Civilisation
There is a myth amongst politicians and philosophers that Civilisation, or at least modern civilisation, equals civilised people.
I think the word civilised is a fraudulent word. Is it possible to be a civilised person? Certainly there is no such thing as a civilised people. I consider myself an intellectual person, I think a lot. I know a lot, I understand a lot, yet I have a thirst for violence. I am not a violent man, I attempt to avoid it within my life as much as possible but I cannot deny that the one time I truly lost my cool and punched someone, I enjoyed myself.
I in fact have a need for violence. I hate hurting people but there are times when all I want to do is punch someone's head in and I wouldn't care who. I deal with this by going clubbing, dancing. Usually I have to go dancing at least twice a week to give my subconcious something to focus on, take my frustrations out on the dancefloor. Quite often I come home with bruised knuckles from punching walls while I dance.
Humans are violent, not all of them, but we are animals, animals kill for food, they fight for territory, they fight for a mate. All that is great and good about humanity has tried to eliminate this instinct to fight, to kill. Will we ever eradicate this instinct? I doubt it, I think it is indeed naive to believe we can. The Romans had human bloodsport to quench their bloodlust. Other cultures hotwired it into their religions. This was blood for the sake of pleasure. Knowing that the normal instinct for death could not be followed, they invented fun ways of inflicting it on people who could not retaliate. Today most of the world considers itself civilised, that it is wrong to kill, to maim, to injure for the sake of pleasure.
Yet executions in America are public to all who have an interest. Hangings were public to all and sundry in Britain barely seventy or eighty years ago. only in the past half century have we sanctified death, sanctified blood, mainly because of the sheer numbers of those lost in the great war, a pointless war, when we realised that blood for the sake of blood could never be worth it.
Yet we have not learnt the lesson, let us not be stupid. We did not send troops half way round the world to give freedom to a people in a country on the other side of the world. We did it for oil and our own safety (whether illusory or not). We did it for our own power. We did it because we could. The lives don't matter, the number of soldiers killed on either side don't matter. The number of civilians killed don't matter. We cannot put a number on how many people we are willing to kill before an objective becomes too great, that 5000 deaths is acceptable but 5001 is too many. Governments are run by the rich and the clever or alternatively the feared and the worshipped, whichever country we may be in, whether America, Iran, Britain, North Korea, Australia, Zimbabwe, Russia or Syria.
And the clever wish to become rich and the feared wish to become worshipped.
And still we want blood, we want to be better than, we want to be defended from, we want to have their resources, we want our freedom, we want them to be free, we want the money, or the fear, or the worship, essentially, we want the power. And because we cannot have six billion clever, rich, feared, worshipped dictators on this planet, because we pretend that we must live in a bloodless world, where, despite our instincts we cannot ever be violent, we coldly accept the violence that is put in front of us as some sort of substitute.
We have killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people whom we were trying to save from a dictator that we ourselves armed. The people marched, protested, and the rulers took no notice. But this was for our own army. If any of us truly cared about human life, if any of us wished to call ourselves civilised we would bring the nation to a stop with our cries until the leaders had no option but to listen. Until then, we are as equal to the charge of murder as either Saddam Hussein or George Bush.
George Bush recently rushed back from holiday to pass legislation on a woman, who, in a vegetative state, has had her feeding tube removed and so will starve to death, which, although a stark choice, has to be marginally more humane than being left, essentially braindead for the rest of her life. I find it ironic that Bush, whose actions and decisions have killed countless, should fight to keep alive a woman without a life.
A person may consider themselves civilised, their actions may be reasoned, logical, even morally correct, if there is such a thing. But humanity will never be civilised, debate will always fall into violence, ego's will always erupt. It takes just one blow. And lets be truly honest, we all enjoy being the victor, no one wants to lose, in anything. We will always fight, we will always die, those who survive will say how terrible, and if they won, will be glad, and if they lost, will want revenge. And others will complain about the violence around us and blame it on tv or computer games or rock music and forget that it is inherent in this race of ours. We will never outlive it to gain some great nirvana. I do not excuse violence, do not endorse it, do not believe in it, but it is programmed in our genes. The strongest survive, this tenet applies to our structures, our countries, as well as our immediate circle.
Therefore, we must stop evolution, in our base terms, occuring in the political world. If we remove competition, we remove the need to fight. Violence will be bred out, eventually. There are two drawbacks to this; a> Without evolution there is stagnation and death, b> it'll never happen. The Human Race is aptly named. Currently our countries fight over beliefs. Soon we will fight over resources, we already are in some cases. Then, when too many are subjugated, and the supplies again run low, we will begin to fight each other. This too is happening. We forget that power and freedom are also resources.
