The Raven Foundation

^{Afghan soldiers. Photo: EPA}

The worst thing one can do now is believe in violence. – René Girard

Battling to the End, 125

The greatest danger facing humanity today is our belief that violence can produce peace. It’s a belief that threatens our future, and, indeed, our planet. At some deep level, we all know our belief in violence is flawed, and yet we remain faithful to it. Why?

Those were my thoughts as I read today’s New York Times article titled “As Trained Afghans Turn Enemy, a U.S.-Led Imperative Is in Peril.” It describes an incident of what the U.S. military is calling “green on blue” attacks – NATO trained Afghan soldiers turning on their NATO counterparts. First Sgt. Joseph Hissong awoke during the middle of the night to gunfire. He thought the Taliban was attacking his company, but as the Times reports,

It was not the Taliban. Over the next 52 minutes, as his company of paratroopers braved bullets and rocket-propelled grenades in the predawn darkness to retake one of their own guard towers in southern Afghanistan, they found themselves facing what has become a more pernicious threat: the Afghan soldiers who live and fight alongside the Americans.

Why do we believe in violence? Because our continued belief in violence allows us the conviction that they are the violent ones, not us. We use violence in the name of liberation and peace. They use violence because, well, they are violent people.

Here’s the deal. Everyone uses violence in the name of liberation and peace. Everyone. For example, liberation and peace was the rationale behind the US war in Afghanistan.  Liberation and peace is also the rationale behind the Afghan soldiers’ machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades against US troops.

The problem with our belief in violence is that one person’s violence leads to another’s revenge. And the imitative cycle of violence continues and escalates, as we accuse the other of being a pernicious threat. That accusation against the other absolves us from the responsibility of coming to terms with the fact that our use of violence makes us a pernicious threat.

Where do we go from there?

Unless we find another way of bringing peace, the logical conclusion is that we will be the authors of our own destruction.

But we haven’t authored our own destruction … yet. I’m optimistic about our future because I think Paul was right when he wrote in Romans 5:20,

Where sin increases, grace abounds all the more.

In other words, where violence increases there is the greatest opportunity for grace and forgiveness.

But as long as we believe in violence we will never have peace and we will remain a pernicious threat to one another and to the world.

Paul pointed to the alternative to our irrational belief that violence will create peace. If we truly want peace, we need courageous people like you to deconstruct our belief in violence and construct a belief in grace and forgiveness.

(For more on this topic, join Raven’s radio show Playing for Keeps on Monday morning at 11:00 Central as peace journalist Bob Kohler and I interview 2 time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly about her quest to help create peace in Afghanistan. You can listen to the interview at TalkShoe.com)

I recently came across a controversial statement about peace that I’d like to discuss with you. Here it is – our desire for peace actually makes us violent. (See Rene Girard’s book Battling to the End, especially page 44.) Sounds counter-intuitive, huh?  I mean, if everyone desired peace, wouldn’t the world be a more peaceful place? Maybe not. The Hunger Games offers us a way to understand this idea

I don’t know about you, but it’s easy for me to hate the Capitol of Panem. It keeps the districts down through oppression and violence – ultimately through the violence of the annual sacrifice of teenagers called the Hunger Games. But here’s the thing about the Capitol – it desires peace and it creates a sense of peace and order in the Capitol by uniting through violence against the districts. The Capitol thinks that the districts are a threat to peace, so the Capitol uses violence as a method to subdue the districts. About 74 years before the events in The Hunger Games, we are told that the districts rebelled against the Capitol.  Katniss, the main character of the novels, narrates that this rebellion created

… the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol.  Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated.  The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the dark days must never be repeater, it gave us the Hunger Games. (18)

It is the Capitol’s desire for peace that fosters the violence and oppression of the Hunger Games – because the Capitol thinks the Districts are a threat to peace. Indeed, the Capitol believes the Districts are barbaric, but it never questions its own violence as barbaric. (See page 74.) Indeed, in its use of violence to create peace, the Capitol believes itself to be unquestionably good. (84) Of course, you and I can easily question the “goodness” of the capitol because we know its sense of peace comes at the expense of the districts, whose citizens have to deal with the realities of violence and oppression every day.

Again, it’s easy for us to hate the Capitol.  But here’s the sad truth about us humans.  We’ve always used violence as a method to achieve peace.  There’s a bit of the Capitol in all of us because violence does give us a sense of peace as it unites us against a common enemy. We all want peace, and we always tend to see another as an obstacle to that peace. So, we must subdue or destroy the other to achieve our desired peace. We see this not just in The Hunger Games, but we see it throughout human history. For example, the Pax Romana (or Peace of Rome) was created through the use of violence to subdue those that Rome believed threatened their peace. The Aztecs also used violence that created a sense of unity against an enemy. (See Father Robert Barron’s excellent video on The Hunger Games by clicking here.) Unfortunately, this method of achieving peace through violence remains with us today. In a desire for peace, the United States wages war against a common enemy.  In an article called “The Bad Apple,” peace journalist Bob Koehler quoted a veteran of the war in Iraq,

The military turned hadji into a disempowering word.  My sergeant major said, ‘The hadji is an obstacle. Get him out of the way.’ Denying a person their name gave us permission to separate ourselves from the people of Iraq.  Thus, when a boy was hit by a truck, the CO said: ‘He’s gone, move out.’

