From Violence to Peace

By Joseph Langen

Why is there so much violence in the world and what can you do about it?

Violent incidents appear in the news on a daily basis. Different kinds of violence surround us in our communities and throughout the world. It has likely touched you or someone you know in one way or another. This book will help you understand violence, see where it comes from and what you can do to reduce it. Here is what you will discover:

•The many faces of violence–Find out what violence is and explore theories which explain it. See how violence fits in with human emotions. Put violence in perspective.

•How we got to this point–Learn about the process of becoming angry. Consider a short history of human violence. See the various kinds of violence. See how violence can arise within you. See why people resort to violence. Learn how your family, community and government can encourage violence.

•How religion fits in–Consider religion across the ages, some of the main religious traditions and how violence and terrorism relate to religion. How can you be at peace with God?

•How you can find peace–Learn how you can find peace within yourself. Find out how to have more peaceful relationships with others.

•A closer look at the worst problems– Consider the problems of domestic violence, sexual violence, school violence, criminal justice contributions, terrorism, random violence and contributions of the media.

•Learn some tools to use in doing your part- Consider earth's needs, what legacy you will leave your children, and on what levels you can contribute to the process of peace?

None of these challenges are easy to engage in. But playing your part is not just for your benefit. Everyone you know or care about has a stake in the conflict between violence and peace. So does the future of your children and of Earth. Would you like to know more about the path which lies ahead?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Langen
• Release date: Oct 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463761885

Joseph Langen

Personal Born in Dunkirk, NY, he moved to Rochester, NY when his father returned from his navy duties in World War II. He considered being a priest, and spent nine years in the seminary and monastery. He was married for twenty nine years and raised three children. He is currently in a wonderful relationship and lives in Leroy, NY. When he returned to the world at large after his monastery stay, he decided to explore psychology and switched from a philosophy major in the monastery to psychology and received his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He stayed in Buffalo to receive a master's degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. Then he moved to the University of Illinois for his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. Along the way during his training, Gowanda Psychiatric Center and Chenute Air Force Base Counseling Center gave him practical experience. Work Life After graduating, he moved to Philadelphia where he worked for two years at Temple University Counseling Center. Next he spent two years at De La Salle In Towne, an experimental day treatment center for delinquent boys. Then he came back to Western New York and worked at Genesee County Mental Health in Batavia. Being in a rural area with limited resources, he learned to work with a great variety of people of all ages. After eleven years, he decided to return to Rochester where he grew up and took a job at DePaul Mental Health where he learned about family therapy, ending up as supervisor of the children's treatment program. By 1990, he felt ready to be more on my own and became an independent contractor at a practice in the Buffalo area. Eventually he moved the rest of the way into private practice and returned to work in Batavia. He has since retired from psychology practice and now writes full time. He also worked for three years as an AmeriCorps volunteer at GO ART! in Batavia, NY. Writing He began writing short stories in the 1980's for his own amusement and published one. In 1990. When he began private practice, he started writing a quarterly newsletter for his referral sources. Eventually he converted this to a biweekly newspaper column now published online as Sliding Otter News. These articles formed the basis of two of his books, Commonsense Wisdom for Everyday Life and: Navigating Life: Commonsense Reflections for the Voyage. In light of his seminary and monastery background, he took an interest in the priest-sexual abuse crisis and thought back to his cloistered years. Pondering these years led to his memoir, Young Man of the Cloth. When he realized that no one had told the priest abuse story from the priest's point of view, he decided to write what he had learned from his research and personal experience about abusive priests as a novel, The Pastor's Inferno. He has published the following books available in paperback and Ebook formats: - Commonsense Wisdom for Everyday Life, thoughts on the events of ordinary life, - Navigating Life: Commonsense Reflections for the Voyage, a book of reflections about life's joys and predicaments and what to do about them. - Young Man of the Cloth- a memoir of the author's nine years in a Catholic seminary and monastery. - The Pastor's Inferno- a novel about an abusive priest in search of redemption. - Release Your Stress and Reclaim Your Life- a comprehensive look at what stress is, how it affects you and what you can do about it. - Make the Best of Your Teen Years: 105 Ways to Do It. A book for teens consisting of poetry by a teen, stories about teens and narrative based on interviews with teens. -From Violence to Peace- Understanding violence and learning how to deal with it in your life and in the world. -How To Transform Your Anger and Find Peace- Understanding your anger and that of others and how to deal with it constructively. -Stress Briefly Noted is a condensed version of Release Your Stress and Reclaim Your Life, available FREE in Ebook format only from various distributors. What To Do About Violence is a brief Ebook on the nature of violence and how to approach it at personal, family, community and government levels. It is also available free from various distributors He also maintains four blogs on Wordpress: - Chats with My Muse Calliope - Make the Best of Your Teen Years - Release Your Stress and Reclaim Your Life. - Reconsidering violence -Anger in America -What To Do About Violence He distributes Sliding Otter News a free newsletter featuring excerpts from his books, his original articles and links to articles by other authors on the themes of finding inner peace and living in harmony with others. A free subscription to Sliding Otter News is available at http://www.slidingotter.com/sign-up-for-free-newsletter. There are no commitments required and you can discontinue your subscription at any time. He welcomes your comments on his writing at [e-mail]. Visit his Pinterest page at http://www.pinterest.com/jglangen/

