Comment by amiga386
2 days ago
There are a lot of definitions for violence, but most would include "destruction" along with "harm", "pain", "suffering" and so on.
If I intentionally wreck your home, like I properly ransack the place, smash it all up, I'd say I had been violent to you. Wouldn't you? You wouldn't walk in to find your home and your life ruined and say "oh it's just property damage", would you?
If my nation was at war with yours, and we dropped a bomb on your weapons factory, would you count that as violent, or non-violent?
FWIW, if you did that to my house I'd be upset and angry and not much inclined to use the word "just" about it, but no, I wouldn't say you'd been violent to me.
(I would say you'd been violent to me if you'd slapped me in the face. I would rather be slapped in the face than have my house ransacked and smashed up. Some not-violent things are worse than some violent things.)
If you dropped a bomb on a weapons factory that had, or plausibly could have had, people in it then that would unquestionably be an act of violence. If you somehow knew that there was nothing there but hardware then I wouldn't call it an act of violence.
(In practice, I'm pretty sure that when you drop a bomb you scarcely ever know that you're not going to injure or kill anyone.)
I'm not claiming that this is the only way, or the only proper way, to use the word "violence". But, so far as I can tell from introspection, it is how I would use it.
There are contexts in which I would use the word "violence" to include destruction that only affects things and not people. But they'd be contexts that already make it clear that it's things and not people being affected. E.g., "We smashed up that misbehaving printer with great violence, and very satisfying it was too".
> If I intentionally wreck your home, like I properly ransack the place, smash it all up, I'd say I had been violent to you. Wouldn't you? You wouldn't walk in to find your home and your life ruined and say "oh it's just property damage", would you?
There's certainly implied violence. Like, if you done that once, maybe you'll be back tomorrow when I happen to be in, and actually be violent to me. And even if that weren't the case, I'd still obviously be very distressed about the situation.
But, having said all that, no I wouldn't say you had been violent, if you hadn't actually tried to hurt anyone.
If you dropped a bomb on an abandoned or fully automated factory, that you could be 100% sure doesn't have any people in it - then I still wouldn't count that as "violent" (except maybe figuratively), no matter how destructive.