PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPACITIES FOR CULTIVATING A KILLING-FREE WORLD*
by
Mitch Hall
Marc Pilisuk
The University of California and Saybrook University Graduate School
The word non-killing is used here to express a choice to live without inflicting lethal harm on others. Like nonviolence, the term suggests an absence of something harmful that occurs under normative or expected circumstances. That could be misleading since non-killing social conditions far outnumber those that permit killing or into which killing tragically intrudes. Such epidemiological evidence at the societal level becomes clearer when we examine human psychological propensities, in thought and behavior, for killing or for non-killing. When we speak of peace, we recognize non-killing as a necessary and measurable element of peace.
There are two peace psychologies, one expressed in studies, the other in stories. The first involves the work of psychology scholars who apply the tools of their trade to understanding why humans engage in either violence and war or in peaceful, cooperative relations (Christie et al., 2008; Blumberg, et al. 2007; Kool, 2009).
The second gives witness, through stories, to what is happening in the hearts and minds of people confronting a world awash in violence. In such stories, we hear the voices of those who have suffered violence, fought in wars, and initiated nonviolent reconciliation of conflicts. From those who have found ways to repair the wounds of violence, we learn of capacities for forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, and love. Both studies and stories can inspire insights into why people kill and go to war, how to reconcile differences without violence, how the trauma of violence and fear affects us, and how we recover and sometimes become advocates for peace. We begin with two characteristics of the human species: our ability to create psychological constructions of social reality; and our potential to kill large numbers of our own species. The two are likely related.
The Psychological Construction of Our World
Our earliest human ancestors survived against more powerful predators by collaborating with others, using tools, and storing information in large, complex brains that created intricate languages for communication and teaching successive generations what was learned through experience. We now live in a world we have largely created--a physical world we have changed more in the last 300 years than nature has done in three million and a symbolic world of mental images that define what we assume to be true. The most comprehensive symbols are the prevailing myths about who we are as humans and as members of larger groups. The myths identify our place and purpose in the world, provide a framework for our beliefs, and lead to ritual practices observed with the force of religious dedication (Langer, 1942).
Our images of larger social entities, such as nations and religions, exist only because we believe they are real. We invest them with sovereign powers and sacred attachments. Many willingly kill or die for them. Why? According to terror management theory, we abide by role expectations prescribed by our cultural world-views and social-group identifications for compelling reasons. Playing these roles enhances our self-esteem, gives meaning to our lives, and buffers us from the anxiety and terror that our uniquely human awareness we are going to die can induce in us (Pyszczynski et al., 2003).
Soldiers are assigned a special role in the world of attachment to national symbols. They are depicted as heroic defenders against alien forces who would hurt us. No matter how endangered the soldiers, leaders manipulate the national myths and tell us that we can't pull out of an armed conflict because it would dishonor the troops.
How people behave in roles within these larger symbolic realms is often confused with inherent “human nature.” Violent conflicts among larger groups are commonly attributed to human aggression. That view fails to recognize the myths of nationhood and, of relevance here, the dominant Western worldview.
All cultures appear to give special value to insiders, who in some languages are identified by the same term that means “humans.” For cultures with hegemonic aspirations, the myths surrounding prejudicial favoring of one's own group may determine whether outsiders are to be converted, conquered, enslaved, or annihilated. Cultural attitudes toward outsiders are therefore essential to consider for understanding aggressive societal policies. Our stored constructions of people from other parts of the world depend largely upon whether they are brought to us by media. When Iran held 51 American hostages their well-being was a global concern. When thousands of people are abducted and killed extra-judicially by state terrorism in Guatemala, Colombia, Haiti, Indonesia, or Egypt, governments favored by the US, their plight is not part of our reality. Human compassion may well extend to individuals, even to species never personally known to us, but this cannot be tapped to stop violence when the facts are concealed.
