AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION, RECONCILIATION ...

potential. Violence is not like eating or sexing, found all over
the world with slight variations. The big variations in violence
are easily explained in terms of culture and structure: cultural
and structural violence cause direct violence, using violent
actors who revolt against the structures and using the culture to
legitimize their use of violence as instruments.
The ABC-triangle is at the human level of human attitudes and
assumptions, cognitions and emotions, human violent behavior
physical or verbal, human perceptions of goals as incompatible,
clashing. The violence triangle is a social reflection of this.
The cultural violence is the sum total of all the myths, of glory
and trauma, and so on that serve to justify direct violence. The
structural violence is the sum total of all the clashes built into
the social and world structures and cemented, solidified so that
unjust, inequitable outcomes are almost unchangeable. The direct
violence described above grows out of this, of some elements, or
out of the total syndrome.
Obviously peace must also be built in the culture and in the
structure, not only in the "human mind". For the violence triangle
has built-in vicious cycles. The visible effects of direct
violence are as described above: the killed, the wounded, the
displaced, the material damage, all increasingly hitting the
civilians. But the invisible effects may be even more vicious:
direct violence reinforces structural and cultural violence, in
ways to be described below. And this, in turn, may lead to even
more direct violence. Most important is hatred and the addiction
to revenge for the trauma suffered among the losers, and to more
victories, glory among the winners. Power also accrues to the men
5