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Biopsychosocial perspective on violence
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"Did people who committed acts of violence think their victims and their victims' relatives would just forget? Didn't people see? How violence went on and on like a terrible wheel? Could you stand in front of a wheel to make it stop?" (235).
When Liyana said this she meant, did people who act violently think of the effect it would have on their victims, some innocent people who have done nothing wrong? Did the people think that their victims’ lives wouldn't change, or that hurting them wouldn't change their or others’ lives? She means that violence keeps on going around, one person gets hurt, leading that person to hurt another, and that cycle goes on and on. You can't just suddenly make it stop, hurt doesn't just stop.
This is my favorite
passage in the book Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye because it has a good point, and if more people were to think of this before committing acts of violence, I think we would live in a much more safe, peaceful world. Liyana brings up a good point that could actually help people, in this real world. Liyana says this in such an honest way, but it's easy to follow, and she explains it with a simile comparing violence to a wheel which keeps on rolling, painting a picture in my mind. It makes me think about what actual people who commit violent acts in this world are thinking, does their anger of the cloud up their minds so they can't think of this? It made me wonder, to ruin somebody else's life, you must have a lot of anger, or would've had to go through something pretty terrible. I wonder if people actually thought before these horrible acts of violence we hear about maybe we wouldn't hear about as many of them. Maybe they need to think about how this could affect the victim. Maybe they should be the person who stops the wheel and doesn't let it roll anymore, and don't even let the wheel start rolling. This excerpt told me I need to think before I act, even my small acts of hurt, because I won't think of the effect on the victim right then, and will regret it later.
The blunt diction in “Parable in Praise of Violence” elucidates the condemnation of the speaker towards those who lash out due to their emotions through
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.
Shields, Patrick J. "EBSCOhost: Arbitrary Condemnation and Sanctioned Violence in Shirley Jackson's "the Lo..." Vol. 7.No.4 (2004): 411-19. EBSCO Publishing Service Selection Page. Dec. 2004. Web. 15 Nov. 2010.
James Gilligan is an American psychiatrist who presents the causation and prevention of violence from his point of view of working in US prisons for decades in his book “Preventing Violence”. Gilligan provides readers with a multitude of data and theories, but his book (or at least the first four chapters) boils down to the fact that violence towards other is caused by shame. He calls upon his many years of interaction with prison inmates and explains how inmates who committed violent crimes often said it was because they were disrespected, and therefore shamed. However, it’s very important to highlight that it takes not only shame but also an inability to “regain respect” after a shameful event, to cause violence as Gilligan proposes. This
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
On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old college student, shocked the nation when he perpetrated the deadliest shooting massacre in U.S. history. The violent rampage took place on the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Cho was a senior majoring in English. Before turning the gun on himself and delivering a fatal gunshot to the head, Cho murdered more than 30 of his classmates and University faculty; numerous others were injured. In a strange twist, several days after the tragedy, a package determined to have been mailed by Cho during the shooting spree was received at NBC News in New York. The package contained photos of Cho posing with guns, as well as video clips and various pages of Cho’s writing. Portraying himself as a martyr avenger of the weak and defenseless, the targets of Cho’s angry ranting included wealthy students, bullies, Christianity, and society (Kleinfield, 2007). In the wake of tragedies like Virginia Tech, an automatic public response is to want immediate answers, explanations. It seems logical that something so extraordinarily awful and wrong must have been caused by an equally unusual and outrageous problem or anomaly. However, explaining heinous crimes of violence is not so straight-forward; understanding violent behavior involves multiple, and sometimes conflicting, theoretical perspectives and disciplines.
“Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder lie; it doesn’t establish truth. Violence may even murder the dishonest man, but it doesn’t murder dishonesty. Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn’t murder hate.