Western Worldview
The dominant Western worldview is among the most potent, though often latent, psychological constructions of the contemporary developed world. Its propositions encompass ownership of resources, inequality, legitimacy of power, amoral reasoning, the use of force, and inevitability (Pilisuk & Zazzi, 2006). This worldview is a constellation of beliefs and values that include:
•All people are free to compete for success, typically defined as expanded wealth and increased consumption (Bredemeier & Toby, 1972);
•The world’s resources exist for exploitation by those best able to take advantage of its gifts;
•Private property is favored by law over either un-owned nature or public property;
•Freedom to speak includes the unlimited right to use wealth to influence opinion and public policy;
•Problems can be fixed with technical solutions (Postman, 1992);
•Corporations shall have the protection by law afforded to citizens;
•Corporate investors are the creators of wealth and jobs;
•Efficacy is more important than ethics in the attainment and protection of wealth;
•Disparities in wealth of any magnitude are natural and acceptable;
•Poverty is due to deficiencies in the poor;
•Military force is justified to protect corporate interests (often defined as national interests);
•Limited parliamentary democracy (mandating elections while allowing wealth to be used for persuasion) is the much-preferred form of government;
•Psycho-cultural values of power, masculine domination, acquisition, and development are aspects of the natural world order (Seager, 1993);
•Those not accepting these views or the policies that flow from them pose a danger and must be either trivialized or eliminated.
The above beliefs and values define the path to progress: they should be, and inevitably will be, universal (Pilisuk & Zazzi, 2006).
These beliefs define a system with little tolerance for alternatives. Against the background of such belief systems, we can evaluate the contribution of human aggression to the occurrence of war.
War and Human Aggression
In developed societies, unless we live in high-violence urban zones, our images of how violent humans are derive less from what we witness directly and more from media depictions. Media always select and frequently distort. Media create an unrealistically violent view of our communities and the world. By reporting the tragedy of victims without serious analysis of what social and economic conditions foment violence, they increase our fearfulness of people. Despite the highlighting of violence in media, people mostly cooperate, share, care, compete peacefully, act altruistically, and forgive. Despite the frequency of conflict, most humans go through a typical day without being either a perpetrator, victim, or witness of any type of physical violence. Across continents and cultures, conflicts are mostly handled by talking over differences, ridiculing a rival, persuading, coaxing, arguing, shouting, grumbling, or walking away. One finds people agreeing to compensate for damages, compromising, reconciling differences and negotiating settlements, often using third parties. Most individuals cope with bullying, insults, competitive conflicts, and disappointments without resorting to violence or inflicting serious harm on adversaries. Even in cultural settings considered violent, most daily behavior is entirely non-violent. Comparative studies show that major violence in societies, while common, is not universal and that human nature does not make war inevitable (Fry, 2007).
Aggression
Human capacities for anger and aggression are deeply rooted in our bodies. Cruel, selfish, and violent activities appear to be as fundamental a part of human nature as creative, caring, and cooperative actions. So we examine one aspect of what makes war possible, the capacity and the motivation of humans to be aggressive and to kill other humans.
Erich Fromm's (1973) The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness describes diverse forms of human aggression, some benign, some accidental, some playful and others expression of self-assertion. Many forms are seen by the aggressor to be purely defensive and/or instrumental to achieving a noble purpose. Such actions often reflect a need to conform to the prejudices of one's group. And some aggression is malevolent and intended mainly to destroy. Frustration frequently increases the arousal of aggressive tendencies. But from the time of our foraging ancestors, those bands whose symbolic worlds included means to resolve conflicts without killing off their members were those that remained. Angry temptations are universally present, but it is more than fear of consequences that keeps us from physically harming one another. It is also the internalized cultural symbols, particularly moral standards, that help us. The world in which such moral standards abound is a world that humans have created. In simple foraging societies, violence, if it does occur, is personal and not the basis for long-term feuds. Tribal hierarchies sometimes permit organized group violence which is typically short-lived. It is at the level of nation states that organized military force to inflict war becomes possible. Even within larger hierarchical societies, people are typically living peacefully even as powerful leaders prepare for war. The world in which organized violence or war can be considered a choice, is a world predicated upon the way fear-arousing symbols are mobilized.
