Online edition of Sunday Observer

A paper presented by Mass Communication Ministry Secretary Kumar Abeysinghe, at an International Seminar on the subject of 'Violence, Media and Challenges of Modern Society' organized by the Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcast Development (AIBD) held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia recently.

Violence Media and challenges of the modern society is undoubtedly a relevant an important topic for reflection. Today we see in society violence emanating from different sources happening at different levels.

Complex reasons are at play. Therefore any analysis towards understanding the phenomenon of violence, I believe should be objective and free of Scapegoating, or rhetoric's of personal political or moral beliefs and convictions.

Sri Lanka as a nation is deeply involved today in an exercise to analyze and understand the reasons for the protracted ethnic conflict which engulfed the nation for more than two decades and established a deep rooted culture of violence within the society due to spill over effects. Sometimes it is a dilemma which makes it difficult to understand as to how a society which was nurtured in the great tradition of Therawadha Buddhism for more than 2500 years which espouse the cause of Ahimsa (Non Violence) turned so violent as they approach towards the end of 20th century.

No country in the world has insulate itself from the modernization process that came indifferent form at different times. Sri Lanka too had been subjected to this process since independence. The beginning of the actual modernization process sometimes go further than that.

The colonizers introduced new political system, a new economy, new infrastructure, new values, in the name modernization. Since independence we have been trying to give more a local version to modernization process. This is very much reflected in the institutions that we have created for governance, for education for management of the economy etc. with whatever flavour, with what ever touch surprisingly the modernization process moves unabated with the hope of creating a better society. But suddenly we have realized that something has gone wrong. The peace tranquillity and much cherished societal values have been overcome by turpitude, which frequently reflected in violence in settling human problems.

So the simple question that one could raise is, whether the modernity which we have been desperately chasing behind is an illusion? A Mirage? Or is it a systems failure? Which means, was it our inability to put the systems in place that could effectively respond to human expectations generated by the modernization forces that has contributed to the present predicament of the society? Has media played any role consciously or unconsciously in reinforcing and consolidation of this position?

In their search for an answer to this grave crisis very often you can see people from different disciplines trying to attribute causality to the problems leaning to their own field of learning and specialization rather than trying to adopt a holistic approach. Based on such thinking they try to prescribe liner approaches to the solutions. For instance, biologists assume that violence especially of male men are the results of evolutionary adaptation and can therefore be channelled but not overcome.

Psychologists in contrast assume that violence is learned and therefore that non-violence can be learned in the process of socialization. Jurists believe that a lack of awareness and the absence of the risk of sanction are the cause of increasing violence. Sociologists point to structural tensions. Moralist believe degradation of moral values in face of alien cultures as the root cause for the violent behaviour of people. They find and easy escape from the problem by pointing the finger to media and its pervasive influence or something else which do not subscribe to their own version of society as the reason.

Meanwhile violence continue to increase at exponential rate. Melko for example notes that "While there have been only two major conflicts in the developed world since 1945 more than 14 million people have been killed in the third world alone. Furthermore the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees estimated in 1989 that there were in the world over 17 million refugees largely victims of internal conflicts and another 20 million internally displaced persons. There are those who even suggest that this total may be double in the 21 century.

Any attempt to understand the phenomena of violence in the context of modernization, I believe should begin with a clear definition on violence. Could we define violence in a narrower sense as we see through our naked eye. 'Assault, killing, physical torture, gun trotting youth etc', or should we be looking for a broader meaning to it enabling us to discover more clearly the underlying causes. Above mentioned acts of violence may be simply an external manifestation of the reasons for violence which may be more deep seated in the society than perceived normally.

Let us also make a distinction between collective or political violence and personal or individual violence. 'Tilly' has written that "Collective violence has flowed regularly out of the central political process of countries. Men seeking to seize hold or realign the levers of power have continually engaged in collective violence as part of their struggles. The opposed have struck in the name of justice. The privileged in the name of order. And those in between in the name of fear."

As mentioned above if need we could define violence in a narrower sense placing both collective and individual violence in one bracket. But there are others who adopt a different and wider approach. They include in their definition of violence war, capital punishment, corporal punishment and certain aspects of penal practices, police behaviour and school discipline etc.

