All violence is interconnected

Violence begets violence; healing begets justice

In our current power-over culture, no one escapes violence. Which means we all have a personal stake in ending it.

I want to connect the dots between events I once saw as separate, but now recognize as linked: my friends starting to disclose their rapes to me when I was 13. The genocide in Gaza. The latest mass shooting. And the better future I believe we can build for my niblings. For everyone.

Because coming to understand that all violence is interconnected—that violence begets violence, and the inverse: that healing begets justice, safety, and dignity—has profound implications for how we address violence.

Our personal stake

I invite you to call to mind the stories of your family tree. I bet they include a lot of violence and trauma. In my lineage, there are experiences of: sexual violence. Domestic violence. Child abuse. Forced institutionalization. Immigration/fleeing fascism. Addiction. Alcoholism. Overdose. Suicide. We have been survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators of violence. I’ve been all three.

And my family is white. The more recent immigrant side was poor/working class and then married into the middle class, but the other side is solidly managerial/upper-class and has been for generations. My parents own their home. I went to private middle and high school. Generational wealth paid for college. I’m now a homeowner.

And yet. My peers at those private schools were experiencing sexual violence. My family carries all kinds of trauma. I experienced a domestic violence relationship when I was 36.

Nationally, more people ages 1-44 die from injuries and violence than any other cause. Violence touches people of every race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age, and place. I’m not saying it’s the same for everyone. I’m saying that—in a culture based on domination—violence happens to us all. Which means we all have a responsibility to stop it.

All violence is interconnected: five concepts

1. “No one enters violence for the first time by committing it”

2. “It hurts to hurt someone”

3. Violence begets disconnection begets violence

4. Violence is a choice

5. “How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale”

1. “No one enters violence for the first time by committing it.”

This is organizer Mariame Kaba, quoting Danielle Sered. I’ve also heard, “hurt people hurt people.” Or that violence can create “victims of the victims.” Meaning: everyone who commits violence first had violence done to them. By a person. By an institution. By a system.

It’s important to note that this is not destiny. Surviving violence does not mean a person or people will later choose to commit violence.

And while one’s own trauma history is never an excuse for abuse, it is an explanation. One that helps point toward solutions—like the promise of prevention.

When I was in middle school and early high school, I bullied three people at my school. It felt wrong and icky in my body then, and it feels icky in my body to recall it now. I feel shame about it. Years later in therapy, I came to understand why I did it: I was experiencing emotional abuse at home, and because the central feature of abuse is powerlessness, I wanted to feel agency, to feel control in some part of my life. Unfortunately, the strategy I chose was to emotionally abuse other people. I believe two things could have prevented me from choosing to hurt those kids: 1) obviously, not being abused in the first place; or 2) having the right supports to deal with my pain in a healthy way, thereby interrupting the cycle of abuse.

Implications for how we end violence: Prevent violence from happening in the first place, which prevents it from rippling out across families, communities, and generations. We’re seeing prevention programs work around the world for community violence, sexual violence, domestic violence, and more.

2. “It hurts to hurt someone”

In her TED Talk, social psychologist Maryann Jacobi Gray describes moral injury—the distress we feel when we do something that goes against our moral beliefs.

Because it hurts to hurt someone.

I believe it also hurts to hurt the land: destroying forests, removing mountaintops, poisoning rivers. One of the most heartbreaking things about living in western Oregon (timber country) is seeing clear-cuts. They mar the mountainsides all over. Ever since I was a kid, seeing a clear-cut makes my stomach clench, my throat tighten, and my eyes prick with tears. It’s the same sensations I experience when I see a person get injured. It’s pain and grief.

Hurting someone, even unintentionally, creates a “toxic storm of guilt, shame, disconnection, alienation, and defensiveness,” says Gray. It disrupts our lives and relationships, compromising belonging—a universal human need.

In our current economic system, we are all experiencing moral injury all the time. Because we live with the knowledge that the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the products we use are made by hurting people and the land. It takes 31 slaves to support my lifestyle alone.

The Good Place captures this:

On top of that, Americans live with the dissonance and distress of knowing that we contribute to violence with our tax dollars, which fund the genocide in Gaza, police violence, ICE abductions, family separation, and so much more.

Implications for how we end violence: Allow ourselves to feel the pain of moral injury, recognize its largely systemic origins, and take action at both the individual and systems levels. We can make better consumer choices while we push for systems-level solutions. Solutions that meet our needs while getting in right relationship with each other and the land on which we all depend. These are a decent start in our current world order: New York’s Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. State and federal governments denying pipeline permits. Mexico tripling the minimum wage. The Clean Air Act. The Paris Agreement.