Facing and Avoiding Danger
The psycho-physiological ability to mobilize thoughts and behavior rapidly in the face of threats is essential to survival. Avoiding recognition of real-world dangers is a manifestation of psychological denial. If we were continuously frightened by an immediate threat of nuclear annihilation or of floods to come with global warming, we likely would be overwhelmed with emotion and unable to act. Pushing danger from awareness has implications for the prevention of mass violence. Not fearing the enormity of such dangers, we may increase their risks by delaying action to prevent them. Fortunately, we humans have the capacity to deal with long-term issues with creative dedication and with opportunities to engage with others in building solutions. Movements for peace and justice do lie within human psychological abilities.
Us and Them: Dehumanization and Enemies
We retain long-term conceptions of others, some of whom are known personally, others known only by images of them offered to us by secondary sources. An intriguing experiment by Bandura (Bandura, 1988; Bandura, et al., 1975) shows how easy it is to set up negative images of an unknown group. In this case it was just overhearing some derogatory comments. People acted upon this information by applying greater punishments (more intense shocks, or so they believed) to the negatively represented group than to others. To engage in killing other humans, or to sanction such killing, we make use of a capacity to withdraw an empathic human connection to the target person or group. Dehumanization is a composite psychological mechanism that permits people to regard others as unworthy of being considered human. On a conscious level it can be fostered by blinding hatred and by appeals to hate a particular evil adversary. Beneath the level of awareness, dehumanization permits us to resolve self-doubts by finding a scapegoat as the target for blame. The terror management researchers argue that since cultural beliefs and identities are symbolic attempts to buffer us from the terror of death, and since our deaths are inevitable, we may have repressed existential terror that is then projected onto members of out-groups who are deemed evil (Pyszczynski et al., 2003).War depends upon a designation of out-groups as enemies. It is a special “game” in which governments grant license to kill.
Creating Soldiers
For most people at most times, personal violence against others is not part of what we do or approve (Fry, 2007). How then do we turn people into professional warriors? Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who has studied soldiers’ willingness to kill, suggests that only approximately two per cent can kill with no feelings of remorse. They are dangerous, psychopathic people who often choose work in missions with special forces involving the chance to kill. The task of turning most civilians into soldiers able to kill is more difficult. The U.S. army had to change training methods from one war to the next over the past century in order to increase the percentage of soldiers capable of killing. In WWII, Grossman reported, only 15 to 20 percent of soldiers in combat fired their weapons. By the Korean War, the percentage increased to 50 to 55 percent, and by the Vietnam War, it had risen to 90 to 95 percent (Grossman, 1995).
Recruitment to the military is presented as a patriotic endeavor to defend one's homeland, prove masculinity, and learn skills. The recruit is brought into an institution with an absolute hierarchy of command based on rank. Boot camp is harsh and aims to create a soldier who will follow orders, act courageously, and be able to kill. While training mentions the obligation of soldiers to follow the accepted rules of warfare, the military tolerance for insubordination or questioning an order is small. Retired marine Sergeant Martin Smith reflected upon the poor and poorly educated recruits he trained:
a recovering meth addict who was still 'using,' a young male who had prostituted himself to pay his rent, an El Salvadorian immigrant serving in order to receive a green card, a single mother who could not afford her child's healthcare needs as a civilian, and a gay teenager who entertained his platoon by singing Madonna karaoke in the barracks They were a cross-section of working-class America hoping for a change in their lives from a world that seemed utterly hopeless (Smith, 2007).
The U.S. soldiers in recent wars were typically from poor or middle-class backgrounds, distinguishing them from the privileged government officials who had decided to engage in war. Recruiters promised them education and job training they could not otherwise afford. No part of their recruitment or training described for the recruits the likelihood of their own death, the consequences to their families, or the effects that the experience would have upon them for the remainder of their lives. In contrast, the upper classes who benefit most economically from war have been practically absent from military service (Roth-Douquet & Schaefer, 2006). The transformation of people into warriors has less to do with human motives to fight than with the absence of other opportunities for education, job training, socially respected employment, and participation in the larger society.