The truth about violence that The Hunger Games points to is that humans have always believed our violence to be unquestionably good because we have faith that our violence will lead to our desired peace.  The problem is that there is always one more obstacle to peace, one more bad guy that needs to be defeated. Who is the good guy when everyone believes in their own goodness and in their right to use violence to kill one another?  To put it another way, does our use of violence turn us into monsters?

We’ll explore that question in my next post on The Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games Blog - Table of Contents

The Hunger Games Part 1: The Hope for a Better World

The Hunger Games Part 2: The Desire for a Better World

The Hunger Games Part 3: The Desire for Peace

The Hunger Games Part 4: The Desire to Subvert Evil

The Hunger Games Part 5: The Desire to Love

The Hunger Games Part 6: The Fear of Death and the Hope for Life: Katniss and Perpetua

He made you look desirable!

-Haymitch, The Hunger Games, 135

We must understand that desire itself is … directed toward an object desired by the model.

René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 146.

The Hunger Games presents us with a post-apocalyptic world living with a fragile peace.  (For a summary of The Hunger Games, click here.) Violence is front and center with the annual ritual called The Hunger Games in which two young people from each District are entered into a bloody contest to the death that reminds us of the Roman Coliseum.  (See Julie Clawson’s wonderful book The Gospel and the Hunger Games.) But all that bloodletting is meant to prevent a bigger outbreak of violence, like the one more than 74 years ago that nearly destroyed all life on the planet. We are not told much about that old conflict. We don’t know what it was about or what started it, but in this article I’d like to reflect with you on conflict and what we know about how it gets started.

Most theories of conflict focus on the differences between the two adversaries, because that’s all the adversaries can talk about. When we are in a conflict with someone, we claim to be as different from each other as night is from day, as good is from evil. Yet, conflict is not due to our differences, but due to our similarities. Indeed, there are extreme differences in The Hunger Games between the Capitol and the Districts. They are divided into the power elite and the oppressed workers, the well-fed and the starving, the rich and the poor and so on.  But the differences, while they may exist in a very real way, are insignificant as triggers for conflict. Think about it this way, if there is an apple on the table (I mean the kind you can actually bite into) and you want it but I don’t, well, there’s no problem at all. But here’s where the conflict begins – as soon as I see that you want the apple, I get a little craving for it. In fact, the more I hear you talking about how good that apple is going to taste, the more I want it. And if I reach for it, trying to head you off at the pass, your desire will be both frustrated and intensified by the display of my desire. You see, we come into conflict with one another because we share desires, desires we learn from one another. Now there’s an easy way out of the conflict – I can admit that your desire preceded mine. I can even thank you for reminding me how good apples are and then I can pick some up on the way home from work. But we rarely take the easy way! I am most likely to forget that I borrowed my desire from you and see you only as a big ole meanie who won’t let me have my apple. Instead of a model for desire, I see only an obstacle to the fulfillment of my desire and that is the recipe for conflict.

So if we want to understand conflict in the Hunger Games we can’t let ourselves get distracted by the differences. We have to look for shared desires. We have no information about the old conflict, but we can look at the potential for conflict that exists in the present of the first novel. The thing that the Capitol wants more than anything is prevent open rebellion. Stated positively, we can say that the Capitol wants peace and it goes to great lengths to get it, most notably forcing 24 teenagers to murder each other on nationwide television each year as a form of entertainment. I’ll discuss how the Hunger Games work to keep the peace in the next article. But what is interesting is that the Capitol sees the Districts as a threat to peace and, you guessed it, the Districts think the same thing about the Capitol. Both want peace and both see the other as the obstacle to its fulfillment. It is seeing the other as obstacle that allows each side to justify their hatred and violence against each other. I don’t owe obstacles anything, except their destruction. As the story progresses through the second and third novels, we will see all manner of violence committed in the name of peace. If, on the other hand, I recognize that we share the same desire for peace, I recognize myself in the other and that might be enough to at least slow my hate to a simmer. Unfortunately, what usually happens is an escalation to all out warfare as the Hunger Games will show us.

