Violence: how to
understand it?
In an article published last week, our companion Anselmo Ferreira Vasconcelos examined the subject in the title of this text: violence, an issue that has been addressed in this magazine numerous times by various writers, and the subject of four editorials published in editions 73, 83, 188 and 210.(1)
In the article to which we refer, the author alludes to this wave of violence that has been taking to the streets of major Brazilian cities and revealing profound disrespect to people and public and private property.
Here's an excerpt from the article:
Hordes of thugs wearing masks or hoods invade the main streets of major Brazilian cities, due to previously scheduled meetings on the internet, destroying everything they see ahead mercilessly and without compassion. Such acts, moreover, are practiced for the simple pleasure of destroying and generating damage to organizations and modest marketers who struggle with difficulty to comply with their legal and social obligations. Meanwhile, dozens of buses are burned - favorite targets of unbalanced mobs - around the country, including people inside of it, as if they were responsible for certain human tragedy or social abnormalities. Apparently, the disposition of the perpetrators of such crimes is only harming other people's heritage, as there are appropriate forums for fair and relevant causes to be addressed and / or claimed.
On the same weekend that the cited article was published, one more crime caused by vandalism occurred, causing real national uproar. We refer to the death of cameraman Santiago Andrade, from TV Bandeirantes, which, when fulfilled his professional duty, became the latest victim of this madness that seems to have no end.
As it has been said in this space on another occasion, we are facing an unprecedented moral crisis. Limitless corruption, widespread impunity and disrespect for the people who provide the conditions for such acts of violence recur.
Of course, delinquency and aggression are not attributes of people who seek peace and wish to build a better world, but rather reveal the character of individuals morally backward, very close to animality, and that, therefore, cannot express their claims in a civilized way, something that has been proven to be possible in the world we live by the unforgettable Mahatma Gandhi, who many admire and so few imitate.
Facing such framework, so troubled, one word comes inevitably to our mind: education. Given the lack of education, ignorance, inferiority, only education is able to modify, to rectify, to renew the society to which we belong, as Emmanuel wisely suggested in the book Emmanuel, his first mediumistic work, published by FEB far back as 1938:
All social reforms needed in your times of spiritual indecision, it must be carried out on the basis of the Gospel.
How? - Be able to object to us.
Through education, we’ll reply.
The pedagogical plan which implicates this huge problem has yet starts from simple to complex. It covers immense and multiform activities, but it is not impossible. First, the work of vulgarization will intensify, flipping through the spoken or written word of teaching, the tiny roots of the future.
(...)
Urges reform, rebuild, seize the still firm material, to destroy the rotten elements in the reorganization of the social edifice. And it is for this reason that our word knocks insistently in ancient keys of the Christian Gospel, because there is no other formula that can resolve the conflict of the tormented life of men.
Present times require the dissemination of their divine teachings. Urge, especially the creation of truly evangelical core, where it can be born Christian orientation to be kept at home, for the dedication of their leaders.
The schools of home are more than accurate in your times for the formation of the spirit that moved across the night of fights that your Earth is living in demand of the glorious light to come.
(...)
There is the need to start the regeneration effort in each individual within the Gospel, as not always pleasant task of self-education. Evangelized the individual, it evangelizes the family; regenerated that, the society is on track to its purification, rehabilitating simultaneously the life of the world.
In the chapter preparation of childhood, we do not advocate the defective education of certain doctrinal notions, but factious, easing up on the child's soul the outbreak of harmful sectarianism and encouraging the spirit of separateness, and we do not agree with the education given in this absolutely destructive materialism manner, which only sees in the man a cell complex, where the glands with their secretions, create a fictional character and transient. (Emmanuel, chapter XXXV, Evangelical Education)
(1) Here are the links that allows the reader to access previous issues:
The misdemeanor, crime and it causes - http://www.oconsolador.com.br/ano2/73/editorial.html
Violence in the world we live in – http://www.oconsolador.com.br/ano5/210/editorial.html
Violence that plagues us and its antidote – http://www.oconsolador.com.br/ano4/188/editorial.html
Jesus, violence and prophetic sermon – http://www.oconsolador.com.br/ano2/83/editorial.html
