Whatever you say about God you should be able to say standing over a pit full of burning babies.

--Elie Wiesel

Violence, Pacifism, and War

By Cat Saunders

Note: "Violence, Pacifism, and War" is a section excerpted from a chapter called "The Anger Primer" in Dr. Cat’s Helping Handbook.

     No anger primer would be complete without addressing the worst-case scenario of violence and rage, namely, war. Therefore, I want to talk frankly about the fight-or-flight response that goes beyond personal anger to collective survival. First, I’ll tell you how I make sense of violence and war. Secondly, I’ll explain how I make peace with my pacifist tendencies, so they don’t tyrannize all my other principles. Last of all, after sharing my position on these difficult subjects, I’ll encourage you to explore your own relationship with violence all the way down to its most terrifying, enigmatic, primitive core.

     Years ago, I read an interview with the Dalai Lama, who is a deeply compassionate man and a paragon of pacifism. Even he, the Dalai Lama, said that if he had to cut off one of his fingers to save his hand, he would do it.

     Around the same time, I saw a television interview with Elie Wiesel, noted author and survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. The interviewer asked him a hypothetical question: If he could have killed Adolph Hitler, would he have done so? Wiesel said yes. I’ll never forget that.

     How can a couple of pacifists talk about doing violence to themselves or to others? Isn’t that hypocritical? Not in my book. Webster’s defines pacifism as "the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes." I think it’s possible to be opposed to violence, and yet find yourself called to use it in extreme situations when all else has failed.

     Like it or not, violence is part of nature and it’s a part of human nature. Frankly, our puny human outbursts–and even our wars–are minor in comparison to earthquakes, volcanoes, sunspot eruptions, and supernova explosions. Nature is full of violence! It dances at every level of existence.

     Conception, for instance, is a violent act. The sperm violates the integrity of the egg in order to merge with it and create life. Another more obvious act of violence is eating. All of us, vegetarians included, must kill to survive. As Thich Nhat Hanh says in Present Moment, Wonderful Moment:

This plate of food, so fragrant and appetizing, also contains much suffering.

     It’s futile to deny that violence is necessary for life. It makes more sense to be aware of this fact and to be responsible in relation to it. Unfortunately, there is so much fear of irresponsible violence that all violence is often judged to be wrong. As a result, many people think that part of their own primal nature is wrong–the part that could kill if one’s life is threatened.

     No part of human nature is wrong, even the violent or destructive part. Everyone has the capacity to be violent and destructive. Everyone! One of my heroes, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, tells the story of Golda, who survived Maidanek, one of Hitler’s most notorious death camps. Kübler-Ross visited Maidanek after World War II, in the hope of gaining some understanding of the horrors committed there.

     Seeing Maidanek firsthand only bewildered Kübler-Ross. She wondered how anyone could treat fellow humans with such absolute cruelty. In the midst of her ruminations, Kübler-Ross was approached by a woman named Golda. Golda understood Kübler-Ross’ inability to comprehend the brutality, but she said that any of us would be capable of committing such atrocities if we had been raised in Nazi Germany. "There is a Hitler in all of us," Golda said simply.

     I agree with Golda. In fact, the people who scare me most are those who think they have no violent streak, no capacity for cruelty, and no potential for rage. These people are probably not ascended masters; they are more likely in denial. Their anger burner may not be functional, and their survival instinct may be disconnected, but that doesn’t mean their potential for violence is nonexistent. It probably just went underground.

     The trick with angry, destructive, or violent thoughts is to know what to do with them. Obviously, you’ll get in a lot of trouble–morally, socially, legally, and karmically–if you act out your violent thoughts by hurting yourself, others, or the environment. I am NOT advocating that. Instead, I’m suggesting that you learn to be with any thoughts or feelings that horrify or repulse you. I even recommend that you find safe and responsible ways (such as those outlined in this chapter) to express these scary thoughts and feelings. The point is, if you can find it in your heart to accept the little Hitler within, you’ll be doing your part to mitigate the collective buildup of this powerful shadow force.

     It may sound paradoxical, but even as I work to accept the Hitler within, I may draw boundaries and take a stand against a Hitler (or any other tyrant) in the outside world. I like to believe that if everyone did their part to process their own cruelty, this cruelty would not need to appear in colossal forms that threaten us all. However, I’m a realist and I try to work with what is, even as I work toward what can be.

     Therefore, in the matter of real-world tyrants, there may be times when my response to violence is based on practical survival needs in the midst of a global community where everyone is not doing the hard inner work necessary to make peace with their own shadows. To put it bluntly, I will take the pacifist route as long as I possibly can, utilizing all the resources at my disposal to keep myself and others safe. In the end, however, I would kill to survive. It’s intense for me to make that statement publicly, because so many people will misunderstand or take my words out of context. Therefore, I’d appreciate your patience in allowing me to explain this position more fully.

     As much as I hate war, I can understand World War II because it was about saying no to a real-world tyrant (Hitler), who had gotten so out of hand that the entire human race was threatened by his insanity. Ultimately, this is the highest purpose of anger: to say no when survival is at risk.

     I make sense of the need for a collective response to Hitler–even a violent collective response–by thinking about it in individual terms. As an individual, if someone threatens my life, I will do everything possible to negotiate, disable my attacker, or run away (not necessarily in that order). If all else fails, however, I would kill to defend myself. I’ve been in enough life-threatening situations to know that this is true about me. Although I’m a pacifist by nature, there’s an even deeper part of my nature–an older, instinctual part–that brings with it the capacity to kill. Ironically, the animal wisdom that ensures my survival would also allow my pacifist self to survive along with it!