There is another example in the Hunger Games of shared desire, but one that does not lead to conflict but instead to love. It is the desire of Peeta for Katniss, which he openly displays in front of the entire country during his interview.  The audience is sympathetic to Peeta, “For unrequited love they can relate to” (130). In other words, they openly allow Peeta to be their model of desire. At the end of his interview, the audience roars in approval of Peeta’s expression of love.  Katniss blushes in embarrassment and after the show she confronts Peeta and yells, “You had no right!  No right to go saying those things about me!” (134)  Haymitch, their mentor, sees this happening and responds to Katniss by saying:

You are a fool … Do you think he hurt you?  That boy just gave you something you could never achieve on your own … He made you look desirable!  And let’s face it, you can use all the help you can get in that department.  You were about as romantic as dirt until he said he wanted you.  Now they all do. You’re all they’re talking about. (135)

The audience’s desire for Katniss is openly borrowed from Peeta’s desire – he reached for the apple and they want it, too!  Peeta’s love for Katniss is actually contagious because like all good fans, the Capitol audience is not ashamed of their open admiration for these two celebrities from District 12.  Peeta’s desire for Katniss is also explained by this contagious aspect of desire, as Peeta openly claims that “a lot of boys like her” back at District 12. (130)

The Hunger Games reveals how shared desire can lead to conflict and to love. This is of great importance if we desire a better world. When we find ourselves locked in rivalry with some wicked other who only seems to want to deny us the very thing we want, we may be caught in the trap of denying how that very rival has taught us what to desire. Learning what to desire from others is nothing to be ashamed of, it’s just how humans work. The danger comes when we think our desires are our own. That is, we run the risk of feeling justified in knocking others to the ground on our way to the apple. When Jesus talks about forgiveness in the Gospels, I think he means that we need to remember that the one who seems deserving of our hate may be the one we have the most in common with. The enemy that seems so different from me, may be my mirror image and want the same things I want precisely because I want them. It’s weird to think about conflict that way, but the next time you crave an apple (or an Apple) look around and see who else is thinking the same thing.

The Hunger Games Blog - Table of Contents

The Hunger Games Part 1: The Hope for a Better World

The Hunger Games Part 2: The Desire for a Better World

The Hunger Games Part 3: The Desire for Peace

The Hunger Games Part 4: The Desire to Subvert Evil

The Hunger Games Part 5: The Desire to Love

The Hunger Games Part 6: The Fear of Death and the Hope for Life: Katniss and Perpetua

That’s mimetic.

The “Tebowing” and now “Cruzing” and “Bradying” phenomena are evidence of humanity’s mimetic nature.  As René Girard has put forth in developing the “mimetic theory,” humans are the best imitators on the planet.  We are so good at imitating, most of the time we don’t even know we are doing it.  This non-conscious imitation is how we learn from others.  Girard calls the “others” we imitate our models – we admire our models and want to be like them.  We want their success, fame, prestige, or fortune.  For example, as the above video shows, our culture has begun to dance the salsa in imitation of Victor Cruz’s celebrations after scoring a touchdown.  As the announcer in the video says, “The salsa is spreading like an internet virus.”  Babies, teenagers, and adults (even a dog!) are imitating Cruz’s victory dance.  Not only are we imitating Cruz, but we are imitating others who are imitating Cruz – hence the baby and the dog.

Even Madonna isn’t immune from imitating Cruz.

According to Girard, this imitation is a positive thing because it’s how we learn, but he also claims there is a dark side to this imitation.  It can turn very negative.  As we imitate one another in the desire for success, fame prestige, or fortune, we can easily fall into rivalry with one another because we desire the same things.  Two football teams, let’s take the Giants and the Patriots for example, want the same thing – to win the Super Bowl.  After winning, the Giants can celebrate by dancing the salsa, but how do the Patriots feel?  Envious.  Why?  Because they want what the Giants have – success.  And here’s the scandal: If you are a Patriots fan, you have a secret admiration for Giants fans.  You admire them because they have what you want.  Sure you feel a sense of hatred, but behind every hatred is a sense of admiration.

When the other team has what we want, we get frustrated.  And frustration always finds an outlet.  If we don’t deal with frustration in a positive way, the need for an outlet will either cause internal strife within our community as we blame one another for a loss, or we will find an external outlet.  As the video shows, a group of frustrated Patriots’ fans were congregating in Boston after the game.  A Giants fan did a little salsa dance, and the group turned into a mob.  Its frustrations coalesced on the man and “as he continued to taunt the crowd, he got sucker punched.”

Yes.  It was a stupid thing to do.  But he was imitating his model, Victor Cruz.  Every celebration after a touchdown will be interpreted by the other team as a taunt.  As a bit of mockery.  In essence we’re saying, “I have what you want.”

And then the ultimate taunt – “Nananananana!”

We imitate winners, but we can also imitate “losers.”  Imitating losers can be a positive thing, if we imitate them in order to share in their pain.  But it can also be a negative thing, as I think is the case with the “Bradying” phenomenon.  Imitating losers is often a way of mocking them – but we only mock those we secretly admire.  We admire our models and our rivals.  In fact, our rival is also our model, for we want what our rival has.  Football fans admire Tom Brady because he has the success we all want.  Playing in five Super Bowls and winning three of them is an amazing career.  We envy Brady because we want the success he’s had.  And so when he fails we mock him.  We imitate one another in mocking him in order to keep him down.  For when our rival is down, we are up.

