Bob Herbert published an article in the New York Times today called Upending Twisted Norms. Herbert laments the inner city violence that plagues our country and the “widespread notion among young people that killing somebody who ticks you off is normal.”
Mimetic anthropology helps us understand that violence permeates our culture. Violence is intensely mimetic, or non-consciously imitative. As René Girard points out in his book Violence and the Sacred, “the mimetic character of violence is so intense that once violence is installed in a community, it cannot burn itself out” (81). Physical, emotional, and verbal violence have been installed everywhere in our culture; they are not just problems that those inner city kids suffer from. Turn on the tv or the radio and it doesn’t take long before you encounter some kind of violence. Violence has become a cultural norm. Violence is a cultural norm because we teach it so well – so well that we are unconscious of the myriad ways in which we teach it.
Herbert’s article explores the transformation of violence. He writes about Dr. Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist who formed an organization called CeaseFire. The organization has two primary goals: To work with community and government partners to reduce violence in all forms and to help design intervention to be included in a community or city anti-violence program.
(Click here to watch a CeaseFire video.)
“These violent behaviors are learned,” said Dr. Slutkin. “They are largely formed by modeling, the almost unconscious copying of one another. And then they are maintained by the social pressure of peers. It becomes normal to reach for a gun.” That’s mimetic anthropology 101.
Since violence won’t burn itself out, what is needed is to model a different way. Dr. Slutkin is doing just that. Herbert states that through their trained volunteers CeaseFire “intervene[s] to ward off potentially tragic outcomes.” Part of the reason CeaseFire has been enormously successful is because those who volunteer “know the streets first hand, and in many cases are former gang members and convicts themselves.”
Unfortunately, our culture tends to be cynical when it comes to former gang members and convicts. We have little faith that those who have committed acts of violence can be transformed into people who seek peace. Government funding has been reduced during the last few years. Indeed, these are difficult economic times, but as Herbert claims:
The absurdity of this jumps out at you when you think of the cost of adequately funding an operation like CeaseFire versus the financial cost to society of the endless violence. Typically, when one of these shootings occurs, the public pays for the medical care (sometimes for many years), for the police investigation, for the prosecutors and the defense lawyers, for the judges and other court personnel, and for the imprisonment of anyone who is convicted. In other words, the costs are monumental.
We need proper policing, better parenting, better schools and more jobs. But we also need an immediate campaign to upend the norm of murderous violence in big cities. CeaseFire is offering a blueprint that deserves much wider distribution.
