Violence plays a major part in shaping the many aspects of who we are. Two popular icons who analyze and discuss the role of violence in our lives include Martin Luther King Jr. and Sigmund Freud. King does not practice violence. Instead, he relies on nonviolence as means of getting a message across or creating a movement for a change. Freud believes that we, individuals, run on sexual desire and anger within us, but we are forced to control them and only exhibit them in ways that are socially appropriate.
First, there is Martin Luther King Jr. who practices nonviolence. He does not believe violence to be an effective approach for long-lasting change. In fact, he states in his Nobel Prize Lecture that, “[he is] not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results (King, 4).” The key phrase is “momentary results” which means that violence only solves a problem for a certain amount of time. His example includes how violence won independence for nations. However, no set peace is achieved by it. King regards it as temporary peace. In fact, he states that it creates more complex, unresolved issues, with a never-ending series of self-destruction. He claims that, “It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers (King, 4).” All of those claims just portray destruction in itself. There seemingly lacks a positive ring. Instead, he preaches nonviolence because it concerns the majority of the people and their goals concerns the peace and harmony of the community. His nonviolent approaches include persuasion with the use of words. However, if that fails...
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...apons, men can easily kill each other off, but that is acting out of society's rules, which are set for the maintenance of order within a civilization. This can result in negative feelings such as unhappiness and anxiety for men, however. It evidently shows that bottling up one's instincts and drives is self-destructing, but going out and killing or sexually assaulting anybody is also very destructive. It is an ongoing internal battle.
Influencing our thoughts, values, beliefs, and knowledge, violence definitely plays a major role in our lives. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sigmund Freud both uniquely view the role of violence in who we are but contrast in how they apply it to they apply it to their lives. The two creatively extracted an individualized meaning from the role of violence in all of us and they facilitated their own intricate and complex meaning out of it.
In Cesar Chavez’s article “He Showed us the Way”, Chavez talks about Martin Luther King’s practices, how he stands with his nonviolent teachings and how king believed hate cannot driven out hate. Chavez explains how being nonviolent helped many members of the Civil Rights Movement get what they wanted. Throughout the article, Chavez uses religious and historical allusion, to show how nonviolence can be the best route to achieve what they want.
Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” does a marvelous job of highlighting the violent nature of mankind. The underlying cause of this violent nature can be analyzed from three perspectives, the first being where the occurrence of violence takes place, the second man’s need to be led and the way their leader leads them, and lastly whether violence is truly an innate and inherent characteristic in man.
Jones proves to be deserving of the persuasiveness prize due to his success in refuting the alternative viewpoints. But, not only does he express how violence is beneficial, but he also concedes with the alternative view by expressing how “it has helped to inspire some people to real-life [crimes].”(Jones 287) Although he displays concession for the contrasting view, Jones strongly supports his own opinion by referencing his life experiences. This allows us to reflect on our own childhoods and remember the times of powerlessness and helplessness. When Jones generates the abnormal opinion that violent media can be constructive, he makes reference to a specified psychologist. Melanie Mo...
Gandhi once said “An eye for an eye and the whole world is blind.” This is true in most circumstances but there are exceptions. By comparing acts of nonviolent civil disobedience with acts of violent civil disobedience it is apparent that force or violence is only necessary to combat violence but never if it effects the lives of the innocent. A recurrent theme in each of these examples is that there is a genuine desire to achieve equality and liberty. However, one cannot take away the liberties of others in order to gain their own. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that political change would come faster through nonviolent methods and one can not argue his results as many of the Jim Crow laws were repealed. Similarly, through nonviolent resistance Gandhi was able to eventually free India from the rule of Britain. It is true that sometimes the only way to fight violence is through violence, but as is apparent, much can be said of peaceful demonstrations in order to enact change. Thus, it is the responsibility of we as individuals to understand that nonviolence is often a more viable means to an end than violence.
As Dr. King stated in Letter from A Birmingham Jail, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. I must confess that I am not afraid of the word, tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth. The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” Such as in the case of the 1969 student site-in against the Vietnam W...
(Ansbro, 231) instead of promoting love and violence among all races. King’s purpose in promoting nonviolence direct action was to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiations. He felt that practicing nonviolence would portray his followers as moral beings while making apparent the brutality of the segregationists. King’s preaching of nonviolence was monumental in succeeding in demonstrations such as the Montgomery bus boycott and the desegregation of public schools. King’s reaching of nonviolent direct action furthers the arguments that King is the most influential person of the twentieth century.
