Violence
Permanent violence forces us to think. Why is it so recurrent?
Tomás Núñez. ThD
To glimpse some light, we must start without self-deception from this fundamental
ambiguity: on the one hand, the reality is full of conflicts, but in another sense, it is a
fabric of order and peace. Neither of these two aspects succeeds in eradicating the
other. They mix and maintain them in complex and dynamic equilibrium.
Art consists in maintaining this tension, seeking that convergence of energies that
allows the emergence of peace, the fruit of minimally fair and inclusive institutions, and
healthy social arrangements, guarded by a State that ensures the balance of tensions,
legitimately using coercion when necessary. If this search for balance did not occur,
sociability would be impossible, and human beings would exterminate each other.
Peace results from the management of conflicts using non-conflictive means. In building
peace, collective interests must prevail over individual interests, multiculturalism must
prevail over ethnocentrism, and the global perspective will guide the local one.
We must be realistic and sincere. There is violence in the world because I carry violence
within me in the form of rage, envy, and hatred, which we must always contain.
The explanation of aggression has challenged the most acute thinkers. Sigmund Freud
starts by observing two basic drives: one that affirms and exalts life (Eros) and another
that tends towards death (Thanatos) and its psychological derivatives, such as hatred
and exclusion.
For Freud, aggression arises when the death instinct is activated by some threat that
comes from outside. Someone can threaten another and want to take his life. Then, the
threatened person anticipates and attacks and eventually eliminates the person who
threatens him.
Another contemporary thinker, René Girard, claims that aggression comes from the
permanent rivalry that exists between human beings (which he calls "mimetic desire").
This rivalry creates permanent tensions and elaborates sinister complicities. Society
makes him a scapegoat by concentrating all evil and all threats on someone. Everyone
unites against him to get rid of him. This union establishes a momentary peace between
all the contenders. Once the peace is destroyed, a new scapegoat is invented
(terrorists, drug dealers, etc.), and once again, the union of all against him is created,
and the lost peace is remade.
Anthropologists have also helped us to understand aggression. They assure us that we
are simultaneously sapiens and demons, not because of degeneration, but because of
the evolutionary constitution. We are carriers of intelligence and inner energies oriented
toward generosity, collaboration, and benevolence. And at the same time, we are
carriers of madness, of excess, of death drives. We are tragic beings because we
emerge as a coexistence of opposites.
Given this contradiction, how can we build peace? Peace will only triumph if people and
communities are willing to cultivate cooperation, solidarity, and love as a life project. The
culture of peace depends on the predominance of these positives and on the vigilance
that people and institutions maintain over the other dimension, always present,
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