NCJ Number
166631
Date Published
1996
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Collective violence that is regarded as legitimate and useful is examined with respect to its definition, its place in modern culture, and the decision making processes involved.
Abstract
Many of the common decisionmaking methods used by institutions and organizations to take decisions about how to manage the future lead to the conscious use of violence. This violence is often justified because an alternative course of action may lead to a greater loss. However, this balancing of costs and benefits seeks to compare objects that are not comparable. Trying to make them comparable by focusing on economic values pushes important human values out of the decision process; ideas such as justice, equality, and ethics are difficult to include in the rational decisionmaking process. Moreover, such decisionmaking processes are usually undertaken by small groups of experts working for powerful institutions. As a result, judgment has become increasingly displaced from those who experience the violence. Recognition that we live in an increasingly interdependent world with complex social structures requires ways to make collective decisions about the future. However, using only rationality leads to violence. Therefore, the subjects of morality and ethics need to be put back into decisionmaking. The importance of doing so is underscored in Bauman's analysis of the Holocaust and the lessons that history teaches. Bauman concludes that humanity is the main loser when rationality and ethics point in opposite directions and that putting self-preservation above moral duty is in no way predetermined, inevitable, and inescapable. Notes and 10 references