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Violence Begets Violence
 by Thomas Capshew • Fredericksburg, Virginia

Violence begets violence. It is a universal Truth. Just as an acorn cannot produce a palm tree, violence does not give birth to compassion. Violence devalues another person. Compassion maintains a recognition of value in another person, no matter what they value, think, speak or do.

The reason we are confused right now is because we have been fed a load of misinformation from a dominator culture asserting that compassion equals weakness.
Compassion is always stronger and more enduring than violence and domination when seen at the proper scale. The dominators first lead us to believe that our self-interest is paramount, including our individual lives. They show us by their actions and words and we begin to believe them. Second, the dominators offer us opportunities to feed this self-interest, from touting “the American Dream” to offering us higher and higher salaries to do the work they need us to do to further their self-interests of money and power. They use our midbrains, with both dopamine for pleasure activities, and the amygdala for generating perceived danger, to move us farther and farther away from our life’s purpose and the essential stuff of life. The end game of this pattern is the same: marginalization, insignificance, high medical bills, and dying with a sour taste in our mouth and a deep sense of an unfulfilled life.

As a person who stands at the crossroads of psychotherapy and spirituality and helps people to find a way forward that combines mental health and spiritual health, I see the “killing-of-spirit” effects every day and this spiritual malaise can be found in every stage of life: children, adolescents, young adults, middle aged adults, and older adults all exhibit it. The spiritual malaise can be found among all levels of what our society would call “success,” from the children and adolescents who have not yet “accomplished” anything, to the adults who by all external markers are in the top 5% of the accomplished and successful.

What happens is we may learn to feed our bodies with healthy food, feed our emotions with pleasure and avoid pain and danger, and feed our minds with knowledge and sensory stimulation, but we have forgotten to feed our spirits. We have become, not all of us, but many of us, soul starved.

What do our spirits need for nourishment? Our spirits’ core need is connection. Connection to something bigger than ourselves. Only when we are in relationship to something bigger than ourselves can we put our existence into perspective and make meaning of our lives and the world around us. With this deep connection, our figure finds the ground in our existence that provides context and meaning to being alive.

Violence is an anathema of life. Violence devalues other life to exalt one’s own. Feeding our spirit a connection to something impure breeds violence.
This food that breeds violence has many flavors, but all flavors of violence share the same aborted process. Rather than connecting to the creative force of the universe, which feeds all of us and everything in existence, the connection is made to a difference among humans; ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, educational level, socio-economic status, nationality, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Our brains can always find a difference— it is an organ that has helped us survive as a species in a previously much more dangerous natural world. Once we begin feeding on the food of difference, we are preparing ourselves for the risk of making an impure connection to something bigger that brings us significance, meaning and purpose. Name a group that promotes hatred and we can easily see that joining that group is a connection that leaves one feeling understood with a growing sense of belongingness and purpose. The central message of the group may initially sound unpalatable, but over time, our minds entrain to the message. Over time, our brain begins to filter the overwhelming sensory information we all receive daily to screen out the information inconsistent with the central message of the group and allow information consistent with the central message of the group to pass through, supporting what we have come to believe. Over time, believing is seeing.

One of the essential characteristics of this impure connection–finding value in difference–is that as our value increases, the value of anyone or anything that is considered “not group” or “other” decreases. Once this dynamic begins, our value increases in our mind to 100% and the value of the “different other” decreases in our mind to 0%, making violence inevitable.

So what is our way out of this spiraling death plunge? Meeting violence with violence only breeds more violence. Meeting violence with compassion and value breeds compassion and value. Not condoning or giving a pass to the violent acts that have occurred—they should be addressed in our rule of law that was developed to protect the common good. But planting the seeds of compassion, finding value in the lives of those with different or even hateful beliefs is the only way forward that creates the opportunity for reconciliation. The path forward is to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” inviting them into a connection with the source of all of our being, regardless of what name or label we choose to use for it/her/him. The creative force of the universe is the source of life, value, connection, meaning, and purpose. All of us have unlimited access.

 

 


Tom Capshew

Tom Capshew is the author of Divine Warrior Training: Manifesting the Divine in Our World. He is working on his second book, Consciousness Rising, available in early 2018. Tom works with individuals, couples and families in a private psychotherapy practice. His private spirituality practice is available in-person and online. For a free meditation mp3 and to join his mailing list, visit http://thomascapshew.com.