We admire both our models and our rivals.  We want what they have, which can lead to rivalry, and even to violence.  Now, you may be searching for an answer to all of this negative imitation that’s going on.  Fortunately, there is an answer – but, I’ll tell you up front, few people like it.  It’s not glamorous.  And it’s hard work.  If you want to transform this negative imitation into a positive imitation, the answer is in identifying with cultural “losers” in a way that feels their pain.  Few people want to do that.  We’d rather do a salsa dance – and keep others from dancing with us.

Giants and Patriots fans, after all, don’t dance together.

“World Peace” at a football game.  Did you find that ironic?  I mean, we just watched 30 minutes of hard hitting Super Bowl action.  It’s not peaceful.  It’s violent.  And we loved it!  Seriously.  Why did Madonna (or whomever it was) have to go and spoil my football fun by making me think about world peace.

It’s pretty easy to argue that football is not a peaceful sport.  Of course, few sports can be deemed “peaceful.”  If you ask someone what the definition of peace is, they are likely to respond, “The absence of conflict.”  If that definition is anywhere near the mark, then football is very un-peaceful.  It thrives on conflict, rivalry, and high impact collisions.  You may argue that football isn’t violent because players willingly sacrifice their bodies.  That, of course, is true, but NFL players sustain traumatic injuries that cause the average life expectancy of a player to be – depending on position – 53 to 59.

Indeed, football players are willing to subject themselves to a violent game.  And that’s part of the problem.  Football players and football fans are unanimous in this sacrifice.  As the anthropologist René Girard has taught us, this is how it must be, for the most effective sacrifice is a unanimous sacrifice, where even victims willingly participate in their own demise.

So thanks for destroying the sacrificial unanimity, Madonna.  Your message of “World Peace” ruined my Super Bowl experience.

On a related issue, have you heard about the Gisele Bundchen scandal?  Bundchen is a supermodel who began dating Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots, in December of 2006.  Before their relationship, Brady and the Patriots were 3-0 at the Super Bowl; they were poised to become the dominant football dynasty for years to come.  But then, as The Business Insider.com states, “Gisele happened.  And now look at them: zilch in five years.”  Bill Simmons, a Boston sports reporter, claims that in Boston “There's an ‘Us Against Them’ mentality that's just part of the DNA. You grow up there, you live a full life there, you die there. That's how it's supposed to play out. There's been a local undercurrent for the past few years that Brady thinks he's too good for Boston (because he moved to New York, then California), that he cares too much about being a celebrity, that Gisele made him soft, that he's not really ‘one of us.’”

It’s been called “The Gisele Bundchen Curse” in Boston, but the animosity directed against her isn’t isolated to Boston.  As I watched the Today Show this morning, they had a segment on Bundchen from the Patriot’s Super Bowl loss in 2008. They showed a clip of Bundchen at that game, sitting in a private booth, “sipping red wine and looking uninterested.”  I wondered, why would the Today Show emphasize “red wine”?  Well, as one website claims, the red wine was a “Nice way for Gisele to mock American football fans who actually drink beer (not red wine) for the game.”

The accusation that she looked uninterested in the 2008 game is especially interesting, considering her reaction after Sunday’s Super Bowl.  When a Giants fan taunted her, saying, “Eli [Manning, the Giants quarterback] rules your husband!”  a video camera caught her responding, “My husband cannot  f****** throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time.”  Since the video’s release, Bundchen has been accused of betraying her husband’s teammates and throwing them under the bus.  Maybe she was too interested in this Super Bowl.

What does all of this have to do with “World Peace”?  The problem is with our definition of peace.  When we define peace in negative terms, as the absence of conflict, we will have problems.  Conflict is inevitable – as long as there are humans we will have conflict.  If we want conflict to be absent from our lives, then we have to expel those that we blame for starting conflicts.   So, I want to banish Madonna because she brought up “World Peace” during a football game and Patriots fans want to expel Bundchen because she single handedly brought the downfall of their beloved franchise.

Peace, at least a feeling of peace, often comes at the expense of others.  And when peace comes at the expense of others, we will have never have peace.

We will be closer to peace, both in our world and in our personal lives, when we think of peace as a way of life.  Peace is hard work.  It’s a way of life that seeks justice, healing, love, and reconciliation in a world where our relationships are inevitably infected with conflicts.

So, we need to ask ourselves a question – Do we really want “World Peace”?  If we do want peace, the advice of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton is worth heeding:

Instead of loving what you think is peace, love other [humans] and love God above all.  And instead of hating the people you think are war mongers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war.  If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another. (Passion for Peace, 38.  Italics in original.)

