``Kill! Kill! Kill!

You will not kill''

-- ``Thieves and Liars'' - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste - Ministry

personal violence

Centuries ago travelling at night was taking your life into your hands. Brigands wandered the roads searching for prey.

mass destruction

Gradually nations grew strong enough to control the criminals within their borders. However, recently, nations still visited frequent violence upon one another through war.

One could say that we're trying to end that violence. The U.N. is trying to stamp out civil wars. The U.S. smacked Iraq for using violence against Kuwait.

We have not yet achieved an end to personal violence, but it's generally frowned upon, and there are mechanisms in place designed to punish it (with more personal violence?!).

War may be becoming passe. What if war between major nations were rare, and the U.N.'s main problem would be suppressing bush wars? (It would become fairly adept). The next step would be eliminating

economic violence

Despite the fact that we haven't perfected this to the same extent we've perfected war there are already attempts to curb ``economic violence''. Progressive taxes try to give the ``victims'' a break, while ``punishing'' the ``aggressors''. Welfare is a form of ``medical care'' for the ``economically hurt''.

I think the Securities and Exchange Commission exists to prevent blatant underhanded economic warfare between corporations. Governments intervene with economic sanctions (econo-violence) when native industries skin their knees.

There is a World Trade Court (under the auspices of the U.N. if I am not mistaken). It, or a successor, will probably find itself very busy in the next few centuries arbitrating disputes and developing laws to let the kids compete on the playground without beating upon each other.

And when economic violence becomes passe the focus will turn to

psychological violence

You won't be allowed to make fun of someone else's stutter, or clothes. You won't be able to insult them, or give destructive criticism of their behavior. You won't be able to criticize their art.

It sounds absurd, but I'm sure if you told someone from the 14th century that one day the U.N. would tell one nation ``You can't invade Kuwait and kill their civilian males just because they were sideways drilling into your oil fields (economic violence)'' they'd be incredulous.

what next?

I don't know. By the time psychological violence is a revolting crime the world will be a very strange place. I can only envision that the people will be very bland and without passion. Children will be drugged and trained to be efficient, obedient, and conformant. Such a drab existence frightens me, but society doesn't work very well when violence is common.

Economies of scale...

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Robert Forsman <thoth@purplefrog.com>

Last modified: Thu Jun 8 18:26:06 1995