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| Pathology Cult of violence WAR |
Robert Burrowes discusses
dark subconscious
Peace Pledge Union sees experiential conditioning, State
perpetrator
Excerpting and editing by
Carolyn Bennett
Resisters
“People who resist violence do so because they feel
courageous and powerful,” writes Australian activist and researcher Robert
Burrowes. “Because of their courage and power to act, they have no self-hatred
to project. 
They have a deep sense of self-worth
and can ascribe worth to others. They have well-developed feelings of
compassion, empathy, sympathy. They have a clear conscience. As any emotionally undamaged individual must do, they abhor violence and injustice. They know that
violence cannot achieve any desirable social outcome. They love the truth and
do what they can to expose it ─ even at risk to themselves. Perhaps most
important of all: they are self-loving, which means that they can love others
too. An individual who does not truly love self cannot love another. Self-love
is true love. |
| U.S. drone attack: Yemen |
In the article “Understanding Obama and other people who
kill” published today at Pravda Ru Robert J. Burrowes writes this.
“When Barack Obama orders the U.S. military to attack people
in another country, whether in a war or by using an illegal drone strike, he
knows that people ─ including innocent men, women and children (called ‘collateral
damage’) ─ will be killed. How can he do
this?
 |
| U.S. drone attack: Pakistan |
“When [Israel’s Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu orders
Israeli military attacks on unarmed Palestinians, he knows that innocent men,
women and children will be killed. How
can he do this?
“When corporate executives such as Hugh Grant (chief of
Monsanto) and Gregory R. Page (boss of Cargill) make decisions that deprive
people ─ including those in Africa, Asia and Central/South America ─ of the
means of economic survival, they know that people will be exploited and killed.
How can they do this?”
 |
| Israeli government attacks Syria |
Perpetrators
It takes someone with a particular psychological profile to
kill people. Most of us cannot do it even when ordered to do so. Studies have
shown that even in combat situations under enemy fire many soldiers either do
not shoot or ‘aim to miss’.
P
|
eople
who deliberately kill have suffered an extraordinary level of terror and
violence during their own childhood and this leaves them particularly badly
emotionally damaged. This might be concealed behind a good-looking face
and/or a superficially pleasant personality. So what is the psychological
profile of a killer ─ whether political leader, corporate executive, terrorist
or someone who commits murder on our streets?”
 |
| Israeli soldiers attack Palestinian youth |
Burrowes says “careful scrutiny and analysis reveals that
these individuals share at least 23 feelings/attributes most of which are
invisible to casual observation.” These are eight of the 23 he mentions and refers
to a “Why Violence?” link.
“Fundamentally,” he says, “perpetrators of violence are
terrified, particularly terrified of individuals who perpetrated violence
against them when they were children”; but this terror remains beneath the
level of consciousness.
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| Law Enforcement and Society |
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| Law Society |
So extreme is this “terror … that archetype [model, prime
example, standard] perpetrators are too
terrified to consciously identify to themselves their own perpetrator (one or
both parents and/or other significant adults who are supposed to love them) and
to say that it is this individual or these individuals who are violent and
wrong.”
 |
| U.S. invasion of Iraq |
This incapacity to defend themselves “leads to the fourth
and fifth attributes - a deep sense of powerlessness and of self-hatred, the
latter attribute negating any sense of personal self-worth, leaving them with
an extremely negative perception of the self as the sixth attribute: ‘bad’. (These attributes are deeply
embedded in the unconscious and likely inapparent to others).
 |
| Iraqis still payingCosts of war |
“The extreme social terrorization experience to which
archetype perpetrators of violence have been subjected means [attribute seven]
that feelings of love, compassion, empathy and sympathy, as well as the mental
function of conscience are prevented from developing.
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| Afghans paying Costs of endless war |
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| Palestinian woman and child attack rubble |
Devoid of conscience and these
feelings [of love, compassion, empathy, and sympathy], perpetrators can inflict
violence on others without experiencing the feedback that conscience, love,
compassion, empathy and sympathy would provide.
“Archetype perpetrators of violence have [attribute eight] a
delusional belief in the effectiveness and morality
of violence.”
Experiential conditioning, State culprit
In a recent statement concerning its opposition to militarism,
the Peace Pledge Union, Britain’s oldest non-sectarian pacifist organization, puts
it this way, “Courage in the face of danger is one thing but calling on [the young]
to kill others in combat is surely a perversion of courage.
“Murder
is murder.
|
Calling it by other names does not alter that fact. Transporting
men and women many miles to conflict areas and equipping them for armed
conflict takes more
It takes a supportive population
whose minds process events according to internalized attitudes. But even
embedded values need reinforcing. Much of this happens from early childhood
onward.
We learn the supposed value of
force and threats from comics, films, television, and now digital games.
 |
| Refugees - Syria |
Such media offer narratives of
problem-solving that frequently involve violence and make (albeit virtual)
destruction ‘fun’.
“By their late teens, even if they have escaped the siren
call of cadet forces or other military blandishments, most young people have an
unquestioned belief that wars are often inevitable and sometimes necessary:
there can, they believe, be ‘good’ wars. They may campaign vigorously against
some wars, as many have done against Iraq (‘No blood for oil’); but that is far
from being against war.
 |
| Child poverty |
“In such small ways militaristic values are transmitted from
generation to generation.”
