Beyond the Breaking News-Part 3

Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

Deepali Bhattacharya

In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

PART III

When Violence Is Chosen

“The deepest wound is not always death. Sometimes it is the knowledge that another human being chose to inflict it.”

Not long ago, I found myself thinking about two families.

One had lost a loved one after a long battle with cancer. They spoke of hospital visits, hope, setbacks, prayers and finally acceptance. Their grief was immense, but woven into it was the painful recognition that illness had followed its own course.

The other family had lost a young member in an act of violence.

As I listened to them, I realised that although both families had experienced profound loss, their grief was different.

The second family kept returning to the same question.

“Why?”

Why would someone do this?

What kind of anger could make another human being take a life?

Could this have been prevented?

These questions had no easy answers, yet they refused to disappear.

When I shared this observation with TD, he remained silent for a few moments before responding.

“Because intention changes everything.”

It is such a simple sentence that one can easily overlook its depth.

Natural disasters destroy homes.

Diseases claim lives.

Road accidents leave families devastated.

Yet deliberate violence carries a different psychological burden.

It is not simply that someone died.

It is that another human being made a conscious decision to cause suffering.

Psychologists often describe this as a rupture in our fundamental assumptions about the world. ⁷

Most of us move through life believing that although bad things happen, most people are basically decent. We trust strangers enough to board a train, send our children to school, seek help when we are lost, or knock on a neighbour’s door.

Deliberate violence unsettles these invisible assumptions.

It forces us to ask not only whether the world is safe, but whether people are.

That is why acts of intentional violence leave behind something more than grief.

They leave behind doubt.

I have often noticed this during conversations with survivors.

Many speak less about the injury itself and more about the betrayal.

“It was my husband.”

“It was someone I trusted.”

“It was my neighbour.”

“It was a relative.”

“It was someone everyone respected.”

Violence committed by strangers is frightening.

Violence committed by people we trust is psychologically devastating. ⁸

The injury is no longer only physical.

It becomes moral.

It shakes our confidence in relationships themselves.

Perhaps this is why violence against women within homes leaves such deep scars.

The home is meant to represent safety.

Marriage is meant to represent companionship.

Family is meant to represent belonging.

When violence emerges from these very spaces, the injury extends beyond the individual.

It disturbs the meaning of home itself.

The same is true for violence against children.

Children are not merely hurt by abuse.

Their understanding of trust is altered.

Their sense of security becomes uncertain.

The world no longer feels predictable.

As I reflected on this, another thought emerged.

Perhaps violence frightens us not because it reminds us that death exists.

We already know that.

Perhaps it frightens us because it reminds us that human beings are capable of choosing cruelty.

And yet, if this is true, another truth must also exist.

Human beings are equally capable of choosing compassion.

Every act of violence is someone’s decision.

Every act of courage is also someone’s decision.

Perhaps the real question is not whether human beings are capable of darkness.

History has answered that many times over.

The question is whether we are equally committed to choosing light.

A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

If deliberate violence destroys trust, how do societies rebuild it?

Perhaps the answer lies not only in those who commit violence, but also in those who witness it.

Because sometimes the deepest lesson is not what one person did.

It is what everyone else did not do.

Notes:

7. Janoff-Bulman (1992) calls these “shattered assumptions”: trauma’s deepest damage is to our implicit beliefs that the world is benevolent, meaningful, and that we are safe within it.

8.  Freyd (1996) terms this betrayal trauma: harm inflicted by those we depend on and trust is processed differently — and often more damagingly — than harm from strangers.