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Understanding Obama and other people who kill

By Robert Burrowes - posted Thursday, 9 May 2013


Tenth, archetype perpetrators unconsciously project their self-hatred, one outcome of their own victimhood, as hatred for their victim. This enables them to both self-justify their behaviour and to obscure from themselves their true but unconscious motivation: to remain unaware of their own terror, defencelessness, powerlessness, self-hatred, self-worthlessness, and all of the other unpleasant feelings that make them become perpetrators of violence.

Eleventh, archetype perpetrators have an intense fear of knowing the

truth: it is safer to believe that their carefully but unconsciously chosen victim, who is always much less powerful than the perpetrator, is 'the problem' (and thus gain the desired, but delusionary, sense of 'having control'). The truth would require them to stand up to the actual perpetrator and, of course, this is utterly terrifying.

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Twelfth, archetype perpetrators of violence lack the courage to heal; that is, they delude themselves that their own fear and terror are not responsible for their violence because they are too terrified to take responsibility for feeling this fear and terror as the central component of any strategy for dealing truthfully and powerfully with their violence.

Perpetrators of violence need our understanding and support: they are people who are badly emotionally damaged. But their violence needs to be nonviolently resisted as well. If not, perpetrators in powerful positions will drive us to extinction as they endlessly seek delusional relief from their own fear, self-hatred and powerlessness by inflicting violence on the rest of us.

In contrast to perpetrators, why do some people resist violence? Why, for example, do professors like Noam Chomsky and Chandra Muzaffar, and individuals such as Bradley Manning, resist violence? Why do nonviolent activists such as Mairead Maguire, Kathy Kelly and Dr Teck Young Wee (Hakim) resist violence?

They do so because they feel courageous and powerful; they have a deep sense of Self-worth and can ascribe worth to others; they have well-developed feelings of compassion, empathy and sympathy; they have a clear conscience; they abhor violence and injustice, as any emotionally undamaged individual must do, and they know that violence cannot achieve any desirable social outcome; because of their courage and power to act, they have no self-hatred to project; they love the truth and do what they can to expose it, even at risk to themselves; and, perhaps most importantly of all, they are self-loving which means that they can love others too. Self-love is true love: the individual that does not truly love itself cannot love another.

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If you like, you can ask yourself this: which of these two psychological profiles most accurately fits you? If you see yourself with something like the latter profile, you might wish to consider signing online 'The People's Charter to Create a Nonviolent World'.



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About the Author

Robert has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach, State University of New York Press, 1996. His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his personal website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com.

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