THE BIGGER PICTURE Shalini SinhaIn our world, we have become very used to seeing humans being violent to other humans. It is happening in every corner of the earth, every country we have created and has entered every home.
Violence affects every one of us deeply - if we are not currently being subjected to it, the fear of it has shaped our lives.
Some people say violence is natural - that domination is normal and thus, brutality is inevitable. This is not true, however. The proof of this lies in how difficult we find it to watch violence. If war or torture is reported on the news for any length of time, we turn away.
We need it sterilised and objectified. We need the humanity taken out of it in order to carry on. If we are to see the victim as a real person, it becomes unbearable. If we were to feel any sense of power, we would have to put a stop to it immediately.
As a young woman growing up in Canada, I was trained on how to survive a sexual assault. The main information we were given was to talk to our attacker and get him to see our humanity. We were told that the perpetrator had to dehumanise us in order to wage the attack. If we had been overpowered, breaking this disillusion would be the only possible way of bringing the encounter to a safe end.
This fact of human violence is quite consistent.
Those of us who have been trained to be violent - soldiers for example - are taught to dehumanise their "enemy".
Propaganda is a critical element of the mobilisation of any force. People are put in suppressive, isolating situations where their control is taken away and their confusion is focused.
These are neither reasonable nor natural human environments.
Given how hurtful it is to watch violence, it is ludicrous that we would spend so much time and money recreating it as an aspect of "entertainment".
Video games and violent movies are so commonplace today, one is seen as a rigid, controlling prude to make a protest against it. Still, I remain unconvinced of the value of re-enacting or watching humans destroying other humans.
The justifications for violence in entertainment include either that it is fun or that it depicts a realistic aspect of life.
While normalising the annihilation of others as fun raises an obvious set of questions, I am also not sure that this intense focus on violence provides an accurate picture of our reality.
I notice in our society, most of us are confused with the difference between anger and violence. Anger is a positive human emotion, a constructive force focusing our attention to a trauma or injustice. It is a call to take notice, a call for action, and when channelled with vision and real empowerment, it can become a force of transformation.
Violence, on the other hand, is a means to overpower. It occurs when we act out our anger in disempowered ways.
It is meant to control not to transform - a reflex action requiring no intelligence. It is distinctly an issue of enforcing power when we feel no power ourselves, leaving us with no ability to move forward. Inherent to being violent is an insistence on making someone else responsible for and the solution to our struggles.
I have an even greater concern around violence, however. Whether or not you can remember violence as part of your immediate history, its legacy has affected all of us.
Violence - be it physical or psychological control - is how any oppression or systematic inequality was first established. Chronic fear of that violence, even after the real experience is long in the past, is how these systems are kept in place.
There is not a single person on our planet whose daily behaviour is not affected by our histories of violence.
Many women have been left with a compulsion to please and think of others' needs first. We take for granted our careful decisions about walking alone at night.
Many men have been left isolated and feeling that they have to solve all their struggles on their own.
They need to continuously plan on how not to evoke the violence of other men.
Although we often find it easier to focus on solving the problems of the "victims" of violence, we need to fight for those who have learned to use violence as much as those who have been subjected to it. Ending violence in human society will involve breaking the cycles of powerlessness for everyone.
Rather than recreating "entertainment" that encourages us to tear each other apart, we need to find ways to reach for and fight for each other.
We need to listen to each other's struggles, holding out the ultimate reality that we can be responsible for ourselves and care for each other.
Shalini Sinha is an independent producer, counsellor and journalist. She is a counsellor on equality issues. She has lectured on Women's Studies in UCD and co-presents Mono, RTÉ's intercultural programme.