Structural Violence: Shut Down Social Imagination

I was listening to the radio back in October and heard about plantation slavery. The owners learned how to dehumanize their workers into producing more.  It is a story of how humans become evil by focusing on how to get more by violence.  Or how those who have power over others become violent.

So the managers are instructed to beat up the workers if they produce less than they did before or less than the organizers felt they should produce. Of course the managers would lose their jobs if they didn't do as they were told or worse they would be beaten too.

I thought about how people are treated at big corporate outlets, sweatshops, prisons, mental institutions, school bullies, animals in factory farms, indigenous children in residential schools, children abducted into armies. 

Is there a common theme to this maltreatment?

Yes — it is humans of any and all races as long as they have power over others.

To be accepting of this is not in our best interests and yet we can't change the behaviour of others if we don't have power over them. 

So, dear reader (if you are still reading this) I want you to know that you are right to be angry, afraid, bitter and concerned.

You can use whatever tools you have available to resist this system by treating others with respect, by listening and caring, by protecting the vulnerable, and voting for the politicians, leaders, candidates and systems that promote peace and justice. You can change the world for a fraction of a second wherever you stand in your humanity and defend the dignity of another.

Every act that diminishes another soul, diminishes your own. Every trend, every business, every custom that diminishes another, diminishes you.

Think of the colonial rulers who lose their power over the nations they have colonized. The more violence they rely on, the more violence will meet them when they lose that power. Think of the battered child when he becomes bigger than the abusive parent — they run away and neglect them or beat them up as they become needy.

But you know all this don't you? This is old stuff. We've known this for hundreds of years. From Moses to Atwood we have talked the talk, watched the movies, read the books. 

Centralized power is power taken from the millions of sentient beings we share this planet with, until we cannot imagine a way through.

(reposted from October 2019)