Political violence is a recurring theme throughout history and is widely used today in many cultures. It can be defined as a tactic to influence numerous onlookers to affect or resist political, social, and/or cultural change by inflicting damage physically or psychologically. These tactics are aimed at injuring and intimidating populations by attacks on property, assault, or use of weapons. Violence is a range of actions that respond to the changing environment of society and is shaped by a group's goal. Due to the capriciousness of violence, it shouldn’t be practiced, especially in a political sense. However, history proves that peaceful resistance is sometimes not effective. The focus of this essay is to explain the resembling and contrasting motives for political violence, the
…show more content…
These occurrences begin when a group fears their human needs and rights are being challenged. In the historic event, Bleeding Kansas, two groups of settlers committed attacks and murders in a 5 year span for the free territory of Kansas: those who wanted it to become a slave state and those who didn’t. Abolitionists' purpose for this fight was to protect the human rights of slaves, while those for slavery fought for their human rights to have slaves. With opposing viewpoints from each other, this occurrence still exhibits how political violence has the same objective. Regardless of the main goals of political violence, the outcomes are devastating for mental health for those involved in PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Social and political environments are important for health. Humans have evolved to adapt to hardships brought on by the environment surrounding them, relative to the reaction to stress. “...between one-third to one-half of people exposed to political violence will endure some type of mental distress, including PTSD, depression or anxiety.” (Sousa, C.A
These occurrences begin when a group fears their human needs and rights are being challenged. In the historic event, Bleeding Kansas, two groups of settlers committed attacks and murders in a 5 year span for the free territory of Kansas: those who wanted it to become a slave state and those who didn’t. Abolitionists' purpose for this fight was to protect the human rights of slaves, while those for slavery fought for their human rights to have slaves. With opposing viewpoints from each other, this occurrence still exhibits how political violence has the same objective. Regardless of the main goals of political violence, the outcomes are devastating for mental health for those involved in PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Social and political environments are important for health. Humans have evolved to adapt to hardships brought on by the environment surrounding them, relative to the reaction to stress. “...between one-third to one-half of people exposed to political violence will endure some type of mental distress, including PTSD, depression or anxiety.” (Sousa, C.A