Getting Results

“There is nothing so practical
as a good theory”

— Kurt Lewin

The value of the “Violence Integrative Prevention and Restoration (PAR) Model” lies in its ability to produce tangible, measurable results. The results are fairly obvious: a reduction and, ultimately, elimination of violence — interpersonal to international. That translates into improved health, reduced costs (taking a chunk, for example, out of the more than US $1.2 trillion Americans pay for violence each year), greater personal and public safety, and overall improved quality of life.

Seven Key Areas

The PAR Model can be applied in seven key areas:

1. International Relations — Heads of government, policy makers, diplomats, intelligence agencies, military personnel, and international organizations such as the United Nations, NATO, SEATO, etc.
2. Conflict Risk Areas ( such as those we've seen in Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Columbia, Kenya, Indonesia, and Sudan) — Government ministries, police forces, military organizations, relief agencies, and other stakeholders.
3. Peacekeeping — UN Peacekeeping forces, relief organizations, and military and criminal/justice agencies within recipient countries.
4. Prisons — Prison staff, incarcerated individuals, community corrections personnel, parole officers, families related to those incarcerated, and community outreach groups.
5. Schools — Administrators, students, teachers, parents, support groups such as PTAs, school boards, school security personnel, and school volunteers.
6. Public Information — Print, television, radio, web, outdoor, and internal programs within schools, corporations, advocacy groups, and others.
7. Family and Community Health — Local public health agencies, healthcare providers, parenting educators and support groups, mental health professionals, parents, children, and social service agencies.

Delivery

There are myriad ways to put the PAR Model into action. These include conferences and symposia; university curricula; public and private school curricula; professional and public trainings; e-learning programs for professionals and consumers; web -based resource centers; documentary film production; certification programs for trainers, educators, consultants, and policy professionals; research in partnership with groups such as the World Health Organization; publication of books, and magazine, newspaper, and journal articles; scheduled audio and television programming; community resource center development; audio and video public service announcements; and more.

A Public Health Initiative

Like all public health initiatives, the implementing the PAR Model requires the participation of many stakeholders. It will take time for the Model to make its way into the mainstream. It will require a substantial effort as we shift from an fear-based punitive approach to an evidence-based public health approach. But the potential rewards are so great and so passionately desired that I'm very encouraged by the opportunities to bring the PAR Model to bear to benefit everyone.

Reality and Violence

“What we achieve inwardly
will change outer reality.”

— Otto Rank

What is real?

Early on in the process of preparing for the arrival of the “Violence Integrative Prevention and Restoration (PAR) Model,” I was struck by the realization that “now” has no duration. Any “now” of which I could conceive could be made infinitely smaller. And, any “now” that I thought about, as it steadily moves across the continuum of time, would have gone into the past by the time I became conscious of it. I learned earlier that, in terms of quantum mechanics, the world at the quantum level consists of probabilities, not certainties. Assuming this is true, the implications are interesting.

Perhaps the most interesting implication is that “reality” and our relationship to it is more flexible and has more possibilities than I realized. This led to a series of questions which immediately became obvious” Are we humans “things,” “processes,” or both? How much reality do we experience and how much do we miss? What is “experience” and how (and by whom) is it created? How does language figure in all of this?

Learning more about the work of Milton Erickson, MD; Steven Pinker, PhD; Ernest Becker, PhD; Ken Wilbur; Rūmī: a number of Zen practitioners: and a myriad of others helped me develop an appreciation for the influence language has in how I experience reality. I use words to think about the meaning, value, and nature of things. I use language to explain, calculate, justify, plan, and decide about things that have my attention. The moral framework in which I operate is a linguistic one.

Language and Reality

The appreciation of language is an important element in the PAR Model. It’s clear than none of us can experience the totality of reality. We’re very limited to the amount of information we can process, so we select information that best fits us and which is congruent with other information we have. In short, we construct our reality out of the raw materials the universe provides to us. And we use language to describe it to ourselves and to others.

