Stop saying that Violence isn’t the answer

Only a warrior chooses pacifism; others are condemned to it.

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As our world advances, we have developed innumerous ways to achieve a civilized society. We have implemented zero tolerance policies on school bulling, where we make social media protests and marches against violence, and develop policies to defend and help anyone who feels victimized in any way. Cellphone videos have become the modern weapon of justice and social media trolling has become the new style of combat, as public opinion is a lot more important than actual safety.

So when a blind teen is being beat up by another classmate and everyone is just standing around taking video, I am not at all surprises. Out of all those present, only ONE is willing to step in and deal with the bully. And that’s the result of a society that keeps telling everyone that violence isn’t the answer. We are left with a society that’s not willing to stand up for themselves and for others.

We are left with a society willing to embrace victimhood and its only defense mechanism is passive-aggressiveness.

Sure, you might call out every single protest and social movement as proof that I am wrong. But when you look at those event’s it’s easy to brave injustice when you are just one more within a crowd. These, in truth, are little more than social events to express community opinion.

It takes real cojones to step up when you stand alone.

Sure, taking video as evidence is crucial, but it does very title to stop the actual violence. Sometimes you need violence to stop violence. And if all we teach our kids is to not get involved, we end up with a society where violence will exist, and our only option is to deal with the aftermath. We need to change this.

We need to forge a society where the bully will think twice about being a bully. We need to bring back the fear of the older brother who’ll beat you up for abusing his younger sibling. We need to bring back the fear of the father who will “deal” with whoever thought of messing with his daughter. We need to bring back the fear of the stranger who will step in and stand up to whoever tries to bully someone in the street. And this is only done by having men willing to stand up against abuse.

Sure, violence isn’t the answer. But we still have to realize it’s an option.

I Want To See My Child Fall

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

I’ll be the first to admit, I wasn’t an easy kid to deal with. I still remember the trouble I got in when I got home after my first school fight. My mother was furious. Her disappointed glare will forever be etched in my memory as she repeated over and over phrases like “Violence is never the answer” or “I raised you better than that,” and “Wait till your father comes home.” She didn’t take into account the fact that this was an older kid who constantly bullied me and my friends or the fact that I had already told a teacher about it. Keep in mind this was a long time ago, long before the whole anti-bully school programs and long before the “everyone’s a winner” mentality that is so common now days. Back then, “boys will be boys” was the norm for issues like these. That fateful day, the kid picked on the smallest one of my friends and I just reacted. All my mother could see was the black eye, the swollen lip, the ripped shirt, and my tainted school record.

As I waited in my room, grounded for life, I ran all the possible scenarios in my head of what would happen when my father got home. Just so you know, waiting for a punishment is a lot more torturous than the actual punishment. My father walked in, curiously calm compared to my mother. He just looked at me and asked a simple question. “Who threw the last punch?” The last punch? I was expecting to be asked who started the fight, not who ended it. Fearfully I admitted it was me. He looked at me and smiled proudly and left.

“What the hell?”

I had not realized it then, but the day of that fight I learned one very important lesson. I had the power to stand up for myself and for those around me. Sure, it meant I got hit hard several times and was grounded, but I realized that not standing up for myself because I was afraid of getting hurt means you are already hurting yourself. Backing down out of fear no longer became an option in my life.

Some of the best lessons my father taught me were actually the ones where he let me get over my head and get hurt. He saw me get climb the tree from which I fell and needed stitches. He saw me make that jump on my bike from which I fell and broke my arm. He saw me go out with a girl for which I fell in love and ended up with a broken heart.

He also saw me stand up afterwards, dust myself off and try again later; sometimes by my own volition and other times thanks to his “motivation” pep talks. (read as him asking if I was “done feeling sorry for yourself?”)

Back then, I just thought my father would let me get away with almost anything. Now that I am older and a father myself, I look back and realize it wasn’t that simple. He always looked out for me without me knowing. He would “make” me compete without my noticing, thinking it was my own idea. From those contests I not only learned that wining was awesome, but I also learned the humility that comes of defeat and the importance of trying again after said defeat. He gave me enough space let me get into trouble, knowing that the only way to grow old and wise is if you are first young and stupid first. He would make me “pay-up” for whatever “stupidity” I did (and there was plenty of that in my youth), never bailing me out. You learn accountability really quickly that way.

I never knew back then all the magic he worked behind his calm façade. As a father myself, I can only now relate to the self-control needed to keep yourself from going to your kid’s rescue, giving them an easy way out. Every time you do that, the person learns there is no responsibility for their actions and someone else will always be there to solve their problems. As a husband, I can only imagine the countless arguments he must have endured dealing with my mother’s overprotective nature, as he fought to keep me from being mollycoddled into an entitled spoiled brat.

I learned more from falling and failing and getting hurt than I did from any of my successes, as I was given the opportunity to learn that failure wasn’t fatal but not learning from it was. They also taught me that a life of not doing anything for fear of getting hurt or losing isn’t really a life. It’s merely an empty existence of underachievement as you lack the 'cojones' to get your act together. Life will constantly challenge you, and you are meant to meet them head on with your head held high and your chest out. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and sometimes you get hurt in the process of both. That’s life and if I want my kid to be strong enough to meet these challenges, I need to be strong enough to let him fall.

