Is violence always wrong?

Violence can result in lifelong consequences

Question: Is violence always wrong?
Position1 of 3›: Yes, violence is always wrong
Argument‹5 of 5: Violence can result in lifelong consequences

The physical and psychological impact of violence can last for years if untreated. Although many individuals are hospitalized because of violence inflicted on them, or their exposure to it from any degree, many victims still find it difficult to recover from their trauma.

The argument

Violence of all forms is wrong because it can result in lifelong consequences. Experiencing violence firsthand can have a physical impact such as permanent physical disability and psychological distress, leading to long-term mental illness. Students who experience bullying, sexual, sexual, physical, and psychological violence at school are prone to developing weight disorders such as obesity, undereating, or self-destructive habits (self-harm, smoking, etc.). Such students, when they grow into adults, find it difficult to cope with normal life stressors. They tend to isolate themselves, avoid confrontation, or become obsessed with constantly pleasing people to avoid conflict. The violence that happens on a larger scale, such as war, genocide, bombings, and mass shootings, disrupts nations' development and well-being. Such conflicts result in a high mortality rate and disability. The consequences of war stretch beyond mortality and extend to endemic poverty, malnutrition, economic/social decline, etc. The passive consumption of violent events through social media and news coverage can lead to psychological distress such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One may not develop a psychological disorder through media right away, but it does lead to feelings of sadness, grief, and anger.

Premises

[P1]Experiencing violence firsthand causes lasting harm — permanent physical disability, psychological distress, long-term mental illness, and difficulty coping with normal life stressors as adults. [P2] Large-scale violence such as war, genocide, and mass shootings brings high mortality, disability, poverty, and social decline, and even passively consuming violent events through media can produce depression, anxiety, and PTSD. [C] Therefore, because violence of all forms can result in lifelong consequences, violence is always wrong.

Counter-arguments

The effects of violence are, in fact, not as large as they are said to be. With the right therapy and school education, anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems can be eliminated. Violence itself is natural and not wrong, but the way people perceive violence makes it a problem. For example, passive consumption of violence through media has very little effects on human psychological behavior.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The harms are real and undisputed, but they establish that violence is harmful rather than that it is always wrong. The two come apart in exactly the cases the position has to cover: defending oneself or another person, policing, and armed resistance all produce the harms described and are defended on the ground that the alternative is worse. [Rejecting P2] Scale strengthens the case against war and mass killing without generalising it. Adding media exposure weakens the premise rather than extending it, since witnessing violence is not doing violence, and treating the two as one thing widens the term so far that the conclusion becomes a claim about anything distressing. [Rejecting C] The conclusion needs a bridge the premises do not supply: from consequences to wrongness. On a consequence-based test the harm has to be weighed against what it prevents, which is how self-defence is justified in the first place; on a test that makes violence wrong in itself, the catalogue of harms is not what does the work.