The professional soldier does not describe his/her work as to kill but rather to engage the adversary, to carry out a designated mission, to protect fellow soldiers, to eliminate a ruthless enemy, or to secure a territory held by dehumanized enemies. In the increasingly common circumstance of war against insurgents opposed to military or police occupation of their countries and supported by local kin and sympathizers, the façade of professionalism often wears thin. Anger rages against suicide bombers and unreliable collaborators who are able to kill one's buddies. In such cases, angry abuse of captured insurgents and of civilians defies the professional rules of law. Recognition for self-sacrificing contributions to a larger cause has long been understood as a benefit of war. William James, perhaps the first peace psychologist, called in 1906 for a moral equivalent to war, a cause that would command the dedication and focus of young people, but for building communities rather than for destruction of enemies (James, 1995). More recently, Chris Hedges provided a compelling look at the group psychology of war (Hedges, 2003). The peace-movement community would benefit from studying his book and finding ways to offer people the same sense of identity and belonging in the work of peace-building that they otherwise find in supporting or participating in war.
Coping with the Aftermath of War: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
Soldiers return from war harmed physically or psychologically. Brain damage from head trauma, spinal cord injuries, amputated limbs, loss of sight or hearing, and shattered dreams are all common for thousands of wounded veterans. "Somebody's got to pay the price," said Col. Joseph Brennan, a head and neck surgeon, "And these kids are paying the price” (Robichaud, 2007). The colonel did not challenge the premises that such a war has to occur. His reference to soldiers as “kids” evokes an unconscious, collective myth organized around the ancient archetypal theme of child sacrifice, which is a dominant cultural symbol, as in the Biblical stories of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and the crucifixion of Jesus as “God’s only begotten son.”
Not counted in the casualty figures are soldiers who suffer long-term psychological trauma of combat. During the Vietnam War these psychological effects became so common that the mental health category of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was created. In coping with trauma, what is first buried from awareness continues to live on. Symptoms include persistent reliving of the traumatic event, hyper-vigilance, sleep disturbance, nightmares, a numbing of emotions, feelings of estrangement, inability to experience intimacy, withdrawal from feelings of connection to the outside world, and avoidance of frightening reminders. People with PTSD sometimes experience heightened fearfulness, amnesia, irritability, and uncontrollable outbursts of anger. Among combat veterans, high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse reflect efforts to dull the torment, while high rates of domestic violence, child abuse, and suicide reflect the difficulty of doing so. Some researchers have documented that soldiers who have killed develop perpetration-induced traumatic stress symptoms that are even more severe than the PTSD in soldiers who have been traumatized in combat but have not killed (MacNair, 2002).
Young children are also traumatized by the sights, sounds, and losses of war. But similar fears may be brought on by punitive parenting, by inconsistent or unpredictable discipline and, to a great degree, by neglect. Such parenting occurs in all social classes and among many cultures, but it is exacerbated by poverty and by forced displacement of people from their familiar origins. Like war veterans, many of these children still maintain a remarkable resilience and ability to recover their sense of caring, especially if they benefit from at least one caring, empathic relationship with, for example, a grandparent, teacher, or other mentor (Perry, 2008). Also like traumatized veterans, some children who remain traumatized from early abuse and/or neglect, will remain prone to act out violently against others and themselves and will be easily recruited into gangs or armies in which their impulse to strike out can be rewarded. Involvement in violence, and particularly in killing, has long-term consequences (Schore, 2003).
Finding Enemies
Designating some people as evil-doers who must be found, imprisoned, or killed is common in the lead-up to executions and to war. Certain behavior, real or fabricated, is interpreted as a reason for killing. But this interpretation reflects what psychologists have long studied as attribution error, the tendency to ascribe behavior to the enduring characteristics of individuals while ignoring circumstances that are frequently more important factors. Often, attempts by one country or group to defend against assault are interpreted by adversaries as aggressive (Holsti, 1982). During the cold war, the common perception among leaders and public alike was that the opposing country, the US or the USSR, could not be trusted and that none of its policies could be considered other than aggressive in intent. Bronfenbrenner described this as the mirror-image in US-Soviet relations (Bronfenbrenner, 1986).
