violence

• law of nature

70:1.1War is the nat­u­ral state and her­itage of evolv­ing man; peace is the so­cial yard­stick mea­sur­ing civ­i­liza­tion’s ad­vance­ment. Be­fore the par­tial so­cial­iza­tion of the ad­vanc­ing races man was ex­ceed­ingly in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic, ex­tremely sus­pi­cious, and un­be­liev­ably quar­rel­some. Vi­o­lence is the law of na­ture, hos­til­ity the au­to­matic re­ac­tion of the chil­dren of na­ture, while war is but these same ac­tiv­i­ties car­ried on col­lec­tively. And wher­ever and when­ever the fab­ric of civ­i­liza­tion be­comes stressed by the com­pli­ca­tions of so­ci­ety’s ad­vance­ment, there is al­ways an im­me­di­ate and ru­inous re­ver­sion to these early meth­ods of vi­o­lent ad­just­ment of the ir­ri­ta­tions of hu­man in­teras­so­ci­a­tions.

• unregulated competition breeds

71:5.1Com­pe­ti­tion is es­sen­tial to so­cial prog­ress, but com­pe­ti­tion, un­reg­u­lated, breeds vi­o­lence. In cur­rent so­ci­ety, com­pe­ti­tion is slowly dis­plac­ing war in that it de­ter­mines the in­di­vid­ual’s place in in­dus­try, as well as de­cree­ing the sur­vival of the in­dus­tries them­selves. (Mur­der and war dif­fer in their sta­tus be­fore the mores, mur­der hav­ing been out­lawed since the early days of so­ci­ety, while war has never yet been out­lawed by man­kind as a whole.)

• outlawed as procedure in adjusting differences

72:5.3These peo­ple have re­cently de­vel­oped new tech­niques for the ad­just­ment of in­dus­trial mis­un­der­stand­ings and for the cor­rec­tion of eco­nomic abuses which are marked im­prove­ments over their older meth­ods of set­tling such prob­lems. Vi­o­lence has been out­lawed as a pro­ce­dure in ad­just­ing ei­ther per­sonal or in­dus­trial dif­fer­ences. Wages, prof­its, and other eco­nomic prob­lems are not rigidly reg­u­lated, but they are in gen­eral con­trolled by the in­dus­trial leg­is­la­tures, while all dis­putes aris­ing out of in­dus­try are passed upon by the in­dus­trial courts.

• man secured freedom from v. by police regulation

81:5.5So­ci­ety thus be­comes a co-op­er­a­tive scheme for se­cur­ing civil free­dom through in­sti­tu­tions, eco­nomic free­dom through cap­i­tal and in­ven­tion, so­cial lib­erty through cul­ture, and free­dom from vi­o­lence through po­lice reg­u­la­tion.

• religion opposes v. in social evolution

99:0.2But re­li­gion should not be di­rectly con­cerned ei­ther with the cre­ation of new so­cial or­ders or with the preser­va­tion of old ones. True re­li­gion does op­pose vi­o­lence as a tech­nique of so­cial evo­lu­tion, but it does not op­pose the in­tel­li­gent ef­forts of so­ci­ety to adapt its us­ages and ad­just its in­sti­tu­tions to new eco­nomic con­di­tions and cul­tural re­quire­ments.

• religion opposes v. in social evolution

99:2.5The in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church may have ap­peared to serve so­ci­ety in the past by glo­ri­fy­ing the es­tab­lished po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic or­ders, but it must speed­ily cease such ac­tion if it is to sur­vive. Its only proper at­ti­tude con­sists in the teach­ing of non­vi­o­lence, the doc­trine of peace­ful evo­lu­tion in the place of vi­o­lent rev­o­lu­tion—peace on earth and good will among all men.