Book preview

From Violence

To Peace

Joseph G. Langen

Sliding Otter Publications

www.slidingotter.com

Copyright ©2018 Joseph G. Langen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form from or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or other without the prior written permission of the author.

Smashwords edition

Produced in the United States of America

Sliding Otter Publications

5 Franklin Ave.

LeRoy, NY 14482

www.slidingotter.com

[e-mail]

Foreword

Intolerance itself is a form of violence

and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.

~Mahatma Gandhi~

Our culture is beset by frustration and rage. We spend our time blaming each other for our current feelings. In the process, we ignore our own contribution to the current state of affairs. It’s somebody else’s fault. If others acted the way I think they should, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Sound familiar? Find a quiet place and listen to what is going on inside your head. Do you feel frustration, rage and blame for others as part of your feelings and thinking? Are you tired of feeling this way?

In this book we will see how we arrived in this position. We will consider how our national culture and the world culture as they exist today hem us in and make us shortsighted. The rest of the book will examine alternatives for us to choose instead. We will see the choices that lie before us and the consequences of our choices for better or worse.

We have already taken many steps toward destroying the world’s environment that makes human life possible. Continuing in our current direction leaves us with the likelihood of destroying the ecosystem which allows human life to flourish. So what does that have to do with the topic of this book? To start moving in a different direction, we need to regain our ancestors’ ancient perspectives on our place in the universe and on Earth. We also need to regain a sense of being a respectful part of the Earth rather than mindlessly continuing to plunder its resources for our own selfish needs. After all, Earth is the only home we have. If we destroy it and all its bounty, where and how will we live?

Let me tell you a little about the plan for this book. In the first chapter we will look at violence. The second chapter explores how we arrived at the unrest we find ourselves in. Next we will explore the role of religion and the part it plays in the violent tremors shaking human society. Then we will look at peaceful alternatives to violence in various parts of our lives. We will consider what it would take to be at peace with ourselves, each other, as well as with God and the universe. We will then consider some special cases of violence. We will also explore the tools we have at our disposal to bring about a more peaceful life for ourselves and those we meet on our life paths.

None of this will happen overnight. Over the centuries we have gone a considerable distance toward not being able to deal with each other at all and have also made good progress toward making Earth uninhabitable. It’s time to stop our ways of destruction and find ways to love ourselves, our planetary home and our fellow living creatures who inhabit Earth with us.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Beth Cahaney for her tireless and thorough editorial assistance. Thanks for Liz Green for insight to the needs of children and teens. Thanks to Bob Fussell for his insight on legal issues and for his constant support and understanding. Thanks to Carol Gomborone for supporting my writing and putting up with me while my mind was buried in this project. Thanks to Gerry Lanning for his assistance in keeping me focused.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. The Face of Violence

Chapter 2. Why We Are Not at Peace

Chapter 3. The Role of Religion

Chapter 4. What is Peace?

