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Fear: The Root Of Violence

Fear: The Root of Violence

Whether or not one believes that war is a solution or an atrocity, most would agree that if conflicts could be resolved in a peaceful manner this world would be a much better place.   So what is it that compels nations and individuals to go to war with one another?   To attempt to end world violence would require one to find the roots of why we fight.   In finding an answer to this question we might begin to understand the problem and find possible solutions that might deter violence from taking place.   As the late philosopher and war activist Bertrand Russell one stated, “Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd”.   It is in my own personal opinion that one strong underlying cause of war is the fear of the unknown and the fear of different people and ideas.   The idea that war is fueled by fear is strongly supported in the essay “Fear and Fate in America”, written by Gerald Early, as well as almost every war recorded in history.   It is only in ridding this fear of the unknown, of each other, and of foreign ideas and notions that this world will begin to tear down the walls of prejudice and resentment and begin to replace it with acts of compassion and respect.
Fear of the unknown has forever been a major factor in the cause of violence and war around the world.   In the twentieth century alone there have been over 165 wars, with 5 of them claiming more than 6 million victims (www.erols.com).   In the early days of April 1994, at least 800,000 members of Rwanda’s minority Tutsi group were brutally murdered by the majority Hutus.   In March of 1993 the Nazi party, or the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, opened its first concentration camp under the rule of Adolph Hitler.   Over the course of the next twelve years over 6 million (or nearly 63 percent of the world’s Jewish population) Jews were brutally killed all over Europe.   Both of these two...

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