What is "violence"?

[Grinner]

I read a quote recently:


The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.

As I trace through my experiences, I can see how one might categorize various instances of moral failings beneath these headings. Rape. Adultery. These two fit easily under "pleasure without conscience", since they represent taking pleasure without consideration of how one's actions will affect the other party. I just watched "The Big Short", a film about the 2008 financial crisis. It's emotionally-charged and completely biased, but given the practices that led up to the aforementioned crisis, there's no question that they fall beneath "commerce without morality". Over the years of interacting with others on the internet, I've met many very knowledgeable individuals, but some of those individuals haven't always employed that knowledge to, in my opinion, worthwhile ends. Unfortunately, I can class myself in that last group.

A lot of the listed indicators seem to involve deceit and dishonesty, either with oneself or with other people. That, or just being plain inconsiderate. Arrogance is probably involved on a fundamental level, too. Personally, I'd add something about crying wolf to the list, but that's not really useful to the problem at hand.

Now, that's all good and helpful for untangling this puzzle, but it doesn't seem to provide an obvious answer the question. The term "violence" in the quote doesn't seem to refer physical conflict, although it could refer to social conflict, which sometimes manifests as physical conflict. Or might the term refer to something a little more elemental to human nature? Any ideas?

[Lethologica]

The aphorism talks about the roots of violence. The things described are not necessarily violence themselves; they are phenomena that give rise to violence. It's not clear to me that Gandhi meant to describe anything particularly unorthodox with the term 'violence' in this quote.

[Razade]

This should help.

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

[Crow]

It's a tool. It exists, it will always exist, and it has many different uses. No need to overthink this.

[AMFV]

Violence is the use of physical force against another person. That's pretty much it.

[Eldariel]

Violence is the use of physical force against another person. That's pretty much it.

Though since the 1600's it's also been used in the sense "improper treatment", which comprises a much wider scope of meanings.

[Scarlet Knight]

When I read the quote, I see it as implying not only can these roots lead you to be physically violent ( your rape analogy) but also others to violence - Commerce without morality may lead to someone gettiing violent because he was cheated or Politics without principles leading to civil war. Practice doen't alway make you violent, but will lead to you being caught up in violence.

[Themrys]

Now, that's all good and helpful for untangling this puzzle, but it doesn't seem to provide an obvious answer the question. The term "violence" in the quote doesn't seem to refer physical conflict, although it could refer to social conflict, which sometimes manifests as physical conflict. Or might the term refer to something a little more elemental to human nature? Any ideas?

Are you really confused about what violence is?

I think that is pretty obvious, which is why most people only talk about what leads to violence and how to prevent it.

[Grinner]

Though since the 1600's it's also been used in the sense "improper treatment", which comprises a much wider scope of meanings.

Eldariel seems to understand what I'm getting at.

It's possible that Gandhi was speaking of simple physical conflict when he said that. I have no idea what he said that in reference to. However, it seems to me that, regardless of the original context, the statement could be generalized to encompass more than mapping unscrupulous behaviors to the occurrence of physical conflict. It's almost like...Well, it's hard to explain. If any of you are familiar with the term "dukkha", it's like I could build a model of dukkha and thus understand an important part of the human experience.

Physical violence is merely one avenue of attacking someone else. There exist other ways to harm them. For instance, public humiliation and harassment seems popular these days. So are lawsuits. So if we think of violence as being an umbrella term for various ways of harming other people (be it physically, emotionally, financially, etc.), my question is "What lies at the heart of violence?".


When I read the quote, I see it as implying not only can these roots lead you to be physically violent ( your rape analogy) but also others to violence - Commerce without morality may lead to someone gettiing violent because he was cheated or Politics without principles leading to civil war. Practice doen't alway make you violent, but will lead to you being caught up in violence.

That's an interesting perspective.

I heard a year or two back that an epidemiologist had compared the spread of a contagion to occurrences of violence (in the simple, physical sense) and found that both tend to spread in similar patterns.

[Anarion]

I'll just leave this youtube link on the philosophical aspects of the topic here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyitF-6tBu4

[OldTrees1]

I read a quote recently:
Now, that's all good and helpful for untangling this puzzle, but it doesn't seem to provide an obvious answer the question. The term "violence" in the quote doesn't seem to refer physical conflict, although it could refer to social conflict, which sometimes manifests as physical conflict. Or might the term refer to something a little more elemental to human nature? Any ideas?

