Peace, like charity, begins at home.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, former US president
The violence, antipathy, antagonism and cruelty we see in the world around us, did not just happen.
It was cultivated. Carefully nurtured, watered and grown. Into a systemic acceptance of violence as a status quo, while peace is perceived as a surprisingly rare flourishing of a wild flower amidst the carnage.
Who is to blame for all this? We are sensitive to our conditioning and our environment. Our perception of who we should be and how we must react is formed at a very young age and so everything that we need to make the world a better place to live in starts at home.
Violence is never the answer to anything. Violence thrives in the absence of intelligent and amicable solutions. Children learn violence from their parents. They learn violence from television and movies. From the gaming industry that makes killing a sporting past-time in the virtual world. They learn violence from the wars that politicians and warmongers who benefit from war create continuously.
They learn violence by seeing how callously we treat vulnerable animals who cannot speak out for themselves. Abuse is abuse. Whether we abuse animals or we abuse people, the ability to inflict pain and suffering without feeling any remorse is ugly. But then, violence is ugly.
If the ugliness of violence becomes normalised to these children, they grow up to become part of this ugliness. The circle is complete and continuous like Ouroboros, the snake that eats itself in an endless circle of destruction and rebirth.
We can change this.
We need to start with women. The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World. And so, any change that lasts begins with women.
If we tolerate violence, we accept violence and we teach it to our children. Domestic violence is actually a vicious cycle of boys growing up watching their father treat their mother with contempt because she is weaker than him, and thereby using her as a vessel to vent his anger, frustration and fear and blame her for everything that goes wrong in his life.
Is it really the man’s fault? Not really, he is a product of his environment, his cultural and social upbringing. In some societies, a man is raised to think that women are inferior and that they are second class to him. This could be perpetuated by his friends, his family, his religion and even the way the law is structured to favour him.
Examples of universal reactions to bad behaviour from men in more traditional Asian families – be it Chinese, Malay, Indian, Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist.
Example 1: The husband is cheating on the wife
Reaction from most:
“What did she do to make him stray?
There must be something she is not making him happy with. Does she not satisfy him?
Has she stopped being attractive?
Does she not listen to him? Maybe she nags him?”
Example 2: The husband hits his wife.
Reaction from most:
“He needs to show her who is boss.
She is too feisty and talks back and this upsets his ego.
She should not have pushed him till he lost his temper.
She does not know when to keep quiet to appease.
He has too much on his mind and she should learn to give in, and keep the peace.”
People willingly make so many excuses for the man, and so he learns to start making excuses for himself and his bad behaviour.
But here’s the thing:
A cheating man is a weak man. A violent man is a weak man. And he is as much a victim of his childhood as his spouse is.
A weak man cannot work on his marriage, cannot control his emotions, lies to his spouse and children, and focuses on his ability to ‘get away with it’ over a commitment to the promise he made to build a family together.
He is afraid to face up to decisions he will have to make that is hard. He wants everything – the family, and the security it gives him and not understanding he is creating an endless cycle of trauma to both wife and children by his actions and the disrespect to his family by sleeping around outside or hitting them to be submissive.
He justifies this by blaming the wife, who will then try harder and harder to please him thinking she is not enough until one day she realises that it is too painful to continue. This is why so many divorces happen with the woman finally walking away from a cheating or violent husband.
A cheating or violent man is also an entitled man. A sense of entitlement that comes from society which makes him think it’s a manly thing to do, and that it is OK because his father did it, his grandfather did it.
Join me next week to understand how we can break the cycle.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
