It is will that endows the animal with weapons of defense and with the means of obtaining its food; it is will too that endows the animal with consciousness and man with intellect, for these are weapons like any other contrivance for escaping from the enemy or securing prey. Indeed, intellect is the most perfect of all the weapons with which will has endowed creatures, for as the ink sac of the cuttlefish serves to conceal the animal’s flight or approach, so intellect serves to hide the intent of the will and thus to insure its success. — William Turner on Schopenhauer
To understand what a more sane world may look like, it is important to understand the insanity of violence, and the true nature of violence, which is seldom discussed. That is because any honest exploration of the nature of real violence has deep implications upon the foundations of the society in which we live, and this impacts how we judge ourselves. Modern society, the political body, the legal and judiciary system, the state of governance, capitalism and the very fabric of the society itself, including our religions and so-called morals and values, are institutions steeped in traditions of absolute and total violence.
Like in the animal kingdom, where every creature has its defenses and weapons, humans also possess powerful instruments for camouflage, defense, and attack. For example, the tiger has its claws and teeth, the eagle has its talons, the bee has its stinger, and the ant has its powerful mandibles. What then is the weapon of man? Is it his lumpy fists or fragile fingernails? No. The chief weapon of all human beings is the mind. The human mind is the most powerful force on the face of the earth. It is the human mind that allows human beings to maintain domination over all creatures on the earth, though many are equipped with very powerful systems for predation and defense. Since the human mind is the primary weapon of the human being, it is also therefore the primary and most significant instrument of violence. Sadly, most of the weak discussions and inane posturing over violence in the human world is focused on physical acts of brutality, and the inanimate objects with which people commit these physical acts. Physical violence, however, represents only a minority of true violence in human affairs. To understand the true nature of violence, one must only look at the primary weapon, the mind. It is when we look into the institutions of the human mind that the vast world of human violence begins to emerge as an endless tapestry of cruelty.
The mind is like a gun and our words are like bullets. When one understands that the mind and words represent the weapons, it is then that we can begin to understand that the legal arena is literally a bloodbath, which by common sense we always knew was true. People use words to do battle and to hurt one another terribly, tragically and even mortally. Stress-related death is well documented. Walking into any office building, corporation, trading floor, boardroom, government department, or courthouse can be like walking onto a blood-soaked battlefield. There are bodies everywhere and all you see and hear are the streaks of bullets racing by your head. You look over to the left and see your friend holding her neck as blood shoots from a clipped wound in her jugular vein. Everywhere you look you see empty cartridges falling to the ground as bullets fly in every direction. The bullets are the words. The words in the contracts, the words in your employment agreements, the words in the cheating fine print, the slanted words in your newspapers and on your television screens, the words of the insurance companies and the actuaries, the words in the courtrooms and the laws. The words coming out of the mouths of treacherous co-workers, gossiping neighbors, and capitalist storekeepers hawking their cheap dubious wares, without allegiance to anything beyond the bottom line of profit.
Once you understand that the master weapon of the human being is the mind, you will then see that violence is everywhere — true violence. Each person has terrible acts of violence being perpetrated against them in nearly every aspect of their lives. Pitted against the soul of every flesh and blood human are endless institutions, all enabled, organized and operating on the exacting and absolute definitive and deadly word. Words represent the thoughts of people and thoughts represent the will of the mind. The same violence that we see in the animal kingdom in the form of competition is what plays out day-to-day between individuals and institutions through the mind and the word. Yet, what happens in nature is no justification for our behavior, because we are animals of consciousness with the ability of moral choice.
The total objective of the violent system is to take a free human being, and convert that human being’s speculative gross lifetime output into controllable revenue. Human beings and their gross lifetime product, are practically traded like super-commodities — a pseudo, and perhaps even literal preferred stock of the corporation of the United States. The path of the common citizen is voluntary serfdom as a speculative commodity. This sophisticated nouveau slavery represents the supreme form of usury. Our quality life, in the most significant and meaningful ways, have been devastated by placing people in stressful and artificial environments away from their families and communities. But ultimately, the current social contract we have accepted represents a supreme form of usury, because we use everything and everyone in the process. America and other “developed” industrialized nations have become like the executive hands, or middle-management orchestrators for a large international conglomerate, that could be called Rape the Natural World, Inc. (RNW). At RNW, Inc. nothing is off the table, from irresponsible genetic manipulation and patenting of plants, to copyrighting DNA, the molecular assault on the biosphere, and using every natural resource and human hand, no matter the cost to create and concentrate wealth. If children’s tears could be made into diamonds, corporate thugs would indenture children and force them to cry. This is what happens presently to children in the diamond mines and the electronic assembly sweatshops. How many people have to die before we are rich enough? The endless victims of the system exist in a perpetual tsunami of violence in the form of this economic enslavement. The violence inherent in our common institutions, corporations, and governments is without competition.
The homeless, street gangs, “thugs” and other mostly powerless people with legitimate anger concerning poverty and class, are commonly media and police targeted, and portrayed as dangerous, menacing undesirables. Young revolutionaries, students, activists, and protesters are similarly portrayed as misanthropic juveniles and lazy ne’er-do-wells vandalizing public spaces. But too little attention is given to truly dangerous and powerful political and corporate thugs who loot, vandalize and burn communities to the ground every day, with the mighty stroke of a pen. The boardroom is the ultimate war-room, where history’s most destructive acts of violence and aggression against human dignity, safety, and justice have been strategically orchestrated.
Acts of economic war and violence in the deepest sense are commonly perpetrated against people with a “gentleman’s” handshake and a smile. These villains hide behind a mask of legitimacy and integrity. Part of their illusion of legitimacy is achieved through the custom of costume, by wearing the official uniform of competitive business, the euro war-dress called a suit. These extreme fiscal bloodsport competitors are the top predator savages of the concrete jungle. These predators eat people’s dreams, vitality and youth, along with their 401ks, retirements, savings and security; they eat their lives and their hopes for living a beautiful life. Executive savages who eat human resource energy and soul-joy, by feeding on life-force in these ways, are discomfortingly similar to cannibals, minus the flesh.
Governments potentially represent instruments of tremendous violence, both physically and by the word, or law. As far as physical violence is concerned, governments have historically shown themselves to be the most effective and deadly terrorist organizations that have ever existed, at least this is true if body count means anything. Corporate capitalism, unchecked by restraint and morality, quickly becomes a steady source of passive violence, which extends as far as its greedy reach can grope what it covets. Capitalism places individuals into direct competition with one another, with their minds and words as their weapons. The objective of life under capitalism is to capitalize or realize a gain — materially or socially — over your competitors. To realize this gain one uses the primary weapon of assault against his environment and competitors — the mind. The mind is an awesomely powerful pattern recognition, problem-solving and strategizing computer, which is highly specialized at inventing clever ways in which one may achieve dominance and gain over those in the field of competition. It is in the ways that people are employed, levied against by bond, lured into borrowing money from so-called reputable financial institutions, educated, sold goods, and peer pressured, that violence is perpetrated against the common person at every step of life. In essence, modern consumer life is a form of extreme passive violence against all people. The problem of people not understanding the inherent power of their own minds, and not understanding the true nature of violence, combined with the irresponsible institutions of unchecked capitalism create the conditions allowing enormous injustices to occur. We find ourselves lost in a perfect storm of consumption, greed, fear, suspicion, treachery and violence in the deepest and most meaningful sense, to thinking and feeling creatures such as the human.
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