Chapter 5. Inner Peace

Chapter 6. Peace with Each Other

Chapter 7. Peace with God and the Universe

Chapter 8. Special Cases

Chapter 9. Tools for Peace and Harmony

Afterword

References

About the Author

1

The Face of Violence

Only humans engage in hostile aggression

performed for the purpose of harming the victim.

~Carol Englander~

*****

What you leave behind

is not what is engraved in stone monuments,

but what is woven into the lives of others.

~ Pericles~

Violence in the forefront

The pace of life has become faster and more frantic in recent years. Many people leave little time for thoughtful reflection or just sitting still. If you are older, you might remember when life was simpler and less hectic. If you are younger, you might have heard about more peaceful times from your relatives. How did we get from living in relative peace to being obsessed with anger and its expression in violence?

Many people lately have become alarmed by senseless violence around the world. Have you wondered whether there is a connection between the spate of suicide bombings in Europe and the mass shootings around the world, including those in this country? I have long considered a possible connection between these events and their relationship to fear and violence. Let’s take a closer look.

If you have ever studied psychology or even read about it casually, you are most likely familiar with the fight or flight response to fear. Depending on your circumstances, when faced with something fearful to you, you react by attacking the source of your fear (fight) if you think you can overcome it or avoiding it (flight) if it seems more powerful than you are. Fear and these responses to it follow a direct and immediate threat of attack such as by a wild animal or person. You don’t have time to think about it but automatically react almost immediately.

Anxiety is related to fear. The feared object might not be immediately present, but you might worry about what might happen or not happen in the future. You become anxious about your own welfare or that of your family. You might also fret about the possible behavior of other people or the course taken by the society in which you live.

If you are unable to find a way to relieve this anxiety, it builds and eventually leads to a sense of desperation or hopelessness. This can take place inside you and possibly remain invisible to others. You might find someone whom you trust with your concerns and share them or act on your anxiety by lashing out. Based on my experience and reading, it seems clear that everyone has a breaking point when they feel forced to act in ways not typical of them. Perhaps some people turn to violence as a way to be taken seriously for once. Some commit suicide when they feel their life challenges are more than they can bear.

The result can also be a lashing out toward other individuals or society in general if you see others as responsible for your predicament. If you could understand the workings of others’ minds, much of the violence in the world might not seem quite so senseless. Violence often makes sense to people feeling overwhelmed by life burdens. Most people tend to react emotionally to such situations without giving their response much thought.

If you could step back from your emotions, you might see more constructive possibilities and be able to choose one of them. Once you are overwhelmed, it might be too late to step back. You could make a practice of learning to take a break from your daily routine even when you are not under pressure. Then you will have a better idea how to handle stressful life events when they arise.

But what can you do about that pressured feeling? Perhaps the best place to start is to realize that technology has resulted in amazing inventions allowing you to contact others around the world in a matter of seconds. Yet the overload of immediate communication has resulted in separating people rather than bringing them closer together. Here is what General Omar Bradley had to say, The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we do about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

In the process of becoming immediately connected, we seem to have forgotten the purpose of communication. It is to help us understand each other and learn to work together to find harmonious ways for us to exist together. Instead, we use our channels of communication to persuade others to think as we do. We use them for entertainment, validating ourselves and for advertising.

Although our technology to some extent helps us understand each other, we need to do much more to appreciate each other in our search for meaningful lives. People who tend toward violence may have goals not much different from our own. Yet they might have had their dreams crushed along the way. They no longer see any path toward a fulfilling life and look for a way to express their frustration.

Violence is seen as aggressive behavior with the intent to cause physical or psychological harm. Hostile aggression also fits our definition of violence for the purposes of this book. It is performed in anger for the purpose of harming another person. By constant exposure to it, we have come to be more accustomed to violence in our society, regardless of the presence or absence of a relationship between perpetrator and victim.