But there is also the overarching organized, ongoing violence
of the State. Quoting Charles Tilly, the American sociologist, political
scientist, and historian who wrote about the relationship between politics and
society, Jan Melichar notes ─
‘States made war and war made the State.’
 |
| Refugees - Kenya |
In war, she writes, “European states provided the model for
other states, establishing their monopoly of organized violence within
territorial confines.” U.S. militarism emerged more slowly out of its failure in
Vietnam then flowered in the post-911 era. Thus, if we are to grasp more fully “what
is at issue, we should frequently remind ourselves of the intimate and
incestuous relationship between war and the State.”
Nonviolence works and it is right
W
|
riting on nonviolence, co-authors Thomas Weber and Robert J.
Burrowes said, “As a method of activism, nonviolence guarantees no automatic
and unfailing success. No method of conflict resolution does. [But] to those
who are pessimistic about the ability of nonviolence to resolve conflicts, (in Gandhi’
words), ‘Have you tried? I have, and it works’…
 |
| Peace Pledge Union |
Nonviolence works because it seeks
to deal with causes rather than symptoms of conflict. 
Its rationale, as the preferred
method of political activism or philosophy of life, rests on twin convictions: nonviolence
‘works’ instrumentally and it is ‘right’ ethically.
Sources and notes
“Understanding Obama and other people who kill” (by Robert
J. Burrowes notes to see also “Why Violence?” at http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence
for full 23 feelings/attributes of those who commit violence, http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com),
May 13, 2013,
Copyright © 1999-2013, «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our
materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The
opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view
of PRAVDA.Ru's editors, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/13-05-2013/124539-obama_people_kill-0/
Robert Burrowes
In another place Robert J. Burrowes writes that he was “a
member of the international Gulf Peace Team – the 73 people from 16 countries
who camped on the border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia in an attempt to prevent
the Gulf War in January 1991; [and later] wrote a strategic analysis of this
experience in ‘The Persian Gulf War and the Gulf Peace Team’ (in Yeshua
Moser-Puangsuwan and Thomas Weber, eds., Nonviolent
Intervention Across Borders: A Recurrent Vision, Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i, 2000).” He also “wrote the typology of nonviolent intervention on
which ‘Cross-border Nonviolent Intervention: A Typology’ is based.
Burrowes maintains the Global Nonviolence Network (GNN)
website, which lists nonviolence organizations by region and country around the
world.
He says in his biographical material that he has been
involved since 1981 in many nonviolent action campaigns in relation to peace,
environmental and social justice issues. Among them: refusing to vote (since 1981), the Franklin River Blockade
(1982-1983), the campaign to end nuclear warship visits to Australian ports
(1987-1988), the campaign to remove U.S. military bases from Australian soil
(1989), campaigns to halt the destruction of old-growth forests in
south-eastern Australia (1989-1990) and the campaign to end duck shooting
(1989-1990).
He says he decided at the age of 14 (1966) to devote his “life
to answering two questions –
Why are human beings violent?
How can this violence be ended?
And he has “engaged in an ongoing research effort since 1966
to find answers to these two questions in order to improve the effectiveness of
our collective effort to end human violence (and thus avert extinction at our
own hand).” In a listing of the “most “important documents” from his research and
nonviolent activism, he includes:
The People’s Charter to Create a
Nonviolent World
Why Violence?
The Flame Tree Project to Save Life
on Earth
The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense:
A Gandhian Approach
The Political Objective and
Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions
Nonviolent Activism and [the]
Police
Minimizing the Risk of Police
Violence
Should I be Arrested?
Nonviolent Intervention in
Interpersonal Conflict
Robert J. Burrowes, Daylesford, Victoria, Australia
http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com/
Peace Pledge Union
The Peace Pledge Union is the oldest non-sectarian pacifist organization
in Britain. It came into being in a climate of growing anxiety about the
likelihood of another major war.
Following a huge response to a letter published in the
Manchester Guardian (now the Guardian-UK) by Dick Sheppard in 1934 a mass
meeting in the Albert Hall of the people who responded to the letter agreed to
form an organization to be known as the Peace Pledge Union.
Its membership grew quickly – tens of thousands, then
hundreds of thousands by the start of the Second World War.
“Why Peace Pledge Union? The letter, written by Dick
Sheppard that started it all, invited people to send him a postcard giving an
undertaking - making a pledge - to ‘renounce war and never again to support
another’.”
The pledge became the basis of membership. Today the pledge
and its wider implications continue to inform what the PPU does and the basis
on which it acts. It is linked with similar organizations throughout the world
through the War Resisters International.
The pledge has changed slightly over the years though its
central values remain the same.
http://www.ppu.org.uk/ppu/index.html
Peace Matters, Jan Melichar, http://www.ppu.org.uk/peacematters/peacematters/2009/2009a1.html
Charles Tilly (b. May 27, 1929; d. April 29, 2008): an
American sociologist, political scientist, and historian who wrote on the
relationship between politics and society. He was the Joseph L. Buttenwieser
Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.
During his career, Charles Tilly taught at the University of
Delaware, Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the University of
Michigan, The New School, and Columbia University. At Columbia, he was the
Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science. He wrote more than 600
articles and 51 books and monographs; and was a member of the National Academy
of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American
Philosophical Society, the Sociological Research Association and the Ordre des
Palmes Academiques. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Tilly&printable=yes
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