Structural violence denotes behaviour that has its roots in human nature and evolution. It serves the purpose of reinforcing the existing power structures and order of society. This has given stability to society and made progress possible. Structural violence is in its essence accelerated evolution, but at a certain point it becomes an obstruction for continued evolution. As society keeps evolving structural violence in all forms is discontinued as it becomes obsolete.
Examples of structural violence are discrimination of all forms such as racism, psychiatry (especially schizophrenia), apartheid, oppression of women, children, elderly, and handicapped. Apartheid and psychiatry are the same in that they both represent structural violence when it has become institutionalized. Bullying is just an example of when the behaviour gets out of control, which might be considered neurotic.
I will look at the root cause of this behaviour, the idea behind it, and point to the individual I see as responsible for having created all structural violence. Finally I will give a solution to the problem.
All forms of structural violence are based on the idea of forcing a group of people to submission. This comes from the idea that humans have different values which supports the idea of submissivness, which means that we show submissivness to superiors and require it from those considered inferior. The actual structural violence is the behaviour required to make the subjects submissive.
The following two sentences are the origin of all structural violence: I am better than you. I am worth more than you. This give rise to the idea that I have a right to force you to become submissive towards me.
Why do we have this thought process? It must be that we dislike that which is different from ourselves. What does different from ourselves mean? Behaviour that is deviating from our behaviour. What is behaviour? All behaviour is the result of a thought process. This would mean that structural violence has its roots in an inability to accept a deviating thought process in others.
A group or individual that is being forced into submission will try to adapt. In doing so all behaviours that serve no purpose but to annoy others will be removed and replaced with more purposeful behaviours that aids in adapting. Those behaviours that will be retained are those which make these individuals happy. From this we understand that structural violence eliminates useless behaviours and extracts useful behaviours.
The idea of submissivness is built on the idea of that opposites attract, that is to behave submissive to those considered superior and to require the same behaviour from those considered inferior. It should be understood that the idea of submissivness originates out of the false idea that you can assign different value to people. We see that the idea of humans different value supports the idea of submissivness which support the idea of power. All succesfull behaviours are supported by the idea of conformity.
Morality is interpreted as obeying laws and rules by these individuals. The lack of morality means that we might get reaction formation, meaning that these individuals will chew your ass off if they catch you doing something stupid. The idea of submissivness permeates all of your behaviours. For example a trivial thing like saying hello to someone becomes important in the sense that whoever says hello first is showing submissiveness according to this idea. Material things reflects your position in life. For example, a Ferrari represents that you are somebody, but to a person that has morality that car represents a piece of art.
I call this personality type for infantile. This personality's characteristics are social incompetence, unhealthy desire for power, unhappy and dissatisfied with life in general, sees himself as a superman (compare Nietzsche). Lacks conscience. The term infantile stems from that the development of personality is halted during teenage. These individuals have not successfully developed an identity and therefore has no capacity for sympathy. Basically these individuals have no personality, they have roles that they act in order to get the upper hand, or be socially accepted. The lack of identity activates the defense mechanism known as reaction formation and creates the delusion “I am somebody” (maybe I’m the superman that Nietzche talked about), which also is hubris. Descartes said: “I think, therefore I exist”. These people think: “Somebody is kissing my ass, therefore I must exist”. This comes from that these individuals subscribe to the idea of submissivness instead of morality. This is why these individuals lack a conscience.
Another characteristic behaviour among these individuals are that when they are not successful at something they simply switch to something else instead of making an effort of becoming better. This is because of there belief that they somehow should be special and good at something. To them life is supposed to be easy. If things become difficult just do something else. That’s how they deal with adversity in life.
It’s my understanding that these individuals in the past always have tried to uphold the power over life and death, which means that these individuals used to become priests as long as the church had any influence in society or in matters of life and death.
People need to adopt the following thought process: We are all unique with special gifts. All humans have equal value. The idea of submissivness must be replaced by the idea of morality. This would remove the root cause, and in doing so all behaviours considered as structural violence. In other words structural violence would cease to exist.
Morality is a thought or belief where the consideration of others take precedence over self interest and where you are always accountable.
The idea of submissivness is concern about self , while the idea of morality is concern about others. The thought that lay behind morality is that how happy would you be if you were alone in the world? We all know the answer to that, so we better concern ourselves about others, which is the starting point for all morality. We also have to understand that all of our behaviours are determined either by morality or submissivness.