This is something that most of us know on some level, but we don’t permit ourselves to own up to it every single day, because it reminds us just how thin the veneer of civilization is. We don’t want to acknowledge that the bestial in human nature is very often only overcome by channelling . . . the bestial in human nature.
Violence isn’t the only answer, but it is the final answer.
One can make moral arguments and ethical arguments and appeals to reason, emotion, aesthetics, and compassion. People are certainly moved by these arguments, and when sufficiently persuaded –providing of course that they are not excessively inconvenienced — people often choose to moderate or change their behaviors.
However, the willful submission of many inevitably creates a vulnerability waiting to be exploited by any one person who shrugs off social and ethical norms. If every man lays down his arms and refuses to pick them up, the first man to pick them up can do whatever he wants. Peace can only be maintained without violence so long as everyone sticks to the bargain, and to maintain peace every single person in every successive generation — even after war is long forgotten — must continue to agree to remain peaceful. Forever and ever. No delinquent or upstart may ever ask, “Or Else What?,” because in a truly non-violent society, the best available answer is “Or else we won’t think you’re a very nice person and we’re not going to share with you.” Our troublemaker is free to reply, “I don’t care. I’ll take what I want.”
Violence is the final answer to the question, “Or else what?”
Violence is the gold standard, the reserve that guarantees order. In actuality, it is better than a gold standard, because violence has universal value. Violence transcends the quirks of philosophy, religion, technology and culture. People say that music is a universal language, but a punch in the face hurts the same no matter what language you speak or what kind of music you prefer. If you are trapped in a room with me and I grab a pipe and gesture to strike you with it, no matter who you are, your monkey brain will immediately understand “or else what.” And thereby, a certain order is achieved.
One of the books that most changed my worldview is a volume called The Hot House, about prisoners at Leavenworth. It really takes you inside the walls of a maximum-security facility; it shows us what human nature looks like when a code of conduct lays it bare. The mirror it holds up to our species isn’t flattering, but that demonstrates why the people inside prison are kept there via armed guards and high walls.
h/t: Mikal’s FaceBook feed.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Recent psychological tests have shown that 50% of Americans would be willing to kill just as long as someone else is willing to take the blame.
Perhaps our species is diverging?
The best way to avoid a fight is to be more than willing to engage in one and to use overwhelming retaliatory force. It has been shown to work quite well.
Lord of the Flies was one of the books I read for school that I was glad I read (1969 or so).
Is it still on school booklists?
Grim’s Hall has been discussing this same topic lately: http://grimbeorn.blogspot.com.
The Romans said it more succinctly: si vis pacem, parabellum. If you want peace, prepare for war.
Sadly, that’s the Taliban’s motto, too.
yeah… NO.
God and Guns
???
Folks really, honestly, in their gut, seriously don’t know violence is sometimes needed? That sometimes, war IS the answer, even if you hold that violence is always a last resort?
…
This is another one of those “fish don’t see water” things, isn’t it, same way some folks just don’t understand that their worldview has Christian influence, like “that human over there is a person, too”?
At the risk of being a fanboy, Heinlein was right: “Anyone who clings to the historically untrue – and thoroughly immoral – doctrine ‘that violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.”
What a usefully subversive writer, as a trip through his ‘Juvenile’ works attests.
I’d take it further. Sun-tzu said that “when you become like your enemy, your enemy has won.” But even this ancient warrior was too civilized to understand the reality of our nature.
Ideals have no place in struggle. It is necessary to lie to the population to get them to support the inevitability of war. But in reality, we cannot fight for anything but ourselves and our tribe. If you do not become like your enemy – fully as ruthless, fully as cruel – your enemy will win.