The Universal Field, Discriminator, and the Construct

In the illustration above, the totality of reality is represented by the Universal Field. This field consists of all information at all times under all conditions. In our typical state of consciousness, we can’t be aware of and knowledgeable about every bit of information in the Universal Field. What we can do is select, interpret, and associate pieces of information which become our “reality” or Construct which we often — mistakenly — believe is the totality of reality.

The discriminating mechanism for pulling information out of the Universal Field is the Discriminator, which I sometimes refer to as the “lens.” The lens is tempered by our values, beliefs, aspirations, fears, and experience. The lens defines how we see the world, how we construct our “reality.” The Construct, of course, is not reality. It appears to us as reality because it’s what we know. And it’s very, very convincing.

Reality and Violence

In creating the PAR Model, I asked, “What is common in the construct of those who engage in violence? How did their reality get so marked by real or imagined powerlessness and an absence of alternatives that they resorted to violence?” I realized that the key to ending violence was ending the power deficiency which is very real to people in the grasp of violence. That means two things: First, helping them get clarity about the false power violence provides them and, second, exposing them to powerful alternatives which build their violence immune system.

* * *

In future postings, I’ll delve into the notion of the construct as well as the issue of the human experience of power.

Time for a Change

“We shrink from change;
yet is there anything that can
come into being without it?”

— Marcus Aurelius

Home on the Range

When I worked as a ranch hand in southeastern Montana, I heard the phrase “get a bigger hammer” used a number of times. Being an inexperienced and somewhat bewildered young man from the city, I had much to learn that first summer along the Powder River. I had to become skilled at maintenance work on the trucks, tractors, buck-rakes, combines, pick-ups, and other ranch machinery.

Left: The author as a
ranch hand in southeastern
Montana, circa 1964.

Sometimes, in trying to loosen a bolt, we’d hit the wrench with a hammer to break it free. If my boss saw me straining to turn the bolt the wrong way — thus tightening it further — he would smile and say, “Son: maybe what you need to do is get yourself a bigger hammer.” The point was, of course, that if something isn’t right, doing it in a bigger way or with more force won’t fix it.

So it is with how we see, describe, and respond to violence.

How’s it working?

By violence, I use the definition from the “Violence Integrative Prevention and Restoration (PAR) Model.” To wit: “Any action resulting from an intention to do harm or any action resulting from attempts to gain inappropriate power and control for self-serving gain which result in harm.” Such actions include war, genocide, child abuse, violent crime, torture, “honor killings” of women, rape, economic violence, bigotry, deprivation, slavery, neglect, and “ethnic cleansing.”

“How’s it working?” is, I think, a good question to ask when we want to know whether on not a technique, program, theory, approach, or process to reduce or end violence is effective. We could (and should) apply it to the application of the “punitive” approach — one humanity has commonly used for more than 10,000 years.

How is the “War on Terror” working? How is jailing 2.2 million people in the United States working? How is torture working? How is “three strikes you’re out” working? How is the concept of “enemies” working? How is building “Titan” prisons in the United Kingdom working? How is beating your kids to teach them to be better people working? How is political oppression in Burma, North Korea, and Zimbabwe working?

And violence costs us a fortune. In the United States alone, we spend more than US $1.2 trillion each year to deal with violence. There are clearly better things we could do with our financial treasure.

Terrorism and Success

For example, if terrorism really gets the results those engaged in terrorist acts want, then “get a bigger hammer” — do lots and lots more of it. Does it move the cause forward with a better quality of life for those whose lot it’s intended to improve, or does it make life even more miserable? Has “getting a bigger hammer worked?” If not, maybe all the parties to this absurd drama should try something else.

Time for a Change

It’s clear we need to make a change. The traditional punitive model rarely works and, when it does, it’s only over a short term. We need a better way — one that is evidence-based (thus successfully answering the question, “How’s it working?”) and free of political or religious bias. The PAR Model — built on a public health foundation — fits the bill. With preliminary results in, including startling results at a Level 5 (maximum security) prison, this approach is part of a revolution of promise and hope — one which rejects many conventional notions about violence. This new Model allows us to move from despair and powerlessness to effective restoration and healing.