The Nazis who committed genocidal killings of unprecedented magnitude are viewed as pathological killers. Yet, in her study of Nazi storm troopers, Hannah Arendt noted that the most remarkable thing about the Nazis was how like the rest of us they were (Arendt, 1968). Social psychologists have put forth compelling evidence to support the view that the capacity to engage in evil or harmful behavior lies within all of us and that surrounding circumstances play the major role in releasing violent behavior (Zimbardo, 2007). This is the situationist perspective, in contrast to the view that ascribes behavior to individual dispositions. In a famous series of experiments that inform the situationist position, Milgram (Milgram, 1974) showed that ordinary American citizens could be induced into administering what they believed to be harmful electric shocks to strangers under circumstances in which the experimenter explained to them that this was what they should do. Remarkably, administering even a potentially lethal shock could be induced among most subjects, males and females, across all ages and educational levels. Sixty-five percent of the subjects would do this if the experimenter said it was okay, if they saw their peers doing it, and if the victims were presented as being in some way inferior. According to Zimbardo (2007), a contractual agreement, verbal or in writing, contributes to the willingness to justify immoral violence. One critical factor is the cover story that what is being done is for a good cause. The depiction of Panama's Manual Noriega as a brutal drug lord or of Iraq's Saddam Hussein as a political leader stacked with concealed weapons of mass destruction are examples of cover stories that were false but never-the-less helped to legitimize violence. Another major factor is the promise that the cruel activity can be done anonymously and without individual identification. The cloak of the hangman and the uniforms of soldiers contribute to such anonymity. Societies that mutilate their victims in warfare typically provide masks to their warriors (Watson, 1973).
The people behind the cloaks, uniforms, and masks revealed themselves on Christmas Eve, 1914 on a World War I battlefield in Flanders. As the troops were settling in for the night, a young German soldier sang Stille Nacht (Silent Night). The British and French responded by singing other Christmas carols. Eventually, soldiers from both sides left their trenches and met in the no-man’s-land between them. They shook hands, exchanged gifts, and shared pictures of their families. Informal soccer games began, and an informal service was held to bury the dead of both sides, to the displeasure of the generals. Men who have come to know one another’s names and seen family pictures are less likely to want to kill. War often seems to require a nameless, faceless enemy (Wallis, 1994).
Devils and Bad Apples
We distinguish in language heroic warriors from undisciplined killers. The evidence that most of us can be drawn by circumstances into committing violence does not preclude the alternative perspective that there are vast differences among people in the willingness to inflict pain or to kill. A psychological developmental perspective helps to account for such differences. Formative early relationships predispose us toward certain behaviors, which current situations may also influence.
Because we have learned that killing is wrong, those who readily engage in such behavior often reflect a traumatic history that has blunted their capacities for empathy. Young children require the predictable assurance of a parent figure in order to fix within their neural pathways an ability to return from perceived danger to a psychologically safe zone. Such adult assurance is particularly important in adolescence lest violent impulses become overwhelming parts of the personality. Assurance and support help the developing human to believe that resources to cope with fear and anger are a part of the self. Punitive child-rearing, particularly inconsistent punitive discipline, leaves children vulnerable to feelings of worthlessness, easily catapulted into violence by their own emotions and prone to find assurance from gangs of others like themselves. Early violent experience often affects our ability to reexamine dangerous events and respond with a more reasoned approach rather than striking out in anger (Perry, 2008).
