Violence has shaped human consciousness and history since time immemorial.
As an individual and collective force, it has weaved its imprint in societal, cultural, economic, ancestral, psychological and physical threads.
Our relationship to violence, its impact and influence as a whole has embedded itself deeply into our DNA, continuing to create thoughts of separatism and unworthiness even before we enter this world. Violence has become such a powerful miasm in human history that it has become part of the norm. Part of the way in which we live, survive, and for some cultures, thrive.
Yes, thrive. Many societies were built and have thrived on this miasm, when the need for power and attachment to survival became primary incentives for existing.
Systems were created to enforce this miasm, in every facet of humanity and included themes of race, religion, sexual orientation, economic status, thus becoming the backdrop to support a collective violence in which people utilized to survive and maintain power over one another.
I have watched as people become hypnotized by violence. Most certainly a plethora of emotions surface alongside with that.
They become hypnotized over the power one human being can have over another and how the dehumanization of life is so easily accessible to minds and hearts alike.
I am saddened at the thought that violence will always be a part of human evolution. Just as good cannot exist without evil. Its constructs supported by systems that will not weaken unless we change those systems, shift our responses to those systems and create new experiences that will foster different boundaries around violence in the future.
We are not just reacting to the violence we are witnessing today.
We are reacting to the violence we have known for centuries. We are reacting to our reactions surrounding that historical violence that has been programmed within us for centuries.
We all have been victims of violence. Each and every one of us through cellular memory.
When we legitimize violence to accommodate emotional and physical survival, we will fail down that rabbit hole once again.
When we legitimize violence to accommodate our unworthiness, the same thing will happen.
The origins of violence perhaps need to be explored and reevaluated, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of a history which still has not learned about the roles each of us play in perpetuating a miasm as powerful as this one.