More on the subject of violence.  I’m against it.  Big surprise, I know.  Still, I’m not as against it as some people.  For instance, yesterday’s little anecdote about the mammary-obsessed troglodyte will indicate to you that I have something of a long-term relationship with violence.

     Guilty.

     I have what you might call a…um…nuanced…view of violence.  For the purposes of this article, I’d like to limit myself to discussion of personal confrontations.

     The whole Gandhi thing is beyond me at this point.  Maybe I just need to evolve some more, but passive resistance in the face of violence is not in my toolkit just yet.

     On the other hand, Gandhi pretty much has it sorted in the whole eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth thing…it eventually leaves the whole world blind and toothless.

     As usual, I think there has to be a sensible middle ground between the two extremes.

     I happen to think that humans are by nature social creatures.  As a general rule, they simply must come together in groups and work together for something that benefits the group as a whole.

     When they do that, there is a certain tension that develops between the well-being of the group, and the well-being of the individual.  Also, between the well-being of one individual and another.

     As The Evil Cub points out, reasonable people with rational thought and enlightened self-interest can usually work things out in a way that everyone can live with.

     Where violence happens, is where their rationality and enlightenment fail.  When there is a person who does not understand that the preservation of other people’s rights and well being is in his own self-interest, or when his ability to appropriately assert his own rights fails, that is when violence becomes likely.

     And when that person is aimed at me, I feel I have a perfect right to stop him.

     Moreover, as I am a woman, and generally physically more vulnerable than your average raging nutcase, I feel I have the perfect right to fight dirty if I can’t get out of a bad situation by running like hell.

     Honor and fairness and decorum in sport fighting are only right.  In street fighting, it is a luxury some people feel they can afford, and that’s their prerogative.

     Personally, other than running like hell while yelling for help, I think that fighting dirty is the only way to go when attacked by an aggressive person.  If your opponent feels they can hit you to get what they want, then they have rejected the basic rules of our social contract.  At this point, you don’t know where they have drawn the line.  You must assume that if they think they can hit you to get what they want, then if hitting you doesn’t work, they will proceed up the ladder of escalation to killing you to get what they want.

     If you are not willing to give in to their demands, you should assume that’s where they’re headed.  Once they hit you, you should do as much damage as possible as quickly as possible, until they are no longer a threat.  You have to assume that stopping any physical attack could be a fight for your life, and you should treat it as such.

     Now, the Evil Cub also mentioned that he had a problem with pre-emption, and that makes sense.  I don’t think it’s OK to start a physical confrontation in order to head one off.

     You’re not psychic.  You may be filled with a deep intuitive sense that someone is about to attack you, or that the person’s behavior is a prelude to violence, and you may have a sense that if he gets one good hit in, it will be all over.  Be all that as it may, you don’t know.  Everyone has to be their own ultimate judge of what is right or wrong, and live with the consequences of their own decisions, but my feeling is that it is wrong to preemptively attack someone, and it cannot be called self-defense.

     “But what if they say that they are going to hurt you,” you ask?

     Ah.  That’s another matter entirely.  Yes, indeed. 

     Let’s go back to the idea that human beings are inherently social creatures.  A person’s statement of intent is generally accepted as a commitment to carry through with the action promised.  I usually assume that if someone says that they are going to do something, they intend to do it, and probably will.  I think that’s a reasonable assumption.  I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to call such a threat an attack.  I’m pretty sure that the law disagrees with me on that, but if push comes to shove, I’ll act on my ethics and stand ready to be arrested because hey, if it’s good enough for Socrates, it’s good enough for me.

     True, they might be shooting their mouth off, or they might be just hoping that the threat alone will get them what they want, but that’s not my problem.  I have no way of knowing.  I’m not a psychic. 

     All that said, the fact of the matter is that most conflict doesn’t go there.  Most conflict is non-physical and stays that way.

     Reading the Dalai Lama may seem like a flakey sort of thing to do, but it has helped me realize that most of people’s actions come from the pursuit of happiness as they understand it and the avoidance of suffering as they understand it.  Some people choose constructive ways to pursue these goals, and some do not.

     Everyone has baggage, and some people have more baggage than they can handle.  They have a problem, and they don’t have the resources to deal with it.  As Yoda might say, this leads to suffering, and suffering leads to anger, and anger leads to hate and hate leads to violence.  Yep, the dark side. 

     Let me pull my tongue out of my cheek long enough to note that most aggressive people who make our lives miserable do so because they are unable to deal appropriately with their suffering.

     Realizing this has made me a lot more patient, a lot less vengeful, and has helped me resolve a number of conflicts without taking any damage myself, and without causing further damage to an already over-burdened human being.

     I don’t have any insights that would make the Dalai Lama particularly proud of me or anything.  It’s just one step, but for me it was a big one…to realize that someone’s aggressive treatment of me (at least non-physically) could only harm me if I let it.  Indeed, it had nothing to do with me, but was instead an inappropriate and futile attempt to deal with their own demons.

     For instance, a woman who got up in my face screaming at me about my bad parenting at the play-park was most likely either blowing off steam from a different situation where she felt trapped and powerless, was expressing her feelings about shortcomings in her own upbringing, or her fears about herself as a parent.

     I was only as involved as I thought I needed to be.  My reactions came from inside me, from my defensiveness and my own insecurity, but I didn’t need to defend myself to her, and I didn’t need to get mad at her, and I didn’t need to make her shut up.  

     As satisfying as it would have been to congratulate her on modeling such good problem-solving social skills in front of her children, it would have done nothing but risk adding to her damage and would only be a temporary satisfaction.

     As much as my fight-or-flight endocrine response wanted me to hit her over the head with a chair for yelling at my kid who was trying to help her daughter out of a scary situation, I didn’t need to do that either.  Because it wasn’t about me, and it wasn’t about my kid.  We were just there when her suffering got too much for her to deal with it as a rational, social being.

     Luckily, my eleven-year-old is quite socially evolved and well-grounded and understands these things…(except when they involve his seven-year-old brother).  He showed remarkable insight into her reasons for behaving that way, and didn’t seem to take it personally.  Although he was quite freaked out for a while, he was confident in his own proper behavior, and understanding of her emotions.

     Also luckily, I had been reading the writings of Stoic philosopher and Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius exactly one slender moment before she went on her tirade.  All those fresh thoughts about our role as Social Beings, and our potential as Rational Beings, and our duty to the higher calling of our true nature made things much more productive for both of us, although she will never know that she owes a dead emperor for the fact that the urge to use her head as a tetherball was effectively diffused.

     What can I say, my mind is substantially more enlightened than my endocrine system.

     What this all boils down to in a nutshell is that we have right to protect ourselves from damage when other people have the capability to hurt us and attempt to do so and we shouldn’t shrink from the necessity of doing the job right when it needs to be done.

     Conversely, I think we have the obligation to ourselves and our society to increase our powers of rationality, enlightenment and understanding of ourselves and fellow man so that we can avoid causing harm when it is not necessary and taking harm when it can be avoided.