Trauma has been associated with neuronal and brain-chemistry dysfunction affecting areas of the brain responsible for emotion-regulation and empathy. Individual trauma history and the presence of subsequent healing relationships account for the fact that not all of those who were severely abused are prone to react with impulsive acts of aggression. Others who were egregiously neglected are more likely to perpetrate calculated, predatory violence (Schore, 2003). Arendt’s cogent observations on the “banality of evil” among the Nazis did not take into account the developmental perspective later presented. Alice Miller and Lloyd deMause, for example, provided historical data about widespread, abusive child-rearing practices in Germany at the turn of the 20th century that probably contributed to the childhood traumatization of many who later became Nazis (Miller, 1983; DeMause, 2006). Hitler’s own background is one example affirming Stephenson’s studies of 14 modern tyrants. All had suffered multiple childhood humiliations, were shame-based, and had grown up in violent, authoritarian families (Stephenson, 1998). While their rise to power may well reflect the current situations faced by their populations, the contribution of childhood trauma affecting the predisposition to violence should not be ignored. The research on impacts of early trauma is complicated because some individuals with a history of unhealed, violent trauma have a socialized, normal-appearing personality housed in one part of the brain, along with a dissociated alter personality in which feelings of terror, helplessness, rage, humiliation, and identification with the perpetrator of early traumatic experience are stored and, under certain circumstances, activated (Schiffer, 2002).
Observations of killing at the level of the individual homicide contribute to understanding a complex relation between personal and situational factors. Many are related to family or group pressure (for example, honor killings or street gang activity). Convicted killers do not all share the same personality type. Some fit the image of mean, aggressive, impulse-driven males with little sign of sensitivity or compassion for others. But another group of first homicides are committed by people who are more androgynous or feminine, gentle, shy, and with no prior record of violence (Zimbardo, 2007).
One study of blood chemistry of violent inmates, found two distinctive, abnormal blood profiles, one associated with episodic, explosive violence, followed by remorse, and the other with frequent, assaultive behavior followed by no remorse (Bitsas, 2004). The forensic psychiatrist Gilligan who worked for 20 years with violent inmates found a primary cause of their violent acts was overwhelming, shame which they unsuccessfully tried, through killing, to replace with pride. They did not perceive themselves as having alternative nonviolent ways of relieving themselves from feelings of shame, humiliation, and low self-esteem. Also, they lacked the capacity to experience the feelings that normally inhibit violence, feelings such as love and guilt in relation to others, and fear of consequences for themselves (Gilligan, 1996).
Social psychologists Milburn and Conrad and linguist George Lakoff have presented evidence that punitive political attitudes, including the favoring of war as an instrument of national policy and capital punishment, are consequences of punitive upbringings and venues through which people, particularly males, beaten, terrified, and shamed by parental authorities as children, who have not subsequently benefited from psychotherapy, displace their childhood anger onto political issues and out-groups (Milburn & Conrad, 1996; Lakoff, 1996). In light of these findings, it is significant that James Dobson, the politically influential, conservative, evangelical leader, child psychologist, best-selling author, radio and television journalist, and founder of Focus on the Family, explicitly advocates the physical punishment of children, along with not allowing them to cry in pain for more than two to five minutes before they are hit
again (Blumenthal, 2009). Dobson is an example of the misappropriation of both psychology and religion in the service of an authoritarian personal and political agenda that, to the extent it is implemented, increases levels of violence in the home, society, and the wider world. Individuals who are more prone to violence find inducements to act violently in a culture that accentuates individual achievement through competition and glorifies retribution against evildoers. Such retribution begins in the homes of religious fundamentalists who teach their children that they are born sinful and who use physical punishment in child rearing more than do other groups (Grille, 2009).