     For years, I tried to spiritualize everything. I didn’t want to make room in my universe for any kind of violence, responsible or otherwise. In this version of starry-eyed pacifism, I would shake my head in disgust at those who raised their fists or dropped their bombs. I thought such people were unevolved, when in fact it was I who needed to grow up.

     At some point, I got more connected to my animal self, and I started thinking more deeply about the paradox of peaceful life, in terms of how much violence it takes to support survival. I would contemplate the words of Elie Wiesel or think about Hitler, or I’d consider the time someone tried to rape my best friend at knifepoint. What happens to my pacifism when reality–RIGHT NOW–presents its opposite? Do I turn the other cheek or do I fight?

     I’ve told you my answer to that question. What’s yours? For my part, if I would fight to save my life, how can I judge a country that fights to defend itself? Don’t get me wrong. I rarely find any country’s reason for war to be worthy of blowing thousands of people to bits. However, my idea of a stupid reason might be someone else’s idea of survival.

     This doesn’t mean I condone war. That would be like saying I condone hell. In point of fact, I hate war. If it were up to me, I’d destroy all the guns and the bombs and the weapons of mass destruction. However, it’s not up to me, so I make do with reality. The reality is, large-scale war is uniquely human. Have you ever wondered about that?

     What if war is part of the human condition, the way peaceful coexistence is part of it? Can you work for peace even if you must make peace with war? What if there are bigger forces that play themselves out through our individual and collective experiences? If you are only a pawn in the game, can you still find the courage to take a stand? What if we humans are as curious about death and destruction as we are about life and creation? Can you accept and celebrate the apparent contradictions of your humanity?

     When I was in the process of adding this section to the Anger Primer, something happened that intensified my writing experience. On August 7, 1998, terrorists bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 257 people. Two weeks later, on August 20th, Americans bombed several sites in Sudan and Afghanistan–a response that many people on all sides (including me) regarded as an act of terrorism in its own right.

     When my country dropped those bombs, I stopped working on this new section. I knew what I needed to say about violence, but I was afraid to take a stand. I knew that hard-core pacifists would judge my acceptance of the fighter position, and I knew that warmongers would judge my advocacy for peace. Eventually I realized that extremists of either position can be equally blind. Even pacifists can become tyrants if they refuse to acknowledge the value of the opposing position. What if everyone could make room for both positions–and for everything in between?

     Consider this: What would have happened to the Jews if no one had sacrificed their lives to stop Hitler’s genocide? Could it be that one of the purposes of the fighter position is to preserve the lives of pacifists? And could it be that one of the purposes of the pacifist position is to inspire those who are willing to die? The point is, human existence is rarely black or white. Sometimes life is messy and complicated and confusing.

     After several days of sitting with these thoughts, I noticed that I still hadn’t returned to my work on this section. I was agitated and angry. I knew something was trying to be born in my writing, but I didn’t know how to birth it. In the midst of this turmoil, I had an intuition. Steven Spielberg had just released his three-hour movie, Saving Private Ryan, about World War II. Although I usually avoid violent movies, I had a sense that his movie would break my impasse and help me finish this section on violence, pacifism, and war.

     I’d read many reviews of Saving Private Ryan, and I knew that World War II veterans were themselves impressed by Spielberg’s accurate depiction of the horrors they endured. Since I knew the film would be an excursion into hell, I made a plan. My intention was to breathe continuously and to keep my eyes, ears, and heart open, no matter what. I succeeded, but it wasn’t easy. By the time I left the theater, I was overcome with grief and shock. My legs were so shaky that I could barely walk, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak for the rest of the night.

     There is really no way I can describe Spielberg’s movie, except to say that he has done the world a great service by showing war in all its messy, complicated, confusing, and excruciatingly gory detail. As far as I’m concerned, those who criticized Saving Private Ryan as if it was merely some pro-war, good old boys’ story, missed the point entirely. War may be unavoidable sometimes, but it’s nothing to cheer about. Even victory is hollow, because war requires so much bloodshed, so much loss of life, and so much destruction. I think Spielberg did a fine job of showing the truth about war.

     When his film opened to its brutal half-hour portrayal of the Normandy massacre (D-Day), I wanted to throw my arms around every veteran alive and say THANK YOU. I wondered how I could ever honor all those men (and in this case, it usually was men) who carried their butchered buddies on their backs, forced themselves to blow other men’s brains out, and kept going even when they felt their own bodies splintering and splattering and suffocating in blood.

     The writer in me knows only one way to express my gratitude to those who suffered: by using the freedoms those soldiers fought to protect. Think about it. I wouldn’t be writing this–and you wouldn’t be reading it–if America didn’t have freedom of speech and a free press. Rivers of blood have been shed so that I may speak my heart to you now.

     It’s tempting to deny the high cost of freedom. Those of us who have enjoyed relative ease (compared to the rest of the world) may prefer to forget the violence that birthed our comfort. It’s difficult to stay conscious of all the napalmed babies, the missing limbs, and the bombed-out neighborhoods as I sit down to dinner. How on earth can I keep going when I remember the true price of peace?

     Ultimately, war is mysterious, the way pain and death and life are mysterious. Acknowledging this mystery, the best I can do is figure out where my own heart is leading me, and then take a stand. I stand on the side of peace, even if I must fight. Where do you stand?