As others said that quote is looking at a list (complete or incomplete) of the Roots (origin or source of something) of Violence.

It does not specify what kinds of violence it is talking about. We could look at the list for answers but the list is structured as <Beneficial thing> without <Moral thing> which can easily extend beyond just physical violence or be just looking at the causes of physical violence. So the next step is to quote the Paragraph the quoted sentence comes from.


Physical violence is merely one avenue of attacking someone else. There exist other ways to harm them. For instance, public humiliation and harassment seems popular these days. So are lawsuits. So if we think of violence as being an umbrella term for various ways of harming other people (be it physically, emotionally, financially, etc.), my question is "What lies at the heart of violence?".

Define "lies at the heart".
Are you asking "What are the causes of Violence", "What are the universal traits of Violence (aka if you remove everything that differs between kinds of violence, what remains?)", something else ... ?


Are you really confused about what violence is?

I think that is pretty obvious, which is why most people only talk about what leads to violence and how to prevent it.

People also talk about borders. What is like violence but just shy of being violence? If Bob coerces John with a "Do X or die", is it still violence if the "or die" was through inaction on Bob's part? What if the "or die" was through indirect action on Bob's part (stealing John's necessities for example)? Etc.

[A.A.King]

Eldariel seems to understand what I'm getting at.

It's possible that Gandhi was speaking of simple physical conflict when he said that. I have no idea what he said that in reference to. However, it seems to me that, regardless of the original context, the statement could be generalized to encompass more than mapping unscrupulous behaviors to the occurrence of physical conflict. It's almost like...Well, it's hard to explain. If any of you are familiar with the term "dukkha", it's like I could build a model of dukkha and thus understand an important part of the human experience.

Physical violence is merely one avenue of attacking someone else. There exist other ways to harm them. For instance, public humiliation and harassment seems popular these days. So are lawsuits. So if we think of violence as being an umbrella term for various ways of harming other people (be it physically, emotionally, financially, etc.), my question is "What lies at the heart of violence?".


You don't really need an umbrella term for the various ways of harming other people, that is to say a term other than: "harming other people". I also think that you shouldn't try to expand the scope of 'violence' to include other things than "physical violence" (btw: physical violence using the currently definition of violence is a tautology)

Other than that, you are right: Violence is merely one avenue of attacking some else. There are other ways to harm people which are therefor not 'violence'. Attacking someone with a lawsuit isn't violence, because if it was then a "wrongful suit" would turn into a "violent crime" which I think you'll instinctively see as a wrong classification. Violence has a meaning and based on that meaning we get other words which stop making sense if you change the meaning of 'violence'. So just to re-iterate: Don't think of violence as an umbrella term for harming other people, think of violence as violence and think of 'harming other people' as 'harming other people'

If we now re-phrase your question we get "What lies at the heart of [harming other people]?" which is more obviously an incomplete question. Are you asking about what makes someone want to (try and) harm someone else [insert third question here]?

[Jay R]

There is no English words that has a single meaning that covers all contexts. Trying to find one and apply is blindly must fail. [The Oxford English Dictionary gives over thirty definitions and sub-definitions for "the".]

This quote is not literal. It is not attempting to provide a dictionary definition; it's trying to make a social point. To that end, it's expanding the idea of violence beyond its roots in physical confrontation.

The legal definition of "violence", from Black's Law Dictionary, is "unjust or unwarranted exercise of force, usually with the accompaniment of vehemence, outrage, or fury."

But it also provides this quote from Esco Operating Corporation v. Kaplan: "Violence in labor disputes is not limited to physical contact or injury, but may also include picketing conducted with misleading signs, false statements, publicity, and veiled threats by words and acts."

So once again, we see that the fundamental meaning of violence is purely physical, but that it can sometimes be expanded beyond that foundation.

[rajgupta]

Id say Gandhi is pretty spot on

[shawnhcorey]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/):
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Violence is violating your Inalienable Rights to Life and Security of Person.

[Grinner]

That's certainly something interesting to chew on.

[Crow]

Not liberty, eh?

[shawnhcorey]

Not liberty, eh?

Hadn't thought of that. You could be right.

[laotze]

Use of any nonconsensual force against another.