spills over and contributes something to the mentality
of the community at large, the community will not be cured physically
but may have a chance of being healed spiritually.
Ref.: Journal
of the Henry Martyn Institute, Vol. 21,
n. 2, July/December 2002, pp. 94-96.