Living With The Beast Within

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

Mahatma Gandhi

One of the main staples of toxic masculinity is the reliance to violence as a means to solve problems. Yet, we constantly are teaching out boys to praise violence. From the mother who beats discipline into her son, to the athlete applauded for his ability to crush his opponent, to the businessman respected for his “take no prisoners” mentality. We applaud aggressively as a virtue while condemning the results of an aggressive behavior. We honor those willing to fight for us, yet have gotten front row seats to the hurt and damage that results from it. So the obvious solution would be to view violence as a problem, right? Take Violence out of video games, out of sports, out of society, out of our lives?

Wrong.

Violence and the ability to be violent is actually an important aspect of simple self-preservation. The willingness to stand up and confront someone, challenge someone, is actually a necessary aspect of society. Without it, without rage, you would lose the ability to confront injustice. Without it you would just be another victim to a cruel world. It’s your personal rage that keeps your own worlds cruelty in check. Just think what kind of society you would live in without that anger that swells within your spirit every time you see someone doing something wrong.

We might blame violent media, be it music, movies or games, as directly responsible for the violence within society. There have been plenty of studies that the link between violence and violent media. Ironically, there have been plenty of studies that prove the complete opposite, how there is no connection between one and the other. The latter actually questions if we want to make that link just to justify our fears. Personally, I don’t think one causes the other automatically. If you need proof of how violent games don’t produce a violent culture, just consider all the countries that consume violent media, yet have some of the lowest violent crimes statistics worldwide. When we relate violent behavior and blame the media for violent acts, we remove personal accountability from these actions.

The danger of being blinded by the beast within comes from our inability to control the beast within. We are taught to unleash our beast when the time comes, yet do little to teach how to keep them in check. If anything, we are taught to suppress them so badly that the beast turns inward and consumes our soul. At this time, we either turn self-destructive or become that caged lion that no longer cares how much abuse is done on to him as you are left with an empty shell where once lived a majestic creature.

So, how can you unlearn to unleash the beast when it’s not needed, and keep it from eating you from the inside out? Create your own pressure valve. Give it an outlet. Hit the gym, take up fighting arts, run, anything that pushes the body and burn off the beast’s energy.

Take the time to understand your beast. Is it a result of frustration? Of anger? Of impotence? Or is it just habit as you are used to solve everything with confrontation? Understand who you are and contemplate why you are that way. You can’t really better yourself without understanding yourself. Write, reflect, meditate, smoke cigars, or whatever you need to create a space where you can lose yourself in thought. Only when you lose yourself within your mind can you find who you are.

Civilize the mind but make savage the body.

Find what works for you to keep the beast on a leash. Now, if you find it hard to discipline the animal within, DO NOT BE AFRAID OR ASHAMED TO LOOK FOR HELP. If you have a cold, you’d go to the doctor, right? If your car’s not running smooth, you’d take it to a mechanic? Then why wouldn’t you do the same for your emotions and your thoughts. We have made great strides in removing some of the social stigma from depression, yet have done little to do the same for violent behavior. Seeking help isn’t an admission of being an abuser, but rather an admission that you refuse to be one.

Just remember, "Only a Warrior chooses pacifism; others are condemned to it."

The Response Waiting Period

If you speak when angry, you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.

Groucho Marx

In many places, where civilians are allowed to own a firearm, the government requires that there be a waiting period between the time when the weapon is purchased and the time it’s handed over. Although this time varies from location to location, the general explanation given is so that the government can do a proper background check on the person. Yet, with today’s hyper connected society, a background check can be done almost instantaneously. Even without the government’s resources, as an individual you can Google anyone's life history in less than an hour to know what kind of a person they are. So, with that understood, why would you have to wait 24 hours, 48 hours, or even a week for a background check?

Because it’s not about doing a background check. It’s a cooling off period. It’s giving you enough time to think about why you are getting a weapon. It’s giving you enough to keep you from doing something you will regret the rest of your life. So, if we can understand the logic behind a cooling off period to keep you from your own stupidity, why don’t we use that same logic in any other moment we need to keep ourselves from “doing something you will regret the rest of your life.”

Be it your spouse, your kids, your parents, your boss, or anyone else, comes up to you with the dreaded “we need to talk,” they probably already talked about the issue with you. You just weren’t present during the discussion. We all do this, as we review how to discuss any difficult issue with someone. We review what we want to say and how we will say it. We consider any reply the person might have, practicing what our response to these comments will be. And we do this for days, even weeks. When we think we have every base covered and every scenario pre-rehearsed, we confront the person. Then, even if it took us weeks to get ready, expect the other person to be able to respond instantaneously.

And the other person probably ends up doing something stupid.

As the ability of people today to do constructive criticism has lessened, and our ability to receive ANY kind of criticism is slowly lost as a result, we will probably react to “we need to talk” as a challenge. In this case, it’s within our nature as humans to revert to a fight/flight when confronted. Your reaction will either be to win the argument, however possible, or to run away from it, again however possible. By this time, the conversation has turned into a win/lose situation, where it stops being about understanding, reviewing what is being called out, or even finding common ground.

As communication and openness is crucial in any social interaction, how do you handle this kind of situation, how do you keep it from turning into a power struggle? First, the person bringing up the issue, the one who had enough time to prepare for the exchange, has to give the other person the same consideration of time to review the issues brought up. Second, the person on the receiving end has to listen and consider just what is brought up, not as an attack, but as something they might not have considered.

All Relationship, be it familiar, friendships, romantic, or even business, must be about a balance and a partnership. It should never be a power struggle where one dominates the other. It should be about creating an environment where both persons benefit from each other. By giving a person the space to explain what they are going though and how they feel, you are offering them respect. By giving the person the time to consider what was told to them, you are offering them understanding.

And isn’t that what all relationships should be about? Respect and understanding?