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In excess of 1.6 million people each

In the last few years, we have visibly seen a considerablespike in violence not only in the United States but all over the world.  One of the main reasons why this is madepossible comes down to the use of social media and the ease of having somethingrecorded.  While there are many negativesto being able to have such a power, such as seeing the nature of man as theytruly are and the death and destruction they can cause, it also has positiveeffects such as showing the most accurate events of an incident or the thirdside of man.  This paper looks to defineviolence, understand why it happens and show that there are clear forms ofillegal and justified violence.

Violence ischaracterized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the deliberate utilizationof physical power or control, whether it be threatened or actual, against anotherperson, group, or community which results in the likely event of psychological harm, injury, and/or death.  WHO also definesviolence with the intentionality of committing the act itself without theregard of the outcome produced. Generally speaking, even something that was never intentionally supposedto be conceived as violent can be considered as such if it damages in any way.

Violence comes in many forms and as a wholecan be preventable.  Violence has become aglobal circumstance resulting in the deaths of an excess of 1. 6 million peopleeach year, constituting it to being one of the leading most cause of death inthe world. 1          This violencecan either be directed at oneself, such as the acts of self-abuse and suicide; interpersonal violence, which can include violence by a close family member orfriend and has the examples of domestic violence, elder and child abuse, assault and property crimes; and lastly, violence can be collective, which isfound within groups and include hate crimes and are usually socially, politically or economically based.

Thesecrimes are also committed by strangers and are usually the rarest kind out ofthe three types.            The act of violenceitself, is as old as time as the oldest recorded conflict was the Battle ofZhoulo in the area of China, approximately 2500 BC.  Like the greater part of primates, we battleand sometimes also kill individuals from our own species, and this conduct isnormal and almost widespread across the board that it shows up all through ourhistory. Be that as it may, while deadly viciousness is a piece of ourindividual hereditary predisposition, it is for the most part administered bythe development of our social structures and the communities inside them.            Violence isuniversal. We see it in network shows, films, computer games, and commercials; we read about it in news articles, magazines, and books; we talk about it—botht when we describe what’s occurring in today’s society, and more regularlymetaphorically with a variety of fierce expressions that infest our ordinaryevery day speech; we fear it while having our security systems, firearms, andpolice and military presence; and we encounter it, straightforwardly or in aroundabout way, in our homes, schools, groups, work environments, playingfields, and war zones.

2          From asociological point of view, it should not shock anyone that the manner by whichwe comprehend and assess viciousness is uneven, possibly unpredictable. Violence, similar to all types of conduct, is very logical and somewhatcontextual.  It is difficult to imaginethat there could be an all inclusive “ violence gauge” that couldimpartially figure out what is or isn’t vicious without representing certainfactors.

To completely see any demonstration of violence, we should considerthe normal line of inquiries that we ought to ask of all actions: when andwhere did it happen, who were the actors, what was the motive behind it, whatreally happened, and how did people respond to the act. There might be extrathings that need to be asked however those will at any rate get us on track fora clearer total perception.  In the eventthat we agree that violence is very contextual, then the following logic can beargued that violence is socially built as a construct. Be that as it may, forsome individuals, this sociological interpretation of violence is missing themain point. For the regular person (non sociologist), viciousness has little todo with the idea of nurturing and nearly everything to do with the nature.  On the off chance that violence is in fact inour genetic makeup, at that point we would not be required to look at thesocial institutions we have built that empower and excuse this sameviciousness.  In the event that violenceis supposed to be common, and if some individuals merit what they get as aresult of violence, I would argue that at that point every single one of usshould just be worried about our own particular conduct; the societal impactsare auxiliary to our individual and natural inclinations. 3          Specialists inthe field of criminology, psychology, education, and sociology have all beenendeavoring to comprehend the pathways to violence in which a couple of basicperceptions develop.

The initial, and most alarming, is that people, similar tocouple of different species, are unavoidably brutally violent to each other. The real predator of the human race has always been other humans. 4The second observation is that all brutality isn’t the same. Some violence isbecause of impairment due to drugs and alcohol, mental illness, revenge andretribution and finally in the heat of the moment.

How any individual comes tothe idea of committing violence is a mind boggling blend of conditions, and itis relatively difficult to know precisely “ why” for any givendemonstration of violence.  We do howeverunderstand that not all people are violent by nature and that some societies inthe world are more violent than others. It is because of this, that we are ableto objectively view violence as a whole and its impact in the world. 5          This brings meto my main argument if violence is justifiable.

One of the main things one would need to look at is philosopher HannahArendt in her work On Violence, whereshe takes a separate stance on the notions of power, force, and authority byplacing them in their own categories and defining them as individualentities.  She would label power inviolence the ability to take a certain action, a violent force of the energybeing exerted by the group and the violence itself as the opposition of saidpower. 6  As I said before about the contextually ofviolence, it still is far too vague for us to perceive.  At whatever point an individual or a group isthe unfortunate victim of an act of violence, they are surely being abused in acertain type of way.