Do you have or know a child with an attention deficit disorder diagnosis? Then you are probably aware that the standard approach to diagnosing and treating A.D.D. is being seriously challenged by long term studies and neuroscientific discoveries. If you have been doing your best to cope with an A.D.D. child, this news may trigger a complicated range of emotions, everything from joy that there might be new hope for your child to anger, resentment, guilt or downright despair that by following the best medical advice of the last twenty years you may have harmed rather than helped your child. In spreading the news, it is not my intention to make anyone feel bad. That we have been misled is not our fault and fault-finding, while tempting in the short run to ease some personal pain, will not help your child. My hope for you and your child is that your undeniable willingness to do whatever it takes, including adjusting and adapting your own behavior, will enable you to listen with an open mind to the current discoveries and that you will find my parenting advice helpful. Here goes:

As a pre-school teacher in the late nineties, I had to deal with the standard approach to A.D.D. Over the years, a few of my students were in the process of being evaluated. Well-meaning parents, keen to give their children the best edge at early learning, eagerly embraced the diagnosis and drug treatment. But I wondered about the rush to diagnosis. Observing one parent at home with her young son, I couldn’t help but question the belief in genetic or born-with explanations. Believing that her child had trouble attending to the task at hand, I think it was playing with a set of blocks, she interrupted every few seconds with directions. It sounded like rapid gun fire to me.

See the big one? No not that one—the big one is blue. You know what blue is—you wanted to wear your blue shirt today. Look at your shirt. Look at your—don’t walk away. I want you to finish this. I know you can do it. Now sit down and see if you can find the big, blue one.

I felt my blood pressure rise as I listened to her relentless string of directives and I thought two things: no one could concentrate under those conditions, I don’t care how “normal” they were and her lack of confidence in her child broke my heart, and I am sure it wounded his. The big question that formed for me was this: Was this child truly born with an attention problem or was his parent’s behavior creating one in him? And if the latter, what good would a pill do?

The look-inside-the-child’s-brain-and-fix-it-with-a-pill approach to solving behavior problems is a symptom of a deeply held cultural conviction in the human being as a self-made, self-starting creature. The belief goes something like this: We are born with innate abilities and deficits, gifts and limits, that make us who we are. The job of concerned parents and educators is to correctly sort out what to encourage and what to fix and then to throw ourselves into the task with devotion as demonstrated by the barraging mother above. This conviction infects medicine, of course, as medicine is embedded in culture, not separate from it, and so medicine seeks to fix with its own brand of corrections. We have been operating under the self-made, self-starting picture of human beings for a good 500 years now, but this view is in the process of being overturned by theorists and experimental scientists and yielding exciting new ways to think about medicine, education and parenting.

In an article in the New York Times recently, L. Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, beautifully summarized the shift in thinking about A.D.D. that has occurred since the 1960s. From a theory of inborn dysfunction, the field has begun to recognize that “behavior and the brain are intertwined” and grow in a sort of feedback loop with one another. Behavior and environment influence and actually shape the physical brain. Prof. Sroufe says it this way: “One of the most profound findings in behavioral neuroscience in recent years has been the clear evidence that the developing brain is shaped by experience.” Or as René Girard, cultural theorist and founder of mimetic theory might say, we are not individuals at all but at every level and fiber of our being, we are inter-dividual, social creatures who when left alone as infants fail to thrive and even die. Just the opposite of independent self-starters, human beings develop under the influence of others, our community and culture. Are we born with particular bodies, unique genetics and predispositions? Of course we are, but that is not the limit of our becoming, in fact it is more like a cupboard of ingredients that can be shaped into different dishes by different environmental factors. It is also true that our particularities at birth will shape our response to the environments, but the critical discovery is the profound interaction of biology with environment that is the creative force in human development.

You may be surprised to know that this understanding of human development is not new, but rather has been part of the minority report operating below the surface. As a Montessori educator I learned that as early as 1903, Dr. Maria Montessori was teaching that the absolute worst thing one could do with children is to interrupt their play, or “work” as she called it. These interruptions interfere with a child’s normal attention pattern by imposing our will upon him. Today this is a common problem where busy lifestyles, the need to get to work, daycare, or other appointments forces the child into adapting to adult patterns of behavior.