I punched someone once and I immediately regretted it. I scared myself, not because I threw the punch, but because I enjoyed myself immensely while doing so.
Long Live Aslan Maskhadov.
Long Live Mahatma Gandhi.
Long Live Che Guevara.
Long Live Yasser Arafat.
Long Live Owain Glyndwr.
Long Live William Wallace.
Long Live Michael Collins.
Long Live Martin Luther King.
Long Live Spartacus.
Long Live Crazy Horse.
Long Live all those who have fought and died, whether remembered, or unheralded, in the pursuit of the greatest resource of all, a freedom that they would never see.
If violence is inherent in us, let it only be used in a noble cause. Where we can, let us follow Gandhi or King, in nonviolence, but it must also be recognised that it is possible to fight in two different ways. Honourably and dishonourably. It is the way of the world that honour has become so blatantly distorted.
This is not about religion, this is about oppression. If Osama Bin Laden and Islam were genuinely oppressed by America then they too would earn a place on the above list. They do not for they do not fight for freedom but for power. Islam is as betrayed by it's own worshipped religious leaders and rich political leaders as anyone in the west. This does not leave America in the right.
And no one can find a solution except in violence, not because there isn't one, but because deep down, we enjoy violence, we enjoy the power we have over another person. We enjoy creating fear and terror.
If we enjoy the violence we do to another person we destroy the reason we are forced to resort to it, for it should always be a last resort if at all.
Osama Bin Laden and George Bush, both enjoy this violence too much, and whatsmore, we as a people also enjoy it, or at the least believe in it, even if it is at a primal level. We cannot call ourselves peace loving. We should have ousted our leaders before we allowed them to condemn us.
We are not civilised. We never will be.
I think the word civilised is a fraudulent word. Is it possible to be a civilised person? Certainly there is no such thing as a civilised people. I consider myself an intellectual person, I think a lot. I know a lot, I understand a lot, yet I have a thirst for violence. I am not a violent man, I attempt to avoid it within my life as much as possible but I cannot deny that the one time I truly lost my cool and punched someone, I enjoyed myself.
I in fact have a need for violence. I hate hurting people but there are times when all I want to do is punch someone's head in and I wouldn't care who. I deal with this by going clubbing, dancing. Usually I have to go dancing at least twice a week to give my subconcious something to focus on, take my frustrations out on the dancefloor. Quite often I come home with bruised knuckles from punching walls while I dance.
Humans are violent, not all of them, but we are animals, animals kill for food, they fight for territory, they fight for a mate. All that is great and good about humanity has tried to eliminate this instinct to fight, to kill. Will we ever eradicate this instinct? I doubt it, I think it is indeed naive to believe we can. The Romans had human bloodsport to quench their bloodlust. Other cultures hotwired it into their religions. This was blood for the sake of pleasure. Knowing that the normal instinct for death could not be followed, they invented fun ways of inflicting it on people who could not retaliate. Today most of the world considers itself civilised, that it is wrong to kill, to maim, to injure for the sake of pleasure.
Yet executions in America are public to all who have an interest. Hangings were public to all and sundry in Britain barely seventy or eighty years ago. only in the past half century have we sanctified death, sanctified blood, mainly because of the sheer numbers of those lost in the great war, a pointless war, when we realised that blood for the sake of blood could never be worth it.
Yet we have not learnt the lesson, let us not be stupid. We did not send troops half way round the world to give freedom to a people in a country on the other side of the world. We did it for oil and our own safety (whether illusory or not). We did it for our own power. We did it because we could. The lives don't matter, the number of soldiers killed on either side don't matter. The number of civilians killed don't matter. We cannot put a number on how many people we are willing to kill before an objective becomes too great, that 5000 deaths is acceptable but 5001 is too many. Governments are run by the rich and the clever or alternatively the feared and the worshipped, whichever country we may be in, whether America, Iran, Britain, North Korea, Australia, Zimbabwe, Russia or Syria.
And the clever wish to become rich and the feared wish to become worshipped.
And still we want blood, we want to be better than, we want to be defended from, we want to have their resources, we want our freedom, we want them to be free, we want the money, or the fear, or the worship, essentially, we want the power. And because we cannot have six billion clever, rich, feared, worshipped dictators on this planet, because we pretend that we must live in a bloodless world, where, despite our instincts we cannot ever be violent, we coldly accept the violence that is put in front of us as some sort of substitute.