The Psychology of Structural Violence
Ordinary soldiers fight in wars begun by others who rarely engage in direct combat themselves and who decide upon national interests and the costs to be tolerated in their pursuit. Moreover, Johan Galtung has drawn attention to structural violence, which requires no fighting but takes a far greater number of casualties than wars and other forms of direct violence (Galtung, 1969). Consider the statistics. The World Health Organization has reported that 1.5 million people are killed worldwide each year due to direct violence of all kinds, including war (World Health Organization, 2009). This tragic reality is compounded by structural violence, which causes from 14 to 18 million deaths per year as a result of starvation, lack of sanitary water, inadequate access to medical care, and other consequences of relative poverty (Gilligan, 1996). Direct violence, Galtung noted, is episodic, and typically harms or kills people quickly and dramatically. Episodes of overt violence are often intentional, personal, instrumental, and sometimes politically motivated. Structural violence, by contrast, represents a chronic affront to human well-being, harming or killing people slowly through relatively permanent social arrangements that are normalized and deprive some people of basic need satisfaction. Structural violence results from how institutions are organized, privileging some people with material goods and political influence in matters that affect their well-being while depriving others. Acting without hostile intent, some people make normal decisions in the global marketplace that necessitate the destitution of others--depriving them of their land, their resources, their jobs, and their hopes. These decisions are not accidents or mistakes but rather understandable consequences of a distorted process. The horrors of this indirect violence as well as the benefits attributed to these market decisions, are products of the system, not of an omnipotent conspiracy. Most of the harm that privileged political, corporate, financial, and military elites cause has been sanctified by custom and law, which protect their privileges.
Beneath the eyes of the citizenry, a high level of planning in a high-stakes game of attaining competitive advantage takes place, at times in secret meetings, at times in normal operating procedures (Pilisuk, 2008). The perpetrators of structural violence who order wars and economic exploitation are rarely studied. They often make use of game theory to calculate strategies for winning and levels of acceptable costs. It is permissible within game theory to consider which country might be coerced into assuring a greater amount of oil for the US, but impermissible to ask whether more oil is desirable.
Legitimizing Global Violence
The mindset in which the world and its inhabitants are all instruments in an elite game to gain competitive advantage is very much a part of the belief system that legitimizes global violence. Human beings, on either side of a conflict or competition, are not considered for their feelings, needs, and rights, but are abstractly viewed as expendable pawns. In a military occupation where torture is used to find, punish, and intimidate resistance, the game has been redefined as one in which the rules permit such abuse. Toxic chemicals, radioactive pollution that will harm lives for millions of years, unhealthy fast foods, or brain-injured war veterans all enter into cost-benefit analyses. The acceptability of risks may look different for executives of a corporation producing toxic chemical pesticides used to dust crops than to the migrant-laborer parents of a child with leukemia. The dehumanized mode of thought of game theorists requires that we consider everything, including material products, human lives, natural resources, and the sound of songbirds to have a monetary value.
To justify apparently immoral and illegal intervention activities, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once explained we have no principles, only interests. Even within the game theory framework, its practitioners are prone to offer technical advice on playing the wrong game. So many situations that might turn out better if the parties are allowed to engage in trust and to seek mutually rewarding solutions are recast by the strategists (with media help) into zero-sum contests, obliging someone to get hurt. Completely absent from this formulation is appreciation of human motivations for empathy with other humans, for altruistic behavior that defies the balance sheets of self-interest and greed, for the gratifications that come from sharing, cooperation, and nurturing those in need. Leaders know their followers may be mobilized to follow their game plan, for short periods, with fear-arousing threats. But they also know that most people do not like the violence of war. A government that has chosen to act with military violence since the end of World War II is continually in need of justifying its compassion. For example, in the now-famous exchange on TV in 1996 between Madeleine Albright and reporter Lesley Stahl, the latter, while speaking of US sanctions against Iraq, asked the then-US ambassador to the UN and Secretary-of-State-to-be: “We have heard that a half-million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And--and you know, is the price worth it?” Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it” (Stahl, 1996). Internationally agreed-upon rules for the game of war preclude unprovoked, preemptive military attack and the kidnapping, extradition, and torture of captives. Under existing international laws for the conduct of war, those responsible for the war in Iraq have engaged in criminal behavior. However, like Madeleine Albright, they find justifications and see themselves as serving good ends that justify any means.