Mindfulness is a way you can come to understand yourself and your inner workings. It involves reflecting on your thoughts and emotions rather than acting on them impulsively. It is a form of meditation and involves making your body and mind still.

You do this by being in a place of serenity free of distractions. You pay attention to your inner state as well as the sounds, sights and smells around you while making no judgments about anything in your awareness. This is a practice where you can exist in just this moment without any concern for the past or future. You can practice mindfulness in order to take your mind and your body down a more constructive path than it might have otherwise taken. Rather than letting your emotions direct your whole day, you could step back from them and put them in context. We will look at this in greater detail later.

Do you usually react with immediate anger when something upsets your routine and then let it consume you for the rest of the day? Do you look for someone to blame for everything that happens to you, when you might be at least partially responsible? Do you let your mood take over your decisions and actions rather than trying to look at situations more rationally? Are you always on alert to find someone at fault? These are a few things to explore in a calmer mood once you find one, but it takes practice to set this mood.

Many people tend to look closely at another person’s behavior, decide what they don’t like about it and then think about how that person should act to make them happy. Yet you are not in charge of what everybody else does or thinks. If you want to understand someone’s inner workings, the closest person at hand is yourself. You can start by looking without judgment at your own thoughts, feelings and actions and work toward understanding them. Again I am referring to mindfulness. With a better understanding of yourself, you will be in a better position to understand and make sense of others’ actions. Maybe you and they can even find ways to work together on handling emotions.

Maybe it’s hard for you to recall the last time you felt at peace. If so, you are not alone. Many people struggle to find peace in their lives. Others have given up on it as a lost cause. What happens when people give up on peaceful ways to address issues in their lives? Look at TV news or the newspaper. More and more frequently, what we think of as senseless violence grabs the headlines. Or maybe it’s just senseless to us readers and viewers.

Almost any act of violence has something behind it. Nobody says, It’s a nice day today. I think I’ll go out and shoot someone. Just because you can’t imagine yourself doing it does not mean rage to the point of murder does not arise in the hearts of others. All too often, citizens demand action to stop senseless crime. Legislators rush to pass laws to counteract it. Police departments crack down; Courts incarcerate more people. Yet crime continues on its merry way as if no one cared.

People tend to react to what they don’t like in an emotional way. Reasoning often makes little contribution to the process of reacting to what you consider assaults on your rights. Maybe there is a connection between emotional response and the trend toward ongoing violence. If you don’t understand the problem, you are unlikely to discover a solution to it unless you stumble over it. Perhaps understanding violence would give you some hints about how to respond to it in your community and worldwide.

Definition of violence

Among the 368 million citations for the definition of violence on Google, the following emerged:

Behavior involving physical force–intended to hurt, damage or kill someone or something

Strength of emotion–or an unpleasant or destructive natural force

The unlawful exercise of physical force–or intimidation by the exhibition of such force

Violence can be seen as a strong negativeemotion–or an action intended to hurt another being. It can also refer to illegal use of force or intimidation

That’s quite a range. In addition actions, the list includes violent intentions. It also includes natural forces such as weather which has no will of its own. Violence in nature is not included in the scope of this book.

For purposes of our examination of violence, we will consider the actions of people. Such actions can be intended to harm others or oneself. They include striking someone else with a fist or foot, pushing someone into the path of physical danger and violent language, such as threats. What you say can be interpreted as violent, although that depends on how it appears to the other person. Regardless of the old adage, names can hurt you.

How to understood violence

Over the years many theories have emerged to explain violence. Here are some of them:

Self control–Whether someone acts violently depends on what goes on inside him or her. This theory assumes that acting violently is a rational choice. A person decides to be violent for some reason. It also assumes that the person knows what he or she is doing and knows the consequences of violent action for oneself and for others but decides to go ahead with it anyway. It also assumes that the person has the option to act violently or not and chooses violence over other possible courses of action.

Social control–Here the person’s environment explains the violence. According to this theory, the person’s environment calls for violence which might be the only viable response available. Others in the immediate environs would act the same way, making violence almost a normal and expected response based on the context.

Cultural theory–Each culture has its