Violence - some thoughts

The I Ching of Life :-)

I have been reading Marc MacYoung’s book, “In the Name of Self-Defense,” when it occurred to me that possibly, possibly, we as a society have actually provided for more violence over less by taking the tact that to “ignore” it that it will go away all on its own. I have the feeling that society thinks if it ignores violence and the fact that humans are by nature violent creatures it exposes us to those common things that lead to violence. 

Maybe I am not that clear here. As I read Marc MacYoung’s book I find that because I am learning a lot more about the subject than I previously understood and assumed I knew it became clearer to me that knowing this stuff would give me the background necessary to use the tools to avoid my nature of being a violent human being. 

Just knowing about how the process of violence works I can grasp what it takes to avoid it myself, i.e. as in my anger leading to conflict and violence. I think this concept is important that putting our heads in the sand and ignoring nature will always get us into trouble.

In addition, our society has to deal with the population explosion it is experiencing meaning that there are more of us, more differeing cultural groups with their own unique belief systems, etc. that create more friction when in contact with one another not to forget even within the group not understanding the rules of violence and its process leaves a greater opportunity for misunderstandings, lousy communications, not knowing the rules and in the end through confusion, perceptions, perspectives, stress, assumptions, speculations, resentments, etc. you find that the human violent tendencies come to the surface.

It is also like communications where simply learning about them and understanding how it can lead to conflict and violence, i.e. like learning about it in Mr. MacYoung’s books along with the gentle art of verbal self-defense, etc., leads to an understanding along with the tools to first see it all in yourself thus providing the opportunity to see it in others then avoid violence by how you handle it all. If everyone were afforded the opportunity to understand all this then maybe violence would diminish to a minimum.

Remember, as I started to state above, with the closeness of the variety of humans becoming overcrowded, etc. nature tends to create greater stress, etc. that create situations and scenarios that will open the door to our monkey brains who tend to like connecting to our human nature of conflict and violence. 

This blog post may seem convoluted but that is because all of this is complex, very complex. I could see the human condition improving if we just embraced our nature and learned all the tools to combat that nature, i.e., like taking the materials from INOSD, Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller, Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and more and put that into our educational system, our homes to teach our children so that we could combat violence by putting it on a choker leash so we can keep that junk yard dog restrained to our benefit rather than our detriment.

I may be taking this to the extreme but I wish I had this knowledge and learning when I was a teenager. I could envision a far better life than what I had (and that life was pretty darn good too but ….. you know that old hindsight thing :-). 

Ok, anyway, off the soap box. 

p.s. if anything, all this stuff could and would make a huge difference in the self-defense and martial art culture and belief system. It might even be a better seller commercially. Hmmm …. Oh, I think some ancient sage in the business of war, etc. said you should keep your friends close but your enemies closer so it that is true, I believe it to be so, then we should really keep our violent natures close, not hidden in the sand but right there on our left with our friends on our right.