I Don't Think We Can Get Rid Of Violence
“I don’t think we can get rid of violence. Anger is in all of us. And greed is in all of us. We can’t get rid of it in ourselves. We can’t get rid of it in the society. But we can oppose the organization of it. The use of it as a tool, and as a threat.” That’s W. S. Merwin with a very helpful mouthful. It rewards careful reading.
Notice that he starts with “violence” but then invites us to consider its relation to “anger” and “greed. By the fourth sentence, violence (now “it”) can’t be easily disavowed by the reader. This is assuming the reader is willing to acknowledge the fact of their own anger. Mental health, y’all.
I share and expound a little on the Merwin passage in the afterword of Life’s Too Short To Pretend You’re Not Religious: Reframed & Expanded, but I thought it worth placing on the Internet again because it’s just that awesome. I bet a semester-long course could be based those seven sentences as the only required reading.
One required reading and one required viewing of a single image. I speak here of the comic panel above provided by Jack Kirby.
If you’re already steeped in the tradition and need no help determining who the “mighty survivor” is, feel free to skip this next sentence. For the unwashed, that hand belongs to Galan of Taa who, following a traumatic experience, is in the process of becoming Galactus, Devourer of Worlds.
“Learning to control his power,” we are told. “He created a unique body-suit which could help him regulate his awesome energies.”
What we do with our awesome energies is what we will have done with our lives. When I think of awesome energies, I think of anxiety and anger as well as love and affection and curiosity. We contain multitudes. We contain awesome energies.
'It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud. Nevertheless, live. Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.” That’s Gwendolyn Brooks speaking to us.
Let’s consider Merwin’s words again: “I don’t think we can get rid of violence. Anger is in all of us. And greed is in all of us. We can’t get rid of it in ourselves. We can’t get rid of it in the society. But we can oppose the organization of it. The use of it as a tool, and as a threat.”
I welcome your thoughts.
I am missing the footbridge from "anger" to "violence." They're almost equivocated in the quote. I am not necessarily saying that I disagree with the notion that violence will always be present AND that violence stems from anger (and greed). But I reject the notion that anger always results in violence.
I am also sometimes slow, so I could be missing something.
And as a proponent of nonviolent communication (NVC), I define violence pretty broadly to be anything that has the potential to do harm (including words & communication).
Hi David, we have corresponded a little bit before on X. I am a sociologist of religion and have found your work really inspiring but this post has struck me particularly because of something that happened to me after I suffered a huge breakdown/kind of psychosis after submitting my PhD which led to a huge outpouring of anger. Would you mind if I sent you a message asking about it? I’m spent seven years strugglign to overcome this anger because it is so far from who I was before.