Responses to Violence

Open

Take the offensive to achieve power/control to stop the violence. The assumption is that the only way violence will end is if a “better force” (usually ourselves”) uses more violence to overpower the other and end it.

Avoidance

Open

• Look the other way.

• Deny it exists.

• Pawn it off on someone else (police, military, others)

• Don’t get involved

• “Not my problem”

• Feel powerless / don’t know what to do

Accommodation

• Get used to it

• Accept it as unavoidable/necessary

• Think “I can’t change the system”

• Adapt to it

• Minimize it

• Normalize it

• Think “It’s not so bad”

This is especially true of cultural/structural violence which is not simply saying “Why can’t we all get along?” It’s a step-by-step process of transforming our attitudes, and grasping the complexity of structural violence and avoiding the pitfalls of moving too fast or too slow.

Nonviolence - the Third Way

• Neither fight nor flight

• The “way out of no way”

• We often talk about taking the low road or the high road

• The “low road” is the more traveled by; the easier one but one that leads to continued conflict

• The “high road” is often seen as passive (accommodating)