A WORLD WITHOUT VIOLENCE: IS IT POSSIBLE?

The prevalence of violence today in our world is becoming alarming by the day. Even as far to our little ones who barely know anything, we can see that they are already exhibiting different forms of violence and are unapologetic about it. There are so many ways to look at violence, its causes, its effects on people and the ways forward. For this reason, the Hivelearners last topic for this week asks us to share our thoughts on the trend of violence, it’s possible cause, impact and way out.

Indeed, we can see violence in almost everything we do as fun these days which are watching movies, playing video games, chatting, playing with our friends and even watching the news. It seems like someone somewhere is trying to normalize the act of violence in the hearts of people and interestingly, even if these aren’t the root causes of violence, they are definitely helping to breed that mind of wanting to be violent in the hearts of us as humans.

But like I said, all of these things aren’t necessarily the root cause of violence but they encourage us as humans to be and remain violent. Sometimes, when you take a statistics of the kind of movies little children watch these days, most of them are movies that different forms of violence is encouraged and as children, they are always curious to try some of these things in real life. And for those children that are not so curious to try them in the real world, a part of their mind may just be unconsciously getting comfortable with the idea that violence might not be so bad after all.

For me, there are so many root causes of violence and for children, I can say the movies, games, books and even those things around them that they see are the major reasons why they see violence as a way of life. I mean, they see the so called adults display violence and they start thinking it is the right thing to do. In fact, some religions encourage some forms of violence and even make it a way of life, so you can imagine what that would make of those individuals in such a religion.

People become violent for different reasons, it could be due to them being defensive, a bully, mentally unstable, due to their poor backgrounds, due to their societal and cultural norms, lack of education and critical thinking and some, they see it as them having fun. There are so many reasons. Some even become violent to prove themselves worthy to someone or to a group. Some become violent because they see how those who are violent seem powerful than those who try to be empathetic.

Well, the ways I believe this can be handled is by finding solutions to those reasons I gave earlier. We should first bear it in mind that violence can’t be completely eliminated because people will always find it hard to change their ways all at once and for defense purposes, we might have to be violent sometimes but that should at least be our last cards and not the first. And the ways we can maybe achieve that is by educating ourselves on the need to be more empathetic towards ourselves and others. Our cultural and societal norms should be nonviolent.

As parents or guidance, we should be in better place to teach our children to not choose violence but instead come up with better ways to resolve conflicts between themselves and others. The problem is, a lot of us tell ourselves the lies that the only out of every situation is violence but that is not true. There is a place for peace and we have to always embrace it when it comes. We shouldn’t always try to seek for ways to go violent with people. People should embrace knowledge because lack of knowledge will most times make them think violence is the only solution.

In the end, the major solution to violence is you and I. We should first accept that violence is not the only way out and then we will start seeing other better ways out of crisis and conflicts.

Thanks for reading through. ❤️

_{Images used are mine}