The Civil Rights Movement brought many accomplishments to African Americans such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The key issues that African Americans fought for were voting rights, integration and racial equality. They were tired of the discrimination and humiliation they received as a result of the segregation laws imposed on them. “State laws mandated racial separation in schools, parks, playgrounds, restaurants, hotels, public transportation, theaters, restrooms and so on” (Blumberg 40). Lawsuits had been tried to gain rights such as the unsuccessful Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and the successful Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Although, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka declared the “separate but equal” clause unconstitutional, de facto segregation continued in the South. During the 1960s, two methods were used: nonviolence and violence. Violence proved to be ineffective since it perpetuated social tensions among Whites and Blacks. Nonviolence was the most effective method in bringing social change in America during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement because it attracted sympathy towards Black people, provoked positive media attention, and promoted unity among African Americans.
Martin Gansberg, who wrote “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police,” talks about how people reacted about not contacting police after a girl was attacked three times. Martin says, “The man explained that he had called the police after much deliberation. He had phoned a friend in Nassau County for advice, and then he had crossed the roof of the building to the apartment of the elderly woman to get her to make the call. ‘I didn’t want to get involved,’ he sheepishly told police” (122). His actions show that the one man who wanted to call the authorities was too scared to call. Norman Cousins talks about how heartless society is when it comes to death. Cousins says, “A young man by the name of Benny Paret was killed in the ring. The killing was seen by millions; it was on television. In the twelfth round, he was hit hard in the head several times, went down, was counted out, and never came out of the coma” (341). Even though it may shock people, it does not stop people from attending the next fight. The lack of concern people have towards death is a cause of the apathetic society we live
_____. “Violence and the Vulnerable Face of the Other: The Vision of Emmanuel Levinas on Moral Evil and Our Responsibility.” Journal of Social Philosophy 30 (1999): 29-45.
Knowing a victim of an unforgettable and unforgivable crime will cause a person to lose a type on innocence. However, witnessing the heinous violation of the victim is much stronger. After the witness sees and hears the exact event, it is nearly impossible to disregard his or her memory. This is true in the short story “In the Shadow of War.” The protagonist of the literary work, a young boy named Omovo, witnesses the killing of a woman.
Meadows, R.J. (2010) Understanding Violence and Victimization, 5th Edition, Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.
...ens should have more faith in the established institution’s ability to deliver justice over that of a vigilante serial killer, but for many, that is not the case. Second, Darkly Dreaming Dexter demonstrates that there is not as clear of a barrier between what is morally right and wrong as North American society sometimes believes, seeing as murder, which is usually regarded as undeniably wrong, can sometimes be justified and placed in the spectrum of acceptable behaviour. Blindly dividing actions up into right and wrong, then, is not only irresponsible, but also dangerous, as it can lead individuals to inappropriately oversimplify complex situations. Ultimately, then, a society that unwaveringly opposes all forms violence can be just as problematic as one that condones them.
Violence appears in many different shapes and forms and in some cases; it is hard to escape violence. As unfortunate as it sounds, everywhere we turn, all around the world, there is a footprint of violence in our society, in our workplace and in our home. There are many homes where parents beat each other and beat their children. There are many places where people are verbally and physically abused by others. There are also many places where racism reigns and people are hurt and violated because of their skin color, religion or gender. In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the author does not only talk about violence, she also shows us how a person confuses love with violence.
The role of violence in the liberation of peoples from systems of domination is necessarily entwined to the concept of freedom. Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon argue that violence, in various forms, is the only reasonable rebuttal to the abhorrent system of subjugation, whether it is in shape of something as transparent as apartheid to thinly veiled laws that take away the rights of humans under the capitalist system. To even understand the relationship between freedom and violence it has to be established what it is even meant by the phrase “violence” while simultaneously attempting to understand what means are necessary to achieve this end. Furthermore, what does it mean to be “violent” and is it always acceptable to use violence as a device to achieve a certain objective, even if that goal is something as vital as human emancipation? Conversely, the argument against the use of violence, in all its forms, to achieve freedom needs to be explored. The contrary argument that will be explored is from various texts of Martin Luther King Jr. and while our fundamental argument is opposed to King’s his views must still be taken into account if, for nothing else, to add structure to the argument at hand. It must be remembered that while the role of violence and freedom are necessarily bonded to one another this does not mean that violence is the only means to achieve freedom but that violence is the “best” way to achieve the ultimate goal of freedom.