We have killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people whom we were trying to save from a dictator that we ourselves armed. The people marched, protested, and the rulers took no notice. But this was for our own army. If any of us truly cared about human life, if any of us wished to call ourselves civilised we would bring the nation to a stop with our cries until the leaders had no option but to listen. Until then, we are as equal to the charge of murder as either Saddam Hussein or George Bush.
George Bush recently rushed back from holiday to pass legislation on a woman, who, in a vegetative state, has had her feeding tube removed and so will starve to death, which, although a stark choice, has to be marginally more humane than being left, essentially braindead for the rest of her life. I find it ironic that Bush, whose actions and decisions have killed countless, should fight to keep alive a woman without a life.
A person may consider themselves civilised, their actions may be reasoned, logical, even morally correct, if there is such a thing. But humanity will never be civilised, debate will always fall into violence, ego's will always erupt. It takes just one blow. And lets be truly honest, we all enjoy being the victor, no one wants to lose, in anything. We will always fight, we will always die, those who survive will say how terrible, and if they won, will be glad, and if they lost, will want revenge. And others will complain about the violence around us and blame it on tv or computer games or rock music and forget that it is inherent in this race of ours. We will never outlive it to gain some great nirvana. I do not excuse violence, do not endorse it, do not believe in it, but it is programmed in our genes. The strongest survive, this tenet applies to our structures, our countries, as well as our immediate circle.
Therefore, we must stop evolution, in our base terms, occuring in the political world. If we remove competition, we remove the need to fight. Violence will be bred out, eventually. There are two drawbacks to this; a> Without evolution there is stagnation and death, b> it'll never happen. The Human Race is aptly named. Currently our countries fight over beliefs. Soon we will fight over resources, we already are in some cases. Then, when too many are subjugated, and the supplies again run low, we will begin to fight each other. This too is happening. We forget that power and freedom are also resources.
I punched someone once and I immediately regretted it. I scared myself, not because I threw the punch, but because I enjoyed myself immensely while doing so.
Long Live Aslan Maskhadov.
Long Live Mahatma Gandhi.
Long Live Che Guevara.
Long Live Yasser Arafat.
Long Live Owain Glyndwr.
Long Live William Wallace.
Long Live Michael Collins.
Long Live Martin Luther King.
Long Live Spartacus.
Long Live Crazy Horse.
Long Live all those who have fought and died, whether remembered, or unheralded, in the pursuit of the greatest resource of all, a freedom that they would never see.
If violence is inherent in us, let it only be used in a noble cause. Where we can, let us follow Gandhi or King, in nonviolence, but it must also be recognised that it is possible to fight in two different ways. Honourably and dishonourably. It is the way of the world that honour has become so blatantly distorted.
This is not about religion, this is about oppression. If Osama Bin Laden and Islam were genuinely oppressed by America then they too would earn a place on the above list. They do not for they do not fight for freedom but for power. Islam is as betrayed by it's own worshipped religious leaders and rich political leaders as anyone in the west. This does not leave America in the right.
And no one can find a solution except in violence, not because there isn't one, but because deep down, we enjoy violence, we enjoy the power we have over another person. We enjoy creating fear and terror.
If we enjoy the violence we do to another person we destroy the reason we are forced to resort to it, for it should always be a last resort if at all.
Osama Bin Laden and George Bush, both enjoy this violence too much, and whatsmore, we as a people also enjoy it, or at the least believe in it, even if it is at a primal level. We cannot call ourselves peace loving. We should have ousted our leaders before we allowed them to condemn us.
We are not civilised. We never will be.
posted by Caractacus at 22:30
3 Comments:
Dear friend, with the greatest respect, I think this piece is fundamentally flawed on the basis of biological determinism (I couldn't help it your honour, my genes made me do it/Oh alright, Mr Shipman, you can go free). Then, on this flawed basis, you leap from personal violence(oi, stop looking at my wife) to war, where soldiers require continuous training and nationalistic and racist brainwashing, technology is purposely developed to reduce human-human fighting, and often come back from war a bit fucked up (and what about the >5000 US soldiers refusing to do another tour in Iraq?) which suggests to me that they are not following instincts.
It is nature/nurture. Nature (genes) cannot tell you to punch, and I'll bet you were provoked into punching, i.e. an external causation and a learned response. I suggest that you don't actually 'have a need' for violence, I certainly don't. If Mike Tyson had lamped you square in the face I bet you would not have written so.