3. Violence begets disconnection begets violence

What do we do with the hurt? There are two options: heal/repair, or disconnect. Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem calls this clean pain vs. dirty pain.

Unfortunately, our current cultures are not good at healing. So we try not to feel the hurt. We disconnect. We disconnect from our bodies. We disconnect from our emotions. And that:

“makes it difficult to empathize with others…That damages us. That damages our relationships with our family members, with our intimate partners, with our children…You have to deaden a person in multiple ways in order for them to be a dominant group that participates in the oppression of others, because that is not how the human animal is evolved. We are evolved where if we see somebody getting hurt, it’s as if it’s happening to us, and our whole being experiences that as trauma.” – educator Eleanor Hancock

And this deadening, this disconnection means that where there is one kind of violence, there will always be other kinds of violence.

Here’s how that works: In our current culture, we both experience and participate in violence. → It messes us up inside. → To cope with/survive that, we disconnect from ourselves. We choose dirty pain over clean pain. As Brené Brown explains, “It is so much easier to cause pain than to feel pain, and people are taking their pain and they are working it out on other people.” Like I did to those kids at school. Like my abuser did to me. → That messes up our relationships. We show up in ways we’re not proud of. It hurts. → We disconnect further. And when we don’t feel ourselves, we can’t feel others. → Which makes it easier to commit or be complicit with violence, and the cycle continues.

All violence is interconnected because violence begets disconnection begets more violence.*

Implications for how we end violence: The good news is that healing begets connection begets safety, dignity, and belonging—three core, universal human needs. We have the power to heal and thereby exit cycles of violence. Trauma healing and social change are interdependent.

Transformative justice. Politicized somatics. Therapy. Plant medicines. Truth and reconciliation processes. Grief circles. Rituals. Singing, chanting, drumming circles. Bodywork. Storytelling. These and other powerful ways of healing are working around the world for those who have access to and choose to practice them. Humans have shown we have a remarkable capacity for healing and repair.

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” – bell hooks

I can’t stress enough how powerful and transformative healing can be. I feel awed by—and grateful for—the healing my own mind/body/nervous system has been capable of in recovering from my DV relationship, childhood trauma, and intergenerational trauma (turns out, they’re interconnected 😫). And I notice I’m able to show up way better because of the (ongoing) healing, which results in the people around me showing up better.

Healing ripples out across families, communities, and generations, too.

4. Violence is a choice

A few years ago, I went on a science fiction kick and happened to read Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time back-to-back.

In both alternate worlds, there is no rape. In The Left Hand of Darkness, it’s because humans are essentially like dogs: either they’re in heat and everything is consensual, or they’re sexually inactive. In Woman on the Edge of Time, it’s because…men respect girls and women. That’s it. There was no rape because no one chose to do it. That could be our world. Men could literally just…not.

“‘We’re trained to respect each other. I’ve never actually known of a case of rape, although I’ve read about it. It seems…particularly horrible to us. Disgusting. Like cannibalism.’”

Violence is a behavior, and behavior is a choice.

The good news is, most people don’t choose to commit violence. Even in communities that see high levels of violence, only a small number of individuals are responsible for most of the violent acts.

And though 1 in 3 women experience gender-based violence, the majority of men don’t commit sexual or domestic violence. A minority of men (6–25% for sexual violence, 19–31% for intimate partner violence) account for most of the harm. As #MeToo made clear, men who choose to abuse, serially abuse: they harm multiple people unless or until they choose to stop.

It’s important to note that men experience abuse, too; 1 in 6 men have experienced sexual violence, with other men the primary perpetrators. And regardless of gender, emotional abuse is widespread: from parents/caregivers to children (1 in 3), in schools (1 in 5 students), and in workplace settings.

Importantly—and this was shocking to me—many perpetrators do not see themselves as abusers/do not understand their behavior as abuse.

I’m haunted by a line in author Kate Beaton’s memoir of her time working in the Alberta oil sands, where she survived two rapes: “I guarantee you that neither of the men who raped me consider what they did to be rape, if they consider it at all.”

The Trap, an outstanding podcast series on domestic abuse, documents how not only do many men who commit domestic violence believe that their behavior is not abuse—they convince themselves that they are the real victims.

Outside of gender-based violence, peers of mine of all genders have experienced emotional abuse from their parents—particularly mothers. Mothers who would vehemently deny that they committed abuse.

Which testifies again to how crucial not only violence prevention and education efforts are, but also broader narrative and culture change efforts.

Even at the largest scales—institutions, systems, countries—violence is a choice, a series of choices. Tiny groups of people make decisions that will harm other people and the land. And it’s people who choose to carry out those decisions.

