Abstract
In 1964, Martin Luther King concluded his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, by proclaiming: “Today, the choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.” Although many would take comfort in the fact that global civilization has survived nearly half a century since those words were written, others (e.g., Bodley 2008) fear that our culture has developed so many possibilities of self-extermination that we have indeed chosen nonexistence. We write this chapter in the conviction that King’s words were prophetic, in the hope that there is still time to choose nonviolence, and in the firm belief that psychology can contribute to that choice.
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results…. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
Martin Luther King
Part of King’s Nobel Lecture delivered December 11, 1964. See http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-lecture.html
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Notes
- 1.
Gene Sharp is the outlier here. His depiction of nonviolence, entirely from a social science perspective, emphasizes the theory of authority and rarely entails any of the other assumptions. The other proponents, more concerned with spirituality, do not ignore authority, but couch it within other assumptions about the world.
- 2.
Serbian Cyrillic: Отпор! The English translation is Resistance!
- 3.
This way of thinking bears similarities to the arguments of Thomas Kuhn (1996) in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions concerning how a scientific paradigm changes.
- 4.
Quote originally from the Preamble of the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an international union that takes the position that the wage system should be abolished.
- 5.
Portions of this section were previously published in Lyubansky (in press). Restorative justice for Trayvon Martin. Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology and in Rosenberg, R. S. (2011). The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Understanding Lisbeth Salander and Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. BenBella Books.
- 6.
- 7.
Norway is technically a constitutional monarchy, with King Harald V as the head of state, but, as in most contemporary constitutional monarchies, royal power in Norway is limited to ceremonial functions. Notably, Norway is currently ranked 1st on the Democracy Index (9.8 on the 10-point scale), an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit that claims to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries. The United States, with a score of 8.11, is ranked 19th.
- 8.
As just one illustration of the dominance of the punitive paradigm in the U.S. culture, consider the 1954 Comics Code which, at the time, had to be followed in order to sell comics. This Code had all of the following statutes, which not only served to reinforce the punitive paradigm but essentially criminalized alternative approaches to justice—in fiction:
-
Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
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If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
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In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
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- 9.
We use “justice system” to refer to an institutionalized process for dealing with rule violations and/or conflict in a given community.
- 10.
We are most familiar with vigilante justice in the form of fictional heroes and heroines, such as Batman and Lisbeth Salendar (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), who take the law into their own capable hands, but real-world examples of vigilantism also exist. Consider, for instance, the case of Kimberly Cunningham. In 2003, she learned that her then 14-year-old daughter Amanda was (at age nine) raped on two occasions by the girl’s uncle, Coy Hundley. Cunningham bought a gun and confronted Hundley at his place of work. When Hundley did not deny the allegations, Cunningham shot him five times, reloaded the weapon, and fired five more rounds, killing him.
- 11.
A process in which the victim of a crime and the person who has taken responsibility for committing that crime have an opportunity to talk to each other (usually face to face) with the help of a trained mediator. In the meeting, the offender and victim typically talk about what happened and the impact the event had on their lives. Sometimes there is also the additional step of agreeing on a plan to repair some or all of the damages.
- 12.
A restorative approach that is designed to have child and adult family members solve their own conflicts, instead of involving courts or other professionals.
- 13.
A restorative practice developed in Brazil that seeks to engage conflict without pre-identifying offenders and victims (because those roles are seen as dynamic) and that involves both those who directly participated in the conflict and the community members who are impacted.
- 14.
The possibility of choosing how to do justice comes from the work of Dominic Barter, who, with his associates, developed the Restorative Circles process. See http://www.restorativecircles.org
- 15.
A tort is a common law term used to describe a breach of any civil duty (other than a contractual duty) owed to someone else. It is differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to society in general. Examples of torts include auto accidents, defamation, product liability, environmental pollution, and any intentional act that could reasonably be predicted to result in harm to an individual.
- 16.
Thus, if John brutally beats Nathan, who dies from the injuries, John’s crime, according to criminal law, is against the state (for violating the state’s prohibition against battery and homicide) not against Nathan. The implication of this distinction is that the wishes and needs of the so-called “victim” are not prioritized and sometimes completely ignored. Thus, in a homicide case, the District Attorney may ask for the death penalty (and the judge may grant it), even against the wishes of the victim’s family.
- 17.
This is the name given by my partner, Elaine Shpungin, to an abbreviated RC process that we developed for little conflicts and little people. It is described in detail here: http://www.improvecommunication.net/2010/10/3-steps-that-transform-sibling-conflict.html
- 18.
Violence, of course, is also a way of walking toward conflict. Barter’s suggestion is that people walk toward conflict with the goal of understanding, rather than the goal of hurting or even the goal of being understood.
- 19.
These similarities are not coincidental. Barter spent time studying NVC with Rosenberg, who, in turn, was a student of Rogers.
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Murray, H., Lyubansky, M., Miller, K., Ortega, L. (2014). Toward a Psychology of Nonviolence. In: Mustakova-Possardt, E., Lyubansky, M., Basseches, M., Oxenberg, J. (eds) Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era. International and Cultural Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7391-6_7
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