My struggles to understand the relationship between violence and the martial arts have led me to explore the general context of violence in our civilization.

According to Christian theologian Walter Wink in Engaging the Powers, violence is not merely a social matter, it is a profoundly spiritual one.

Violence is the ethos of our time. It is the spirituality of the modern world. It has been accorded the status of a religion, demanding from its devotees an absolute obedience to death. Its followers are not aware, however, that the devotion they pay to violence is a form of religious piety. Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts. It is embraced with equal alacrity by people on the left and on the right, by religious liberals as well as religious conservatives. The threat of violence, it is believed, is alone to deter aggressors. It secured us forty-five years of a balance of terror. We learned to trust the Bomb to grant us peace.

The Babylonian creation story is the seed of one such religion of violence. In that myth, in the time before the creation of the world, the gods war on each other. In the end, the mother of the younger gods, Tiamat, is destroyed by the youngest god, Marduk, who then creates the cosmos from her carcass.

The metaphysical relationship between society and universe, analogous to the relationship between the creator Marduk and the opposing force Tiamat, is thus a violent one: Chaos and violence are the natural way of the universe, and only through might is order established.

Wink continues:

The ultimate outcome of this type of myth … is a theology of war founded on the identification of the enemy with the powers that the god has vanquished and continues to vanquish in the drama of creation. Every coherent theology of holy war ultimately reverts to this basic mythological type.

… The distinctive feature of the myth is the victory of order over chaos by means of violence. This myth is the original religion of the status quo, the first articulation of “might makes right.” It is the basic ideology of the Domination System. The gods favor those who conquer. Conversely, whoever conquers must have the favor of the gods … Life is combat.

This mythology forms the underpinnings of the structure of our society — indeed, of any society which uses violence to reinforce itself. He calls it the Domination System.

The idea that “might makes right” pervades all of our institutions and our social dynamics. It is most obvious in extreme forms of hate — racism or sexism, or some forms of religious fundamentalism. It is outrageous in the direction of our national foreign policy. But it is most insidious in its subtlest forms, such as children’s cartoons.

Who would question something as benign as a cartoon? And yet many of the cartoons I grew up with — He-Man, Go-Bots, Thundercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — contained hidden assumptions about the inevitability of violent conflict and the use of might to make right. Fighting is not even a topic for discussion in the stories these cartoons tell; it is the merely the means toward the ends, the one solution to all problems.

Cartoons are certainly not the only place children are indoctrinated into violence. As violence pervades our system, it should not come as a surprise that it is expressed throughout our institutions. Public schools, for instance, are structures set up to force a child to learn certain things at a certain pace or else face punishment and ostracism; to socialize children into obeying orders even if they contradict their needs — so that they must obtain permission even to address their bodily needs; and to grow up having quashed the desire to be their own creative selves, cultivating instead an allegiance to the demands of a society that cares for profit rather than for happiness.

Seth observes:

Your civilization is in sad straits — not because you have allowed spontaneity or fulfillment to individuals, but because you have denied it, and because your institutions are based upon that premise.

You think that, left alone, the natural inclinations of man would destroy civilization. Then what, indeed, started civilization, if not the natural inclinations of man? What began the cooperation that allows people to unite even in tribes, if not the natural inclinations of man?

If you learn to trust your being, then you will be able to trust your institutions and your civilizations. You equate spontaneity with irresponsibility; abandon with evil. If you abandon yourselves to yourselves, then what good would seem to spring out of the heavens of your being?

Your world is not in dire straits because you trust yourselves, but precisely because you do not. Your social institutions are set up to fence in the individual, rather than to allow the natural development of the individual!

The religion of violence has its basis in spiritual alienation. Its fundamental belief is that we are alienated beings, that we are evil and sinful and therefore must either be passively saved by some outside power, or we must take charge — but, being alienated beings, the only tool available to us is that which inhabits our world: Force.

Thus the stories we tell ourselves are filled with these two themes: Either an outsider will come and redeem us all — Jesus and Superman are two of the most recognizable figures — or we must use aggressive means to create order out of the chaos — the fight to “defend America” by invading foreign countries, the fight to “purify the race” by eliminating Jews/blacks/gays.

These are mythical expressions of our belief in two basic approaches to dealing with the system of violence. The first is the way of the victim: complete passivity — the usual interpretation of the Biblical quote to “turn the other cheek.” This approach clearly leads to unending suffering.

The other approach is the one that declares itself the opposite of passivity: Mastery of aggression. Dominance. The ability to wield violence skillfully. And yet this way ultimately keeps oneself within the same cycle of violence as that of the victim. Gaining this power does alleviate one’s own suffering, but what good does this individual gain do to the greater part of the human race?

Returning to the discussion of martial arts begun in Part 1: In this context, what does it mean to learn to fight?

Traditional martial arts, particularly the internal martial arts, offer, in my opinion, a hazardous but potentially fulfilling approach. On some level they acknowledge the spirituality of violence. They offer training in the engagement of violence, as a means to know oneself through honing the body and focusing the mind, and as a means to learn to deal with conflict in increasingly subtle ways. Ultimately this may lead to a transcendence of violent means for resolving conflict.

Of course, for every martial artist with true spiritual depth, there are a dozen who want to win the Ultimate Fighting Championship or be the next Bruce Lee.

Thus, martial arts as a path to peace is for the few. Using violence to transcend violence is too confusing for me.

There must be a third alternative, a way of being in the system without being of the system, without being either victim or aggressor, without using any violent means but without giving up one’s integrity.

What is that way?