Here is how Montessori described it in her medical textbook from the early 1900s:

Often what we call naughtiness on the part of the individual child is rebellion against our own mistakes in educating him. The coercive means which we adopt toward children are what   destroy their natural tranquility. A healthy child, in his moments of freedom, succeeds in escaping from the toys inflicted upon him by his parents, and in securing some object which arouses the investigating instinct of his mind; a worm, an insect, some pebbles, etc.; he is silent, tranquil and attentive. If the child is not well, or if his mother obliges him to remain seated in a chair, playing with a doll, he becomes restless, cries, or gives way to convulsive outbursts (“bad temper”). The mother believes that educating her child means forcing him to do what is pleasing to her, however far she may be from knowing what the child’s real needs are, and unfortunately we must make the same statement regarding the school-teachers! Then, in order to make him yield to coercion, she punishes the child when he rebels and rewards him when he is obedient. By this method we drive a child by force along paths that are not natural to him. (emphasis in the original)

I do admire her boldness – she is really unconcerned if she is hurting the feelings of well-meaning parents because her first and foremost concern is with the child. It is a wonderful example to imitate. Prof. Sroufe, also putting the child’s developmental needs first, pointed out that behavior problems in children have “many possible sources. Among them are family stresses.” He lists a few obvious stressors like domestic violence or chaotic living situations, but the one that interested me was this:

…especially, patterns of parental intrusiveness that involve stimulation for which the baby is not prepared. For example, a 6-month-old baby is playing, and the parent picks it up quickly from behind and plunges it in the bath. Or a 3-year-old is becoming frustrated solving a problem, and a parent taunts or ridicules.

The mother I described at the opening may not have thought of her directives as taunting, but I wonder if her child would agree. Someone who hovers over you and persistently focuses your attention on what you are doing wrong may indeed be described as engaging in ridicule. Now, if you have read this far, you are surely following in Montessori’s footsteps by doggedly putting your desire to help your child ahead of your instinctive need to avoid feeling hurt, guilty or whatever. Allow me to conclude with some easy to implement parenting tips to support a child’s natural development.

1.  
   1. When you see a child engaged in play or concentrating on seemingly trivial things like specks of dust or his own hand, think: “Einstein at work”. If you had to interrupt Einstein, you would do it in a spirit of humility and regret, wouldn’t you? That is the same attitude to take when you need to interrupt your child.
   2. Young children are notoriously bad at transitions, but easily coaxed into them with sufficient warning. Let’s use the example of transitioning from play time to dinner time. While the children are playing, slowly squat near them and in a quiet voice say, “Five minutes until it’s time to wash our hands for dinner.” Then walk away. Of course, the 5 minutes means nothing to them and be as short or long as you need it to be. But in a few minutes more, repeat your warning in a quiet voice, “3 minutes till dinner. It will be time to put your toys away and wash your hands.” Then give a one minute warning and finally, “It’s dinner time. Let’s put our toys away and wash up.”
   3. If your child balks at the moment of transition, don’t get into a power struggle. Just ask, “What did my words say?” Not “What did I say,” but precisely, “What did my words say?” Your child will think for a second and then repeat some version of “It’s time for dinner”. You will just shrug as if it is a shame for you, too, that we have to go to dinner, sharing in your child’s experience at that moment. Then off you go together, putting toys away and washing up as a team.

That’s it, three easy steps! It is hard to underestimate how vitally important this style of parenting can be to the formation of a healthy pattern of attention. As Dr. Montessori put it over one hundred years ago, “We cannot know the consequences of suffocating a spontaneous action at the time when the child is just beginning to be active: perhaps we suffocate life itself.” Too dramatic? Maybe, but maybe not. The beauty of it all is that to support life itself may be as easy as one, two, three.

One of the ugly truths of human existence is that violence works.

As a proponent of nonviolence, it is hard for me to make that statement, but please hear me out.  The anthropologist René Girard claims that we gain temporary peace through sacrifice, expulsion, and other acts of violence.  In this sense, violence works to bring a sense of peace and calm, but that sense of peace and calm is simply that – an illusion that the problem has been solved.  Although violence brings this sense of peace, it doesn’t have the capability of solving underlying problems.  In fact, violence covers up the problems.  Because those problems are not dealt with, they emerge once again.  We remember the sense of peace that violence brought us before, and so we repeat the cycle.

To paraphrase the great non-violent activist Michael Nagler in his book The Search for a Nonviolent Future, violence may work, but violence never works.  It might give us a temporary sense of peace, but it never solves our problems.

What does this have to do with the recent events at University of California, Davis?

The UC Davis campus police believe that violence works.  They used pepper spray to coerce the students who were nonviolently protesting.  That violence worked temporarily as a means to forcibly remove students, but it didn’t work, as two days after the incident student protesters once again occupied the quad, leaving the authorities wondering how they should now respond.

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi believes that violence works, and employed that belief yesterday in the form of expulsion.  She claimed about her decision to place campus Police Chief Annette Spicuzza on administrative leave that “As I have gathered more information about the events that took place on our Quad on Friday, it has become clear to me that this is a necessary step toward restoring trust on our campus.”  The Los Angeles Times correctly reports that this act of expulsion is an attempt to restore peace.  The authors of the article claim that “Katehi announced Monday that she had put campus Police Chief Annette Spicuzza on administrative leave, an effort to restore peace to the 32,000-student public university.”

