As life expectancy increases, so do life-threatening situations based on violence. Paradoxically, violence creates circumstances that are destabilizing for society and for the psychic fabric of individuals. A multiplicity of factors lead to it and these variables have been studied by historians of civilization since ancient times, however when violence breaks the social contract, the question that leads us to seek answers in relation to its genesis appears. .
We know that the loss of values and structuring identifications creates an imbalance and an existential vacuum that manifests itself in mental disorders with a great social impact, such as antisocial personality disorders. The social sciences have identified various causes of violent behavior, both bio-psychic and psychosocial and socio-cultural. All of them are true, but partially, since in human beings both the survival instinct and emotional reactions, frustration, injustice, and even cultural influence can motivate violent behavior.
However, there is extreme violence that impacts the social sphere, this extreme violence being exclusive to the human species and is what we know as “evil.”
Rene Girard and his “mimetic theory” explain how mimetic desire can become extremely violent (because evil is activated by wanting to possess the other’s desire and ultimately their identity and being). Viktor Frankl, for his part, considered violence as a consequence of existential frustration and the loss of meaning in life. Both share a phenomenological-existential vision and consider that if we manage to realize our intimate desires and guide our lives with meaning, it is possible to prevent violent behavior. For this it is necessary to educate self-awareness, responsibility and decision-making in life, the notion of transcendence and the values that govern existence with others.
There are victims because there are perpetrators and it is thus that somehow the brutal and the inhuman need to be explained. It seems that something of humanity will never end up being understood if we fail to explain how the desires to mistreat and make other human beings suffer are activated, those “others” who are “similar to
Social psychologists in the mid-twentieth century, motivated by the horror and atrocious fear of wars, became interested in investigating the causes of violence and concluded that “good” normal people could behave in an extremely violent manner due to the conjunction of certain situational variables that cause these behaviors, such as (the role that these people occupied in the social system, the desire for power that leads to the use of violence, deindividualization and dehumanization).
The psychosocial perspective in the study of violence tries to cover the variables that intervene in any human interaction. Bandura (1987) demonstrated the importance of imitation in learning violent behaviors. Until then, the experiments considered aggressive behavior as a consequence of frustration.
However, in his experiments Bandura verified that the origin is the observation of the aggressive behavior of others (although it is not a determinant of violent behavior because frustration facilitates the emotion of responses and the learned values can help self-control).
From a socio-cultural perspective, the causes of violence in social structures are sought, since people build their personality on socialization models. The sociological description offers unquestionable data in this regard, such as that “family breakdown and violence” are inseparable, for which it seems obvious to assume that the causes of the behavior are found in the system and there are many authors who propose replacement as a solution. of values for the transformation of societies.
Every day we attend as spectators the information on aberrational acts of violence against young people, children and women. Given this, using the resources of technology through social networks, we express a kind of social outcry begging the judges for justice.
Another paradox, we call for justice to those in charge of ruling on what is fair, we do not trust their healthy criticism, we fear that they will be frightened, we feel impotent before a social contract that has been broken by violence and that nobody seems to be willing to act courage that implies the management of public policies that work effectively in the prevention, eradication and punishment of criminal, violent, cruel, perverse, aberrant, brutal and inhuman conduct that puts a society in check, leaving it plunged into the terrifying pain of being at the expense of extreme violence and unpredictable evil, anytime, anywhere, at the hands of anyone, with no possibility of protection, no defense, no justice.
The social contract has been broken and without it social coexistence is not possible. Perhaps it is time for Justice to remove the blindfold to see the victims and provide them with the protection that the State must provide to maintain the validity of the social contract that allows us to live in a civilized society and not in a state of nature.
mg. Lic. Analia Forti
Master in Social Psychology
Bachelor of Science for the Family
Psychological Consultant. logotherapy
Family Mediation Specialist
Writer – Author of two Books
speaker
Dir. Argentine Center of Family Sciences & Psychological Consulting
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by Lic. Analia Forti