As for Bush and Bin Laden enjoying violence, where are they when the fighting starts? Hundreds of miles away.
Whilst we are all humans, we do not act like animals who can do little to control their environment and constantly struggle to access to food. By virtue of our big brains humans behave in very diverse ways. A man who owns an oil refinery will act in a different way to a man who only has his labour to sell.
IMHO, 'Civilisation', presently, is defined by an socio-economic organsation where the use of violence is the norm, because it is the ultimate method of preserving and extending privilege, and economic power - from which all manners of political and idelogical power stem. Notions of freedom, patriotism, religion or racism are used to galvanise troops into killing and dying for what they will never own, but wars themselves are the fought over resources.
Let me deal with your comments one at a time, I may not have explained myself clearly in the piece, it was more a stream of thought rather than an attempt to coherently argue the issue.
Firstly, I don't say that violence is within our genes, I say it is an instinct, many of us, when injured physically or emotionally may lash out, either verbally or physically, at those around us. It is a defence mechanism to protect us from further harm, however, as humans, we have the ability to override this instinct, or not. We also have the ability to choose violence as a path outside of pure defence. It is interesting that you chose Shipman as an example, of almost anyone who chose to kill, Shipman never had an obvious reason other than that he really did enjoy killing, indeed the way in which he was caught was interpreted as a cry for help to escape from the terrible life he had created for himself.
To jump from that to war is not such a big jump, it's simply many people acting with one instinct. You are right to say that soldiers are brainwashed, to see their enemies as inhuman, which is why we are getting so many instances of torture, but it has to be said, you cannot brainwash a pacifist to kill, such a person will hesitate to kill even in absolute self defence, only someone with those tendenies already to the fore are likely to have a compulsion to join an army in the first place. I accept your argument that the poor and those of lower intellectual ability are often forced into service hoever these conditions still apply. Yes, some soldiers suffer from their experiences, in fact most soldiers who experience close fighting will suffer in some way, but I can remember many incidents where trained soldiers who have never been involved in conflict commit acts of violence, such as rape and murder in Cyprus.
Again, war is primarily a backlash, a defence. Take America, attacked on 9/11, Bush (and therefore the country) lashes out, rightly or wrongly first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. The fact that soldiers are refusing to serve in Iraq only serves to point out the fact that we are not slaves to our masters, our feelings, our instincts.
There is much more I could write about that, put in allsorts of hedges and stuff because nothing is concrete, but I'll move on.
Please do not make presumptions about the reasons for my actions. The reason the incident scared me so much was that I was not provoked. I was angry, and someone who was a friend tried to talk to me, I threw him up against the wall and lost my mind. I punched his head in. I had no reason, I saw red. I had never thrown a punch before or since but I realised at that moment that I had a terrible capacity for violence that I had to keep in check and fortunately have done ever since. But that does not mean I don't want to hurt people, quite often I do, instead of hurting them however I go and dance my brains out, or take a long, long walk to clear my head. Again, I'm overcoming my initial instinct to hurt but the instinct is still there.
Also don't assume that I couldn't take a punch from Tyson, I probably couldn't, but if given the opportunity I would not blanche at getting in a ring with him. I have been on the losing end of fights on several occassions, and am not afraid of pain or death. People fight to win, pain and losing is part of the fact.
The point of this is you say you don't have a need for violence, you probably don't, but I do. I'm a pacifist yet every so often I want to punch someone's head in for no reason other than that I am spoiling for a fight. That is what I am trying to explore. Will pacifism ever win, or are we, as humans, doomed to fight each other for the rest of eternity? Is there a point to preventing street brawls if people just need to get it out of their system? etc
You say that Bin Laden and Bush don't partake in violence. Bush I agree, may have been a coward in his youth, but Bin Laden has physically fought before. But you misunderstand the fundamental nature of violence. Their thoughts are violent. Each one wants to wipe the other from the face of the earth. They set in motion the acts of violence.
After Hiroshima, President Truman called the captain of the Enola Gay to the Oval office and asked him how he felt about the massive loss of life. The captain (I forget his name) replied that he had just followed orders, or something to that effect. Truman replied "Damn straight. And I gave you those orders, and you tell that to anyone who asks." Same for Bush and Bin Laden.
It is interesting to look at the current conflict because this conflict is ambiguous. Bin Laden and Islamists see Capitalism and America as the evil empire, as America sees them. But then it was the same in WW2/cold war with a triumvirate of ideologies.
