- Question
- Is violence always wrong?
- Position1 of 3›
- Yes, violence is always wrong
Violence subjects innocent people into suffering. For instance, collective violence is the use of violence by a group of people against another group to achieve political, economic, or social gain. It often results in a large conflict where innocent children and women are targeted.
The argument
One of the examples of collective violence is war. War is a political power product to gain land, exercise authority over other people, and increase fear. War is one of the products of collective violence, and the WHO attributes great importance to dealing with the psychological traumas of war. According to their estimation, armed conflicts will result in 10% with serious mental health issues, and another 10% will develop behaviors that will hinder their ability to function normally. In Palestine, 32.7% of children from 9-10 years suffered from symptoms of PTSD. Children in camps showed higher rates than children living in towns. Collective violence due to climate change is also one of the ways that contribute to social control. It causes displacement, indirect damage to the health-supporting infrastructure of society, damaging the environment, etc. The political power over the people in giving access to facilities to meet victims' needs and yet creating disruptions within countries such as Palestine, Afghanistan, Cambodia, etc., is how collective violence takes place. Even though people in power may have their reasons for waging war, damaging the environment, and withholding economic resources from people, people will suffer from those choices. Collective violence is always unjust.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Violence plays a huge role in moving the economy forward. As patients in hospitals increase, so does the demand for nurses, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. Without mentally or physically ill people, there would be no demand for such professionals. Collective violence isn't necessarily wrong because it provides the means for people to survive and take care of themselves. In America, during World War II, 17 million new civilian jobs were created, and the flow in industrial productivity increased by 96%. The war created new technologies, industries, and human skills. War is a prominent example of how a violent event can revitalize a country.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] The figures describe the harms of war, which nobody in this debate disputes, while the argument needs a stronger claim — that violence is wrong in every case. Harm is what makes violence stand in need of justification; it does not by itself rule out the cases the rival positions raise, such as defence against an attack already under way. [Rejecting P2] "Whatever reasons those in power have" dismisses the weighing rather than carrying it out, and the premise's own examples cut the other way: resisting occupation or defending a population is itself violence, so the reasoning condemns the defence along with the attack. The material also ranges across war, environmental damage and the withholding of resources, a far wider category than the conclusion about violence requires.