The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Not normally the kind of subject I cover over here in my fanblog, but... this is absolutely fascinating, and bears mentioning everywhere.

Wikipedia article
An excerpt from Walter Wink's original essay on the subject

Even before I got to the point in the Wikipedia article where it mentions videogames, I was thinking, "this is my problem with most RPGs". Discovering this myth allowed me to locate the missing piece that's always eluded me when talking about how I think violence is too often assumed to be the default solution even in games that otherwise promote pacifism; how the concept of a "battle system" undoes the good that many games try to encourage through their storylines; how developers seem to be incapable of realising the conflict between their use of battle mechanics and the messages of their games.

They are incapable of realising it.

It's endemic. "Good arises only when you have defeated (the physical manifestation of) evil; therefore, beat the bad guy" is such a standard plot that even cartoons for very young children feature it. Sure, they'll include caveats so as not to appear too bloodthirsty, like the bad guy retreating while cackling "I'll get you next time!" rather than being killed, but the core plot remains: we mst conflict with the servants of evil, and we must triumph.

If I believed in Satan, I'd be up for saying this is Satan's biggest lie; I certainly now know how Christians feel when they make that kind of statement. Of course, the idea of Satan is in itself forged from this myth, from the idea that an entity can personify evil and that this entity must eventually be hunted down and destroyed, but the sentiment behind at least that statement-- that humanity has, for countless years, operated under the influence of a lie so seductive that the vast majority don't even know they're being seduced-- makes sense enough. We're pretty good, as a species, at telling ourselves lies; it's an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that we make sense of our lives through telling ourselves stories. We're good at telling ourselves that the current hated group of the day is really out to get us, that freedom isn't and by implication never should be free, that the good guys always triumph and, as such, if we triumph then we must be the good guys.

There's nothing wrong with good winning, but the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, to quote one insightful individual. If we use violence to attempt to best evil, we only play into evil's hands; for there is no such thing as evil, really, other than our oppression of each other with violence in word, deed and thought.

I want to see society stop using the master's tools to try and dismantle the master's house. I want the lie that we should strive to fight evil, to maim evil, to laugh in the face of evil as it dies-- no, even to reluctantly glance back at the fallen corpse of evil, and say "it was regrettable, but it had to be done"-- to be undone. Because evil isn't a living thing; it's a concept. What lies before you is no more or less than the corpse of a being that was once alive, slain by evil itself. You can't kill evil, can't stick a knife through its heart.

And that disturbs people who've been raised on the myth of redemptive violence, because they feel powerless unless they can lash out, unless they can stab, unless they can subdue, because that's what society tells us winning is. And that's why we need to stop teaching people that myth, because it makes us feel sure that to do good, one must hurt evil, and leaves us feeling hollow when we can't hurt, when we can't attack, when we can't conquer. Most people would feel unsatisfied if they got to the end of an RPG and there was no final boss battle. We need the "satisfaction" of defeating our enemy. We need it because we've been raised on the myth of redemptive violence.

Once we recognise that this is holding us back, as a species, from resolving all of our problems, we'll finally begin to grow. I'm confident the world will come to realise it in time. After all, so many of you already do.

Peace won by the sword will fall by the sword. I've always thought this statement was profound; turns out I hadn't even realised the extent of its profundity until now. With one carefully-tuned phrase, Mir both echoes both the words of feminist writer Audre Lorde and attacks-- no, not attacks; she rebuts; see how easily it creeps into our language-- the myth of redemptive violence. Tellingly, she says this when you're about to kill her, when you take the bad path in AT1. Even more tellingly, perhaps, she says this even while preparing to fight you, even after a lifetime of fighting. She knows it's true, but she can't escape, because the myth is such a seductive one: just beat the ones oppressing you, and your oppression will be gone! But it doesn't work like that, because every act of violence is an act of oppression, and the oppressed, and those who cared for them, will strike back in turn; and on it goes.

This is the lesson Mir teaches. This is the lesson that, if you fight against her, she recognises yet fails to embrace the whole way, because someone has to drop the sword first; and if it's not you, why should it be her? Why should she concede? It shouldn't have to be any of us, we think, but it needs to be one of us, because, as the bad ending shows, otherwise the violence never ends. It needs to be one of us, even if that one is the one who was attacked first. Even if we're in the right. Even if we have every reason to want to fight back. Someone has to. Someone has to, or else no one will.