The Violence Mythos

Book excerpt: Presents a powerful thesis on the nature and significance of violence and its mythos in Western culture, and offers an alternative interactive mythos that bridges the mind/body split inherent in most theories of violence. "The Violence Mythos presents us with a powerful thesis on the nature and significance of violence in human society. It develops its argument with passion and concern, combined with a lucid and sensitive intelligence. The book is sharp .and to the point, challenging any complacency with its idealism and its commitment to change. Whitmer is an author with attitude and with spirit. The violence mythos is a collection of beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and social expectations about violence in Western culture. It includes the war hero myth, the victimizer/victim exploitative dynamic, the theory of innate violence, the mind/body dualism, the myth of male aggression and the subordination of women, the marginalization of trust, and the development of technology in a tradition of destructive instrumentalism. At the core of the violence mythos is the belief that humans are innately violent. The cultural system is then able to legitimate, rationalize, and use violence to control "violent humans", and thus becomes a self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating system of direct and indirect means of social control. This is the repetitive cycle of violence in trauma reenactment, transferred intergenerationally through the roles and rituals of the hero/perpetrator myth. The cycle ceases with the understanding of trauma in the trust triad of the interdependent mythos.