“Violence is the last thing I want to do, but it’s the first thing I will do.”

— Master Matt Suitor

Does knowing how to use the tool of violence inform your relationship with your fellow human beings?  There are really two angles to come at this question from:  knowing what violence entails (or “means”) and knowing how to get it done.

In terms of knowing what violence entails, i.e., the terror and ugly finality of it, the trend is clear:  intimate knowledge leads directly to avoidance.  The more one knows about violence, the less eager one is to get involved in it.  Resolved, yes—eager, no.

This has a great deal to do with the narrowness of the tool, the fact that violence only does one thing:  it shuts off a human being.  The vast majority of your daily social interactions do not require this.  It is unnecessary, therefore, to push social interactions in directions that could result in violence.  Personally, I found I’m much more likely to capitulate and disengage by leaving the area, without a word, when confronted by someone with an obvious chip on their shoulder who has chosen me as the knock-off guy.  Everybody wins—I sleep well, and neither of us gets a broken leg just because he was having a bad day.

My brother, Tony, tells a hilarious story in which a man accosted him by saying “Let’s fight!” and punching him (ineffectually) in the head.  Tony thought about what that would mean—he saw himself breaking the guy’s leg and stomping a mud hole in him on the ground, and thought to himself, He can’t want that.  So he said no.  The guy persisted, again asking for a fight and punching Tony.  Finally, my brother had it and shrugged, thinking, I guess that’s what he wants, and proceeded to make the guy’s head and feet trade places with a single strike.  It wasn’t so much a “fight” like the guy was asking for as it was a “single man-stopping injury.”  Tony knew that’s where it would go (and more importantly, that it could go either way); knowing how serious it was made him uninterested in going there recreationally—if he didn’t have to, he didn’t want to.

I find that I am possessed of a saintlike patience these days—somehow, somewhere, I developed the habit of giving pretty much everyone the benefit of the doubt.  I do not begrudge those who are curt and prickly their public anger and annoyance.  I just figure there are extenuating circumstances I’m not aware of and I have no desire to be the next point on the down-trending curve of their bad day.  I do my best to treat everyone with patience and respect—and how is that different, really, from treating everyone as if they were six seconds away from a killing spree?  I’d much rather be the control rod in the nuclear reactor than the ignition charge in their personal H-bomb.

This gets us to the second angle—beyond mere knowledge of violence and into confidence in how to get it done.  Nietzsche said that courtesy comes from a position of power; I would say it comes from both the knowledge of, and confidence in, violence.  Politeness flows from a desire to avoid violence coupled with the knowledge that if worse comes to worst, the skill is literally in the palm of your hand.  Socially, you have nothing to lose.  Rude people fear that courtesy is a sign of weakness, that something is taken from them when they wait their turn or let someone else go first.

Knowing how to get it done removes the uncertainty from the extreme end of the scale—the answer to “But what if he goes off?” is “I’ll break his leg and stomp a mud hole in him.”  And so I find myself in the position of being resolved, but not eager.  If I don’t have to, I don’t want to.  If I have to, I will.

 

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

(Title quote from the inestimable Johnny Cash.)

One of the truths about studying violence is that it makes you really uninterested in being involved in it.  Dramatic ass-kicking, on the other hand, is attractive—mainly because of your perception of increased social standing.  “Teaching someone a lesson” makes you a badass… and who doesn’t want that?

Of course, “fighting” is necessarily nonspecific.  It won’t be any more explicit than “hit him” or “kick his ass”.  The moment you begin to apply specifics it gets a lot less fun.  Gouging an eye, crushing a throat or snapping a knee backwards are all obviously awful, and usually go far beyond whatever lesson you hoped to teach him.  You recognize that once you get specific you’re no longer teaching, but destroying.  And your social standing will, if anything, probably decrease as you freak your friends out.  That, and finding out the cold difference between the title of “badass” and “psychotic”.

Knowing the truth about violence and still being eager to engage in it is crazy.  So we lie to ourselves, make a game of it, a contest, we try to believe violence is something that can be dialed up or down… that there’s such a thing as “extreme violence”.  We cling to these ideas because we still want it to be fun and to be the badass of our fantasies.

But real violence, the unrestrained use of it (and that’s the only way it works—just ask a bullet) is dirty, kind of scary, and truly awful.

Looking this reality full in the face is both sickening and, secretly, disappointing.  The love affair with being the hero ends abruptly in blood and screaming.  You realize that if you get to choose whether or not to be involved, the answer is always, with some relief, no.

This is what we mean when we say that training to use violence leads to a more peaceful life.  Not as a fortune cookie aphorism, or because we forbid you to use it, but because the truth repels and lessens your ardor to do these things to people in all but the most dire of circumstances.  Keeping the fantasy alive makes you more likely to engage—after all, it’s just an ass-kicking, and he really does deserve it.  When you know there’s no such thing, that physical violence which does not permanently alter peoples’ lives isn’t skill, but just dumb luck, you’ll do what you can to not have to break his leg.

The three most important outcomes of this training are:

1.  Reduced desire to be involved in violence (unless you have no choice)

2.  Ceasing to look like a victim

3.  Knowing how to shut off a human being.

In that order.  So it’s peaceful, predatory, and having the teeth to back it up.  

Early in my career as an instructor I put number three as the only reason to train.  It wasn’t until the stories of those I trained began to filter back—not just the ones where they shut someone off (that was to be expected), but the ones where they spoke of predators waving off when they believed contact was inevitable, and, most telling, stories of changed behavior, solving conflict in new ways that didn’t involve fists.  Simply because they realized it wasn’t necessary… and that if it could be avoided it should.  The importance of this hit me because now the practice of shutting people off had real daily benefits, instead of a few frenzied seconds someday, or perhaps never.

And so it turns out you can use your training daily without ending up in prison.  It can make the worst among us pass you by in search of an easier mark, and having the tool of violence in your back pocket can give you the confidence to try solving problems where in the past you may have reflexively fought or fled.  Besides, if your read on the situation turns out wrong you can always break his leg, right?

This is how violence can lead to peace, at least on a personal level.

So train for that moment where nothing else will do, but enjoy the fruits of that labor on a daily basis:  trading fear for resolve, paranoia for relaxation, violence paradoxically becoming peace.

All the best to you & yours with wishes for a peace-filled New Year,

Chris Ranck-Buhr & The Injury Dynamics Team