Kevin Powers and Geoffrey Canada both describe violence and its effects on people in their novels. They assert that violence profoundly changes a person; however, they differ on the merits of these changes. Canada concludes that violence teaches people and helps them grow, while Powers concludes that it dehumanizes and scars them. The two authors also disagree on the necessity of violence. Specifically, Canada argues that violence is necessary and is used to gain distinction and status, while Powers argues that violence is unnecessary and causes people to lose their singularity and identity. Even further, Canada believes violence protects the boys and their lives, while Powers believes violence kills the young soldiers. From their personal experiences, Canada claims boys in the South Bronx need to be violent to gain respect and to survive, while Powers claims the violence of war is a waste of young men’s lives as they lose respect and even their lives.
...able to showcase the great power that nonviolence could have on the world and how by using methods such as that one would be more successful than if one used violence. As Mahatma Gandhi once said “Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated nonviolence to suppress oppression in his essay, “The Power of Nonviolent Action.” King's factual and reasoned approach is intended to win his adversaries over by appealing to their consciences. King realized that the best strategy to liberate African-Americans and gain them justice was to use nonviolent forms of resistance. He wanted to eliminate the use of violence as a means to manage and establish cooperative ways of interacting. Moreover, King states that the “oppressed people must organize themselves into a militant and nonviolent mass movement” in order to achieve the goal of integration. The oppressed must “convince the oppressors that all he seeks is justice, for both himself and the white man” (King, 345). Furthermore, King agreed with Gandhi that if a law is unjust, it is the duty of the oppressed to break the law, and do what they believe to be right. Once a law is broken, the person must be willing to accept the ...
Tio Hardiman, the creator of the Violence Interrupters Program, said, “You can give them a history lesson. Your daddy was violent, your granddaddy was violent, and your great granddaddy was violent. And now your brothers are messed up because you misled them” (James et al., 2012). He is describing how violence is a learned behavior from your family and close peers. Hardiman goes on to tell a little about his own family’s history with violence. When he was fourteen, a man tried to hurt him in the streets, but his stepfather killed the man right in front of him, and he recalls feelings good about it. This family taught him violence was okay through their own
There are many positive and negative aspects and moral consequences of labeling human violence as a biological behavior. This idea has been debated and supported or rejected by Sigmund Freud, Conrad Lorenz, and other noted anthropologists. Some of these philosophers believe that human violence is part of human makeup. In other words, they feel that people are born with these instincts. Other philosophers believe that violence is a learned trait. Through different studies, each scientist tries to fully understand the nature of violence.
If King defines violence as “immoral and destructive means” (King, 400), and Mitchell claims that violence can be used to bring about peace and equality. And King further states that “immoral and destructive means” (King, 400), can only bring about immoral and destructive ends. Then it is possible to infer that peace and equality are immoral and destructive. This is an error brought about through a lack of a definition to the terms violence and non-violence. As with the time King found new terms to differentiate between the types of love, he must find a number of new terms with which we may differentiate between the types of violence. The lack of variety has led to confusion that can possibly be eased through an ability to discriminate meanings. A possible distinction King could make between his violence and Mitchell’s violence is by using the terms brutality and brouhaha. A brouhaha could be what King calls non-violence, and brutality being what King calls violence. Brutality being a physical, forceful and damaging act of cruelty. A brouhaha is an enthusiastic act of abnormal behavior for the purpose of causing discomfort in others. An example of a brouhaha would be what King would call a non-violent protest. An example of brutality would be smashing in the windows of a store that refused to serve someone. To fix the claim “the type of peace King predicts from non-violence is better than one from violence,” Dr. King need only add a disclaimer stating the fact that such a claim is purely conjecture and wrought with bias. These changes could cause the essay to lose some of its power over the public, a group that has to think very little about the information that moves them, but it is personally believed that the changes would make the document more accurate for the people who
The non-violent philosophy was not a movement of pacifism to Martin Luther King, it was one of action. Absolute strength was apparent in its practice, but how? The student movement caused many of its’ participants to be severely beaten, chastised, and arrested, only to continue while never fighting back. Why were they doing this? King felt the answer was that through their actions they would awaken not only the majority, but more importantly the minority to the need for equal rights. Apathy had set in among both groups causing them to accept the current state of affairs, and like the great “gadfly” Socrates, King and the students were forcing both groups to wake up and open their eyes.
Gandhi and King both agreed that nonviolence is accomplished by revolutionizing the relationship between adversaries, and that its strength lies in their commitment to justice. However, Gandhi puts emphasis on a need for personal suffering in the practice of nonviolence, a stance that is somewhat less aggressive than
Freud believes that aggression is a primal instinct, and civilization thwarts this instinct, making man unhappy. Civilized society controls man's tendency toward aggression through rules and laws and the presence of authority. These mechanisms are put in place to guarantee safety and happiness for all individuals in a society. However, the necessity of suppressing the aggressive drive in m...