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10
ŚCIENICE AND
the hearts of men too. What is needed most is a serious and sustained study of violence and non-violence using all the available insights and techniques of science, especially the social sciences and psychology, to see how science and non-violence can together bring about the world man dreams of.
Man's violence, unlike the violence exhibited between members of different species in the animal kingdom, is in a large measure a part of his secondary evolution and is not embedded in his genes. It can thus be modified, even eliminated, through a properly directed process of education. The very factors which have ministered to violence could, if properly directed through man's understanding of his own nature and through education, serve to promote a society free of violence.
The stability, or rather the semi-stability of our violence-oriented society, is based on the deterrent effect (whatever it may be) of the threat of more violence, retribution and punishment. It is the threat of more violence that serves as a deterrence against an eruption of violence. Such a situation in its very nature canot truly end violence. It can only lead to even greater and more brutal violence when it emerges to the surface, as sooner or later it must. The spiral of violence moves ever upward, now slowly, now rapidly but towards increasing violence all the same. Violence breeds more violence. Violence can be reduced only through non-violence. The promoting of nonviolence implies a willingness to suffer without harming others. Thus Satyagraha, by inviting voluntary
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