Still a broader definition might include poverty, deprivation economic exploitation and discrimination, irrespective of the definition. Behaviours in these categories could be interrelated and feed each other. Prof. Nazli Chaucri describes: "Violence as a sign of institution failure and systems overload". He says that "These conditions are no means unique to the third world. But it remains a fact that the vast majority of wars and war like incidents have taken place since second world war have been fought in the third world."

Recently I was able to read a few lines of an article which reproduced the findings of an authentic report on the subject of 'History of Violence in America'. This report which claims to be one of most comprehensive and authoritative study of violence published during that period says that, "Although many factors impinge on what is a complex process there is considerable evidence that supports the assumption that men's frustration over some of the material and social circumstances of their lives become a necessary precondition of group protest and collective violence.

Elaborating further the report goes on to say that the "Cause of major increase in group violence is the widespread frustration of socially deprived expectation about the goods and the conditions of life men believe as their right. These frustratable expectations according to the report relates not only to material well-being but to more intangible conditions such as ones - security - status freedom to manage ones own affairs and satisfying personal relations with others. Rapid social changes thereby inflame the situation particularly in the case of rising expectation among people.

I find this analysis capture the essence of basic reasoning for societal violence. Rising expectation generated by the modernization process. Value attachment to the new symbols created by the same process. Peoples changed perception of life. There inability to reach those new tangibles and intangibles prescribed by the modernization process.

All these factors acting cumulatively increase human frustration and eventually burst out in the form of violence. In fact it was equally interesting to note that same reasoning has been expounded by Gowthama The Buddha some centuries ago in one of his discourses to the disciples. In a recent article published by Laksiri Jayasuriya Emirates Professor University of Western Australia on Buddhist social philosophy refers to the famous discourse on the 'Lions Roar on the Turning Wheel' the 'Chakkavattisihanada Sutta' which Buddha extols among other things the Buddhist conception of economic life of human beings. It is observed that when there is an economic down turn, adverse economic conditions are likely to lead to a lack of opportunities, and poverty become rampant.

Consequently those distressed by poverty it is observed resort to crime such as lying and stealing and even commit acts of violence. Interestingly blame for this is not to be placed on the individual but on the society as a whole.

John Gultung is his broad definition of violence includes "Any avoidable suffering in human beings." He says that suffering may not be the best term: a better expression might be avoidable reduction in human realization which could vary according to cultures and geographic locations of societies. (5) Based on 'Gultangs' thinking we could further define violence as: "A physical biological or spiritual pressure directly or indirectly exercised by a person on someone else which when exceed a certain threshold reduces or annuls that persons potential for performance both at individual and group level in the society." (6)

I feel the terms included in this definition such pressure-threshold-reduction or annulment-potential for performance, eventually leads us to comprehend the causality of violence those associated with modernity. The most critical point in 'Gultangs' theory on violence is the consequence of the act of violence.

"That is the reduction of the potential for performance. Therefore not all forces lead to violence, only that which produce this result in human being should be considered violence.

'Gultang' also speaks on Structural Violence. He says structural violence is somehow the result of the working of social structures. According to him structural violence is committed by no identifiable individual.

"There may be not any person who directly harms another person in the structure. The violence is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances." This is manifested in a situation he says where the resources are unevenly distributed. When we look at what has left behind by so called modern development projects we see that even towards beginning of the 21 century the modernization process that has taken place in the world had not been able reduce these discrepancy. Rather it has accelerated the widening.

According to a world bank report "Almost half the world's people estimated at 2.8 billion live less than 2$ a day. And a fifth estimated at some 1.2 billion live on less than US$1 a day. In contrast in the USA the richest country in the world there are constellation of 170 billionaires, 250,000 deca-millioners 900,000 millionaires. The combined net worth of the three of the richest men exceeds the total of GDP of the poorest countries.

Added to this the fact that the industrialized western countries representing only 20% of the worlds population gobbles 85% of the global GDP equal to US$18 trillion." The third wave of development powered by the communication revolution seems to be further widening this gap. Now we talk not only about income rich and resource poor but about the 'Digital gap'. While at the global level the disparity between the 'connected and the disconnected world' tend to widen at the country level it is the gap between the media rich and media poor could make matters worse.