I think that there needs to be a word and a conceptual category for the idea of “killing or injuring carried out by living beings for the sake of their continued existence”. I think this word is generally called “eating” or “consuming”. When we say that nature is cruel and that there is a violence that is intrinsic to living, I think we’re usually referring to the fact that (a) most beings must kill or injure other beings in order to continue living, and (sometimes) (b) beings use resources to help continue their lives that could have theoretically been used by other living beings to continue their lives, but are no longer available, such that some beings contribute indirectly to the non-living of other beings via use of a theoretically shared resource.
But this use of the word violence is often conflated with the concept of “killing or injuring carried out by living beings which is not necessary to their continued living”. I recognize that the distinction can be blurry at times, particularly when dealing with beings that kill or injure in order to help other beings (both “related” in the purely hereditary sense, and “non-related”) and potential progeny live. But I still think that the distinction is useful, because otherwise we tend to equate “the violence intrinsic to living” with just violence in general – as if all violence was equally “natural” and equally “necessary”.
