A person can be influenced
not only by punishing him when he does
what the influencer considers wrong, but
also by rewarding him when he does
what the influencer considers right. Instead of increasing the constraints on his
movements the constraints may be decreased instead of increased, and somatic
capabilities extended instead of reduced.
This may be readily agreed to, but does
it have anything to do with violence? Yes,
because the net result may still be that
human beings are effectively prevented
from realizing their potentialities. Thus,
many contemporary thinkers9 emphasize
that the consumer’s society rewards amply he who goes in for consumption,
while not positively punishing him who
does not. The system is reward-oriented,
based on promises of euphoria, but in so
being also narrows down the ranges of
action. It may be disputed whether this
is better or worse than a system that
limits the range of action because of the
dysphoric consequences of staying outside the permitted range. It is perhaps
better in terms of giving pleasure rather
than pain, worse in terms of being more
manipulatory, less overt. But the important point is, the awareness of the concept of violence can be extended in this
direction, since it yields a much richer
basis for discussion.
The third distinction to be made is on
the object side: whether or not there is
an object that is hurt. Can we talk about
violence when no physical or biological
object is hurt? This would be a case of
what is referred to above as truncated
violence, but nevertheless highly meaningful. When a person, a group, a nation
is displaying the means of physical violence, whether throwing stones around or
testing nuclear arms, there may not be violence in the sense that anyone is hit or
hurt, but there is nevertheless the threat
of physical violence and indirect threat of
mental violence that may even be characterized as some type of psychological
violence since it constrains human action.
Indeed, this is also the intention: the
famous balance of power doctrine is
based on efforts to obtain precisely this
effect. And correspondingly with psychological violence that does not reach any
object: a lie does not become more of a
truth because nobody believes in the lie.
Untruthfulness is violence according to
this kind of thinking under any condition,
which does not mean that it cannot be
the least evil under some widely discussed
circumstances.
Is destruction of things violence?
Again, it would not be violence according to the complete definition above, but
possibly some ‘degenerate’ form. But in
at least two senses it can be seen as psychological violence: the destruction of
things as a foreboding or threat of possible destruction of persons,10 and the destruction of things as destruction of
something very dear to persons referred
to as consumers or owners.11
The fourth distinction to be made and
the most important one is on the subject
side: whether or not there is a subject
(person) who acts. Again it may be
asked: can we talk about violence when
nobody is committing direct violence, is
acting? This would also be a case of what
is referred to above as truncated violence,
but again highly meaningful. We shall
refer to the type of violence where there
is an actor that commits the violence as
personal or direct, and to violence where
there is no such actor as structural or
indirect.12 In both cases individuals may
be killed or mutilated, hit or hurt in both
senses of these words, and manipulated
by means of stick or carrot strategies.
But whereas in the first case these consequences can be traced back to concrete