It takes just 270 Congresspeople to approve sending weapons to Israel. They could choose to vote “no.” A crew is tasked with loading those bombs onto a ship. They could (and some do!) choose to refuse. A pilot presses a button to drop a bomb on sheltering Palestinian families. He could choose not to. Even systemic violence is the result of individual humans’ choices.

Implications for how we end violence: We can choose to withhold cooperation from—or outright interfere with—injustice. At all levels. And we are: a Vermont superintendent refused to turn student data over to border agents without a warrant. Men are mobilizing other men and boys to intervene when witnessing abusive or disrespectful behaviors. Germany halted military exports to Israel that could be used in Gaza. (Check out Nonviolence News for dozens of stories like this every week.)

5. “How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale.”

This is adrienne maree brown, describing the relationship between the small (say, a family) and the large (say, a national government). The small and the large reflect each other.

In other words, cultures with authoritarian family structures will also have authoritarian government structures, and vice versa. Cultures that allow interpersonal racist violence also see institutional racist violence…which encourages interpersonal racist violence.

The small and the large also shape each other. generative somatics teaches us that change happens at three levels, or Sites:

• Individual

• Interpersonal

• Structural

Transformation at all levels is essential, and is interdependent.

Image via generative somatics

“We are shaped by all of these Sites, and also have the power to shape them. The larger the circle, the more people and power it takes to transform the Site. All these Sites are interconnected, with social norms, culture, and the economy expressing through each one.”

Implications for how we end violence: The good news, as brown describes, is that “what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” Meaning, how we choose to show up in our relationships, workplaces, neighborhoods, places of worship, local governments—flows up and out.

Congregations offering shelter to undocumented immigrants has helped normalize sanctuary policies at the municipal level.

Participatory budgeting, which started in a handful of neighborhoods, has been adopted by major cities as a tool for direct democracy.

And I’m seeing my peers choose not to beat their kids, though many of us were beaten as children. More than 65 countries have now banned corporal punishment in the home. This has led to a decline in rates of youth fighting and assaults. To higher empathy and less acceptance of intimate partner violence. To more equal community norms around gender and power. And to policy change, including schools using restorative justice instead of suspensions, and governments funding prevention rather than punishment.

Closing thoughts

I recently finished The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow. The book documents the many ways humans have organized societies over the past 40,000 years—and debunks the belief that hierarchy and violence are inevitable. Instead, the evidence shows that large, complex, egalitarian cities with sophisticated civic infrastructures are actually quite commonplace throughout history.

Meaning, the world wasn’t always this way. It doesn’t have to be this way.

There’s a proverb that says a society grows great when elders plant trees under whose shade they know they will never sit. That’s how I feel about the work of this moment.

I want my niblings—or maybe it will be their grandchildren, or their grandchildren’s grandchildren—to grow up in a world where their bodies know and expect safety. Where the stories they whisper at 13 aren’t of rape, but of first crushes and wild dreams. Where the headlines aren’t about hurting each other, but about taking care of each other.

We may not live to see that world. But we can plant the trees.

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* I’ve seen folks use the metaphor “violence is contagious,” but I use “violence begets violence.” On the surface, they seem the same: violence moves among people. But they’re actually quite distinct, and it’s important to tease out why.

First: metaphors help us make sense of intangible/abstract things by likening them to tangible things (things we can see, touch, feel, taste, hear, or smell). We apply metaphors because our understanding of anything abstract comes from our embodied experiences—physical things we experience in everyday life. With metaphors, language normally used to describe something we can see, touch, feel, taste, hear, or smell is applied to the abstract thing we’re trying to describe. And what’s true about the tangible thing gets transferred onto the abstract thing. (H/t to Culture Hack Labs as well as ASO Communications for the Metaphor 101.)

This transference is crucial, because in this way metaphors shape how we understand the problem, and therefore what might be appropriate solutions.

“Violence is contagious” is an infectious disease metaphor. We’ve all had a cold or a cough. We’ve felt that in our bodies. We know that infectious diseases are something that happen naturally any time a group of people share space for long enough. Disease will spread through a community; viruses are always mutating so there will always be illness. And that is the danger of comparing violence to an infectious disease: it implies that violence is natural, inevitable, and unstoppable. Violence is none of those things. But with this metaphor, violence can never be ended, only reduced.

“Violence begets violence” is a reproductive metaphor. Violence is reproduced, is passed down. It suggests a traceable lineage, that everyone has an origin story. (E.g. I bullied those kids in school in part because someone hurt me.) And reproduction is a choice. From pets to plants, we understand that we can choose whether and what to pass down. Not only is this a more accurate way to describe how violence moves among people, this understanding of the problem has profoundly different implications for solutions. With this metaphor, we have agency. We can end violence.