ABSTRACT
Physical violence can radically change the register of conflicts in ways that even the weightiest of words cannot. Adding violence to a conflict does more than make a mere quantitative addition to a conflict; it has the distinct potential for altering conflict in qualitative ways. Some believe, for example, that adding violence to a conflict can change the register of a conflict by eliminating one of the parties to the conflict. If only one could “do unto them, before they do unto us” – with “extreme prejudice” – as some Pentagon “wannabe” poet laureate put it, one could at least reduce one’s opponents to impotence or even liquidate them entirely. Massacres, such as the St. Barthomew’s Day, or genocides, such as that planned by the Third Reich, seem to proceed from the calculation that violence can change the register of conflicts by putting a final end to them. A kind of ugly peace reigns where conflict once prevailed because the winner “takes all.” But, in order really to “take all,” victory requires the physical – and necessarily violent – elimination of one’s enemies. Failing total liquidation, some Hamlet will seek to avenge the death of his father, and conflicts will threaten to continue to nag and drag on without resolution. Violence applied ruthlessly, however, promises to tie up all the loose ends of such irritations. Yet, since final solutions are rarely, if ever, achievable, intruding violence into conflicts is more likely to inflame them. Violence can easily transform relatively manageable conflicts into helter-skelter ones. This chapter is in large part a meditation on the ineluctable difference of scale that physical violence introduces into conflicts. I think it is necessary to make this point about the special power of physical violence because I believe that talk of violence has become altogether too loose. I seek to encourage some attention to a respectful and precise use of language applied to such highly emotive subjects as violence. In the world of religion and politics we are perhaps even more susceptible than most to the mystifications of language. For that reason a re-dedication to the warning of George Orwell about the use of language in politics may be in order. As he observed in his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,”
Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the
necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration.