We all compartmentalize the symbolic maps that guide us. People in power may not be devoid of compassion, although they may be in psychological denial of the human suffering their decisions cause and of their own consequent culpability. In the roles afforded them by governments or corporate structures, their realities are shaped only by what can be measured as winning. Perhaps paradoxically, organizational psychology finds that ignoring one’s non-measurable and unselfish potentials is detrimental to achieving even competitive military and corporate objectives. The army knows this and uses it to build teams of soldiers.
Alternative Ways to Resolve Conflicts
Whereas conflicts are often inevitable, creative, nonviolent ways to resolve them exist. A conflict can be a sign that democratic participation in decision-making is alive and well. A premise of coming together on conflicts over divisive beliefs or ideologies is that the parties should be able to hear and acknowledge each other’s actual position, which is more difficult than it would appear to be. One model requires each party to restate the other’s position in a manner satisfactory to the other party. Once this is mutually achieved, the next step would be to validate points of agreement and to note symmetries. While neither adversary is converted to the other’s views, both sides can see their similarities with and differences from each other. The common ground humanizes the adversary and opens a space for compromise (Rapoport, 1960).
Mediation is the most studied form of third-party intervention. For apparently intransigent conflicts, Fisher and Ury (1983) pioneered a model that encourages empathy, separates personal characteristics from underlying issues, avoids criticism, and invents creative options that provide mutually advantageous outcomes and better relationships. Here psychology helps by teaching not to use “war words” and by distinguishing expressed positions from the actual needs they serve. When alternative ways to meet the needs are found, conflicts can often be resolved. Many creative options for coming together use the principle that antagonists who need each other to attain a shared goal will lessen their hostilities through common action. Even when parties have been locked into a pattern of hostility and distrust, methods are available to reverse the escalation of hostilities. Charles Osgood’s proposal of graduated reciprocation in tension reduction (Osgood, 1962; Rubin, 1994) enables one of the parties to take the courageous first small step by announcing a specific minor conciliatory initiative and following through regardless. The practice is repeated. Eventually the opposition is tempted to reciprocate, if for no other reason than to establish its credibility as the non-belligerent party. This process has been shown to work in controlled psychological experiments (Pilisuk, 1984). Historically, this process occurred in the Kennedy and Kruschev era of the “thaw” in the cold war.
Methods of alternative conflict resolution are wonderful if they avert violence. They can also be misused in situations of unequal power. A large corporation charged with destroying a community’s habitat or chemically poisoning their groundwater may avoid full costs of restitution by mediating with some of the victims. Families impoverished by illness, loss of a wage earner and property value lack the resources to contest corporate lawyers in a drawn-out process. They are pressed during mediation to settle for a compensatory financial agreement along with a promise not to discuss the case. Similar dynamics exist in negotiations between small countries and international funding organizations. Such examples show the difference between conflict resolution and peace. When conflict resolution maintains injustice, it perpetuates structural violence (Pilisuk, 2008). To address this problem, transformative mediation aims to establish a relationship between parties, improve mutual understanding, and open a channel for continued dialogue (Bush et al., 1994). Overall, nonviolent conflict resolution strategies are remarkably effective. The problem is not efficacy but the unwillingness to try them.
Psychology’s application to the understanding of a non-killing social order occurs through comprehension of the socialization of aggression in children, training of warriors, appreciation of competitive mind-sets, constructive resolution of conflicts, and expansion of awareness to include unseen victims of indirect violence. Fairly viewed, psychology teaches us that humans can restrain their hostilities and find creative ways to live together with respect. We can be caring, fair, and peaceful. But to do this, we will need to remake the constructions we have made of militaries, mega-corporations, and nations, to raise our children nonviolently, and to amplify our reverence for life.
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* This paper has been published in D.J. Christie & J.E. Pim (Eds.). (2011), Nonkilling Psychology. Honolulu: Center for Global Nonkilling.
An earlier version of this paper appeared as “Psychology and Peace” in M. Pilisuk, M and M.N. Nagler, Eds. (2011). Peace Movements Worldwide , V.1. Praeger/ABC/Clio : pp. 52-67.