UC Davis assistant professor Nathan Brown, along with some other faculty members, also believes violence in the form of expulsion works.  Brown wrote an impassioned article on his blog calling for Katehi’s resignation.  “I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation…”

I want to be clear: What the UC Davis campus police did was an irresponsible act of violence that put nonviolent protesters in physical danger.  But here’s the thing: All violence is irresponsible because it never works.  It only covers up the underlying problems.  Expelling a police chief by placing her on “administrative leave” may give a sense of peace, but that form of violence isn’t going to solve the bigger problem of our faith in violence.  Demanding Katehi’s resignation might give a sense of peace as we think we are holding someone responsible, but that act of expulsion will only teach that expulsion is an effective way to solve problems, and thus, cover up the real problems.

Perhaps our hope lies with the students.  I hope that all of this violence and talk of expulsion will not distract them for the real issues that they are protesting – universities throughout the country are raising tuition costs and cutting budgets.  In the face of further violence, I hope they remain nonviolent in their protests, because violence will only cover up the issues they are protesting.

Because violence never works.

Whenever the terrible equilibrium of tragedy prevails, all talk of right and wrong is futile.  At that point in the conflict one can only say to the combatants: Make friends or pursue your own ruin.

Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 51.

It’s hard to know what to say in the midst of tragedy.  Last night, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis.  I find that tragic.  Of course, I find the 1989 murder of Officer Mark MacPhail tragic as well.  Tragedy prevails and it is hard for me to say anything without making accusations against someone involved in this case.  I could easily accuse Davis, who, at best, was part of mob violence against a homeless man.  At worst, he shot and killed Officer MacPhail.  I could easily accuse Officer MacPhail’s family for seeking vengeance in the name of justice.  I could easily accuse the American/Georgian judicial system, whose laws claim that mimetic violence is an effective way to bring order out of chaos.  I could easily accuse the United States of continued racism that has coalesced into another lynching of an innocent black man.

Indeed, to say anything is to risk getting caught up the mimetic pull of accusation.  We wonder, “Who is right and who is wrong?”  I think Girard is right; that kind of talk is futile.  It is sacrificial.  It divides the world into “good guys” and “bad guys.”  Of course, anyone making an accusation always thinks he or she is the “good guy.”  And that make us feel so good.  Making accusations allows us to feel superior, as we know who is good and who is bad.  Unfortunately, accusations are always imitative.  Whenever we make an accusation, we can be sure an accusation will be returned.  And when we get caught up in a cycle of accusations “the terrible equilibrium of tragedy [will] prevail.”

I’m a Christian.  As such, I take Jesus seriously when he says, “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13).  That means Christians are to be a source of life giving mercy, not death inflicting sacrifice.  Sometimes people ask if an individual who has done horrible things deserves mercy.  No.  Nobody “deserves” mercy.  Mercy is a free gift.  If someone has to “earn” mercy, it is no longer mercy.  So, because I am a Christian, I’m for life and against the death penalty.  Still, I’m not willing to make accusations against others.  It is futile and could become tragically counterproductive.  For example, what would happen if people who are anti-death penalty and people who are pro-death penalty stand off against each other?  I’ll tell you: Mutual tragedy would prevail.  That’s why our emphasis needs to be for life, and not so much against the death penalty.  That’s why we need to live into the way of mercy and forgiveness.  That’s why we need to follow Girard’s advice and seek to “Make friends, or [we will] pursue [our] own ruin.”

(If you are interested in putting mercy and peace into practice, join Raven in creating a "Peace Circle."  Peace Circles are a great way to practice peace with your community.  To learn more, check out our "Be a Hero for Peace" website by clicking here.)

“Why are you fighting?” I asked as I ran into their room.

The Youngest replied, “He not sharing!”

The Oldest exclaimed, “I had it first!”

“Why do you want it?” I asked the Youngest.

“Because he has it!”

Silly, isn’t it?  They just woke up and already were in a fight.  This time it was over the tiny Batman toy shown above.  I’ll be honest with you – I’ve seen a lot of toys in my 32 years, and this is one of the most BORING toys I have ever seen.  I mean, you can’t move his head, arms, or legs.  Batman just stands there.  I don’t get it.  In a room full of Superheroes and Transformers, Legos and Playmobil, what’s the fascination with this Batman figure?  To make the fight even sillier, we have two more Batmans that are exactly the same.  So, I did the rational Dad thing: I gave one of the other Batmans to the Youngest – at which point he threw it at my face.

(Okay.  Maybe it wasn’t directly at my face, but it was close.)

How is it that the boring Batman action hero became sacred?  The Youngest knows why: “Because he has it!”  There is nothing inherently desirable about that toy – except that the Oldest possessed it.  And this is how desire works.  We desire certain things because another desired that thing first.  This is the way human desire works, from children to adults.  As the anthropologist Rene Girard has pointed out, humans have “an irresistible desire to desire what others desire” (Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 12.)