Particularly there are inalienable rights we as peopletake to be basic human rights which are disregarded; those rights are that overone’s own body (i. e. the privilege to have one’s own body) and that ofautonomous independence.  In this waywhen somebody is the gambit of violence, they are either having their body ortheir self-governance damaged, or in some cases, both.          As I havepreviously argued, violence can materialize in various distinctive ways. Itcould, without much of a stretch, be demonstrated that violence can becharacterized into four various types dependent of two criteria.

Violence canbe personal or it can be institutional, and can be either obvious or secretive. Individual or personal violence alludes to those actions which are directed atspecific people. These can be actions spurred by anger, passion, jealousy orgreed and can come with an entire host of different expectations. Interpersonalviolence is somewhat exponentially different in relation to institutionalizedviolence in which it is an act that is directed at specific communities ofindividuals.          Some couldargue that violence is never justifiable. The main idea could be seen by some taking a philosophical approach tothe idea that all violence is justified if the person claims that it is.

Anexample of this could be the use of the 1940’s and the rise of Nazism.  Everyone can agree that overt violence is andalways will be justifiable otherwise, we’d all be speaking Deutsch and it wouldprobably be like an episode of The Man inthe High Castle.  It would be saidthat it places civilization on a slippery slope on determining what makes itconstitutes justification.

The logicstems from quite possibly Immanuel Kant’s universality theory in that, if it isgood for all than it is good.  In someexamples, violence is not justified and therefore under the universalizationlaw, no violence is ever justified.            It is mytheory that you cannot have a universal law as the standard to determine thatif violence is justified, it is always justified and if there is one way it isnot, then no violence is justified.  Forme, it seems that when looking at the question about justifying violence, weneed to look deeper into the ethics and the circumstances.  I am well aware that this also comes down totoo many different variables as everyone perceives things differently.  As there are also so many different moraltheories such as Kantian, utilitarianism, etc. it is hard to say which is right.

Universally, does having this moral backingmake us morally less violent in society? Life in itself is not merely black and white but is constantly in astate of gray.  But, we must also rememberthat gray is the byproduct of black and white together.  To create the gray area, you need both towhite and black to exist; therefore, it can also be said that as both white andblack are two distinct colors in themselves that when combined make the shadeof gray, the justification or lack thereof of violence are also likewise thetwo distinct actions/behaviors which result from a myriad of situations.          I’d like togive an example of when I feel an act of violence is justified.  The scenario will be loosely based on mytraining and experience of being a law enforcement officer.

While patrolling my assigned area, I amdispatched to a possible domestic violence incident call (one that happensfairly regularly).  For the sake of theexample, let’s say that this is the first time I am responding to the residenceand the info that I was provided was that an argument is pursuing.  When I arrive, I find a man physicallybeating his spouse and promptly use the proper use of force continuum asdictated by the FBI.  Unfortunately, thesituation escalates and I am forced to discharge my primary weapon killinghim.  There will be those that feel whatI should’ve done in my situation would be to try to subdue him by less lethalmeans or worse yet, try shooting him in an extremity. My response to that isfairly simple. While yes, we are trained to shoot and to do so well, theprobability of hitting that target is much harder especially in a stressfulenvironment with adrenaline pumping.

It is much easier to hit a larger, centermass target than one that is smaller and moving. Also, an officer is personallyresponsible for every single round that is fired from his weapon. None of us asofficers want to bear the thought that while attempting to neutralize adangerous threat, we miss and either wound or kill someone in our line of fire.            The example Ihave given, while fairly simple, shows how violence can be justified.

The violence that I had employed to defendnot only innocents around me, but also to keep myself safe from harm, I hadused the proper use of escalation that the circumstances permitted me, and theviolence that I used was proportional to the force needed to stop the threat. 7  It is that criteria, that I firmly believethat you could find my gray area in which violence can be justified.  For the ones that say nay, that situationcould possibly have resulted in the injury or death of someone and it wasbecause of my own action of violence, that helped prevent a tragedy.          I would alsolike to show a secondary example but this time as political violence.  Sinn Féin is the political party of theRepublic of Ireland and strives to have a united Ireland free of British rule.  It was well documented that before the EasterRising of 1916, protestants had widely oppressed Irish Catholics.  Feeling that only violence was needed to stopthis, a few men took up arms against Parliamentary rule to claim Ireland asfree.

While this could be widelydebated, the fact remains that if it wasn’t for the the act of war for independence, Ireland would not be a free state today. 8          As a wholesociety, one could only hope that violence starts to fade away (and somestatistics suggest as such9).  However, we need to be realistic in the ideathat we still possess violent traits and tendencies.  Violence is simply just man recreatinghimself and there is a general inclination for all men to desire some type ofpower in life.  However, when violence iswarranted, it must be considered merciful and appropriate.  Philosophers, possibly including myself, rarely claim that there is an intrinsic value to human life.  Kant would suggest that we should all treatothers “ as ends and not as mere means” which suggests that we value others asthey are.

10  By revaluating the ethics behind actions andlooking at the morality of society, we can determine what needs to be changedto lead to less violence.  The fact that violenceis a never ending spiral, also makes it it’s very weakness.  Until then, great men will be forged in fireas it is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.

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