Violence Begets Violence

Creating Peace Entails Staying within the Eye of the Storm

Many have been messaging me as to my interpretation of what has happened with the events of yesterday. And so I will take a break from publishing my last chapter and answer: a violent act is the end product of a long process, which we have seen coming for a long time.  We see how incendiary rhetoric, incitement to insurrection, endorsement of violence as a political tool, and paranoid, polarizing thinking contribute to an overall climate of violence that benefits no one. This violent incident will likely give rise to further violent rhetoric and weaponization for further violence and “revenge”.

There are two tasks we now have: not to be caught up in the madness and to conceive of creative ways to generate peace.  Flexibility and resourcefulness are the domains of health, and if we can reach that state, we will be able to access the infinite possibilities that are before us, no matter what situation we are in.  By protecting our own mental health, we facilitate our getting there.  Finding the quiet space at the center of a hurricane and taking the time for enjoyment and appreciation of life are not selfish activities but quintessential foundations for finding solutions.  It is our strength.  Anger, fear, and vindictiveness can only destroy, but love and peace create true change.

Ironically, I have been the one shouting from the rooftops for the last eight years: “We are in a public health emergency that could be the end of humanity!”  But now that we are in the storm, I will say: “It is now time to pause, relax, and ground ourselves in eternal things, so that the answer may come.”  And the more urgent and more dire the situation, the more we need this inner stillness.

One of my Substack readers is psychiatrist and author Dr. Ravi Chandra, who wrote an excellent piece for Psychology Today, which I excerpt here:

The last 24 hours have probably been one of the most overwhelming in the American collective psyche in a long time, perhaps rivaled only by the events of January 6….  Violence and the transmission of violence itself are the problem.  An active program of non-violence, in speech and deed, is the solution.

I encourage us all to care for our mental health and our social well-being right now, and remember that, as my own personal writing card says, “kindness is the only instruction.”  There’s a lot of heat right now.  What can we do to bring out the best?...

I fall back on these five things: mindfulness, compassion, relationship, creativity, and insight.  This supports the building blocks of mental health and social well-being: cognition (reason), empathy, and relatedness.

But how?

1. Be aware of catastrophizing and political “haymaking.”  For the long-term wins for democracy and greater safety for all, we have to resist those pulls for our attention and energy.

2. Take time out.  A media break might be needed, even as we might feel we need more information, maybe we need more mental and emotional space to hold the disconnection and anguish that comes at us from this difficult world.

3. Reflect on the role of hostility and violence in your own life.  Have you been the recipient of hostility and violence?  Their agent?  Most of us have elements of both, I think.

4. Do your best not to blame one party or another for the hostility and violence.  Sometimes naming and deconstructing how hostility, violence, and “splitting” are practiced and affect us can help, but try not to harden your mind against perceived “enemies.”  Instead, incline yourself towards soothing friends and benevolent people in your life.  Incline benevolence towards yourself, and being a good friend to your own distress.

5. Keep your eyes on the emotional disturbance that is being transmitted.  At my best, I can realize we are receiving a “historical transmission” of anguish, generated by the quest for power, and underneath it, feelings of powerlessness, vulnerability, and insecurity.

6. Ask yourself, is it possible to cultivate power that doesn’t make others feel powerless, but rather empowers all, and inclines us to the greater good?

7. Do you have a spiritual or secular tradition that might help you contain your hostility?  If so, can you remember to practice it?  I use self-compassion, mindfulness, and loving kindness to be with difficult emotions, rather than allowing myself to “become” them.

8. Use all of this to deepen your understanding of how you suffer, and how the culture suffers.

9. Can you pledge to do your best not to transmit suffering, but to transform it?

10. Continue to remind yourself to cultivate inner peace, and advocate for reason, empathy, and relationship.

There is a great deal of wisdom in this, and therefore I hope you will take the time to practice, cultivate “a cool head and a warm heart,” as he says, and remember who we truly are.  We are not our temporary madness, or our anger and aggression, but wonders of life and miracles of being that all our scientific and intellectual endeavors have not figured out.  And of what we have within our potential, we have yet to discover limits.

A great gift of mental health knowledge is the discovery of just how much the outside world is of our own creation.  Once we overcome our own denial, projection, resistance, and rigidity, we learn that we can shift from being a creator of problems to a creator of solutions.  As we do this and remove our own barriers, we discover more and more just how much is under our control.  We recognize that most of our obstacles had been internal.  As we free ourselves from this oppression, we also free our vast capacities, talents, generosity, and joy.  Problems begin to disappear.  This is the state of health that all human beings seek but often do not know how to attain.  Even the most violent offenders soften, once they can believe that this is available to them, too—since all their defenses stem from the belief that they could not have this.  As we share with one another the possibilities, through direct experience and demonstration, this vision can spread in a way that is powerful and empowering.  Though not as instantly forceful as the contagion of pathology, it is more deeply influential and enduring.  Above all, it is real—unlike the guise of power that authoritarianism takes on, because it believes, in truth, that it cannot have the real.  Find out more about the difference in my new book, The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Threat to American Democracy and All Humankind, available through paid subscription.