This key to understanding human desire is counter-intuitive to our modern world.  Our modern world idolizes our individuality.  It tells you that your desire starts and ends with you.  You came up with it and you need to fulfill it.  It’s all about You.  You are your own man!  In fact …

You are the MAN!!!!  (Or the WOMAN!!!  You know, depending.)

But, and I really hate to break this to you, it’s really not about you.  And it’s definitely not about Batman, the perfect house, car, or job.  It’s about relationships.  (Which for this introvert, that’s hard to admit.)  No one exists as an individual.  Rather, the key to understanding desire is that we exist as inter-dividuals.  Our desire for objects is given to us by others, who desired them first.  And you can see how our shared desires can easily lead all of us, from children to adults, into conflicts.

So, you’re probably wondering how I solved the Batman issue.  The important thing that I’ve learned is that our desires need to be redirected to something positive, deep, and meaningful.  So that’s what I tried to do.

“Who wants breakfast?”

It worked.  It was simple.  And, I’ll be honest, I was hungry.

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“It is logical.  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one”

-Spock

I’ve been trained to ask a surprisingly complex question during the last few years: Where is God in this?  The question is surprisingly complex because the answer is not always obvious.

Last week I went to visit my family in Portland, Oregon.  When my brothers and I get together, we ususally watch a Star Trek or Star Wars movie.  Yup.  We’re nerds.  And I love it.

On this visit I wanted to watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Although it is not their favorite Star Trek movie, my brothers politely obliged.  Throughout the movie, they made playful, sarcastic comments Mystery Science Theater 3000 style about the Kobayashi Maru test, Ceti Eels (okay, those are gross), and Khan’s massive pecs, (I envy the pecs on that 60+ year old dude).  This is the Sci-Fi nerdiness that I love.

But I also love The Wrath of Khan for its theology.  I’m convinced that the director, Nicholas Meyer, knew what he was doing. So, as one of my brothers loaded the DVD, I asked the question nerdy theological question: “Where do you think God is in The Wrath of Khan?”

They referred to the Genesis Device – which could bring life to a lifeless planet.  Creation and resurrection are indeed Godlike qualities.  But the Genesis Device has a darkside that made us hesitate to say that this is where we find God in the movie.  The Genesis Device can be used to destroy and manipulate planetary life.

So, where is God in the movie?  First, because the word means different things to different people, I need to tell you what I mean by “God.”  I mean Jesus.  I mean the God who self-sacrifices for the needs of the many.  And what did Jesus bring that we need?  In part, he brought a transformation in our understanding of sacrifice.

As René Girard points out in his development of mimetic theory, human culture was built on the logic of violent sacrifice.  Girard has a long explanation of this hominization process that you can read about in books like Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, but it’s fairly intuitive.  The logic of sacrifice works basically like this: If conflicts and rivalries arise among people, the mimetic (nonconscious) solution is to unite against a common enemy.  This unfortunate person becomes our sacrificial victim, aka, our scapegoat.  Even more unfortunate is that this scapegoating works to bring temporary peace to a community, but it never actually solves the problem.  Soon, conflicts and rivalries arise again and sacrificial logic reasserts itself and a new scapegoat is needed to bring peace and unity.

Girard calls this archaic sacrifice.  Don’t let the word archaic fool you: Girard asserts that we are still infected by archaic sacrifice.  We still know that finding a common enemy is the easiest way to find unity.  But the Judeo-Christian message challenges archaic sacrifice with another form of sacrifice.  Instead of sacrificing another, we find the Judeo-Christian alternative of self-sacrifice.  It is a form of sacrifice that has its own logic, but it is a logic that counters the logic of archaic sacrifice.   For example, when two prostitutes ask Solomon to settle their rivalry over a child, the real mother sacrifices her desire for the child so the child may live.  The prophet Isaiah writes about the Suffering Servant who sacrifices himself for the needs of the many.  And, of course, there is Jesus, who for Christians concretely reveals the true character of God precisely in this self-sacrificial love.  Jesus' logic of sacrificial love is summed up in John 15:13, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."

If you have seen the movies, you know that Spock is not a perfect Christ figure.  But when he sacrifices himself in order to save his friends, he does something truly amazing and “Christlike.” Spock had choices.  He could have used archaic logic to unite the crew in sacrificing someone else, but instead he used the Judeo-Christian logic of self-sacrifice.  When I see Spock perform this sacrifice, I think of the prostitute and her child, the prophet Isaiah, and Jesus.

As the movie ends, Amazing Grace begins to play.  Indeed, as the director, Meyer had to have known what he was doing.  For ‘tis amazing grace that leads us to the self-sacrificing love of God.

And, to further my sci-fi/theological nerdiness, in Star Trek III Spock is resurrected back to life!

Self-sacrifice and resurrection.  Judeo-Christian themes are all over Star Trek, and my inner sci-fi theological nerd is all kinds of giddy.