You say that humans do not act like animals, controlled only by their environment, except you then contradict yourself by saying that a poor person and an oil magnate, with two different environments would act in different ways. In my experience and learning, humans act very much like animals according to their environment. Consider; two oil magnates will act similarly, just as two poor people in the same ghetto will act similarly. In fact there are absolutely thousands of scientific and psychological studies out there that depend on the general similarity of human reaction.
Of course there are differences but it is very easy to create circumstances where almost anyone will react in the same way, for instance, a mother will almost always protect her children even to the cost of her own life, a starving man will always search for food. This is not just in common with other humans but in common with most animals. Our genes do not tell us this, they decide what we look like, but it is our feelings, that determine how we act. This is instinct and in general most people do actually have the same instincts. The main argument for humanity is that we are capable of overriding these instincts due to our superior brains and self consciousness, however you would be surprised how few people actually have the self awareness to escape from their instincts. Humanity in general is actually very predictable. Watch people and see. I think this is fundamentally where you have misunderstood my argument.
With respect I found your views very cynical, not as cynical as mine perhaps. You say you don't fight for territory or a mate, but in order to buy a house you sometimes have to outbid other buyers, if you want to pull in a club you have to be able to dance better than any rival. This is not physically violent because we assume that we have risen above such crude methods (I'll deal with that later) but the terminology is the same. Big business has to fight for our custom, your child has to fight to get into certain schools, an election is fought.
I respect your definition of civilisation but I work from a different definition of the word which I will argue for. Civilisation is a word that encompasses the entirety of a country, it's history, politics, religion, culture, people. Basically an encompassment of the achievements of a people. thereby we can talk about the Roman civilisation, the English civilisation, or the civilisation of the world as a whole.
This is part of what I question, the essence of a civilisation is the nature of it's people. The Romans saw people killed in the arena. Our civilisations today supposedly support a higher degree and respect of human rights, yet in many ways we are more violent than the Romans or other ancient civilisations. My argument is that those ancient cultures acknowledged the human need for blood and satiated it, while we try and suppress it. With all respect to human rights I wonder if this is contributary to the violent nature of our so called civilised era.
In your final statement you say that freedom, patriotism, religion and racism are tools used by the powerbase to control the proletariat. I do not believe this is the case, although these can be used it is rare. Firstly, it is generally the media that channel patriotism and racism, although the media can be on message with the powerbase, most often they are in disagreement. It is only in countries where the media and the power is conjoined, such as Italy, Russia, China and majorly in North Korea. Being frank it is only North Korea that actually succeeds in completely controlling the hearts and minds of its populace, neither China, Russia or even even harsher regimes such as Burma can lay claim to this.
No one said I have to be patriotic. I'm Welsh and Wales hasn't a hope in hell of independence. We're not at war with anyone. The Welsh have almost nothing except an incredible sense of national identity. There is no parliament in Wales, it is an assembly. Wales had no Capital city until fifty years ago, it's identity evolved through its own history not its political leaders because it's never had any. I am not patriotic for any reason other than that I love my country. To argue that this is senseless leaves you arguing that countries are no more communities than your borough. You don't see grudge matches between Denton Holme and the Bothergate boys do you? To argue thus is valid but it leaves you arguing for something that will never happen, you ignore the base of identity, that people do have an identity whether you recognise it or not and that this is defined by race, country, religion and freedom. Of course you may say that having argued for the similarity of people I am now arguing that they are different. I am, but it's true.
Again religion and freedom, these are both ideas that have evolved seperately from the state although it cannot be denied that these have been used far more by the powerbase for its own means. I have irish friends who say they would have gladly joined the IRA, had they been alive in it's time of operations and died in the name of that cause. This is obviously different from British and American soldiers dying in Iraq, but the causes of freedom and religion can not be pinioned into complete cynicism. Even by a cynic such as myself.
There are still noble causes to fight for.
Hope this has cleared up some of my ideas. Again, I wasn't attempting to really provide a coherent argument the first time round, more think myself into an exploration of the issues, whether you agree or disagree with what I have expressed I am glad it has provoked thinking.
A couple of last points (Sorry answered your comment now amending to answer your blog) Yes WE (the national we) have soldiers in Iraq. You don't like it, I don't like it, but we still have soldiers in Iraq, and those soldiers are our responsibility. We may have campaigned against it, but they were still sent and so we, whether we like it or not have collective responsibility, that is how democracy works (not that it does work) that we are all responsible for the actions of the country. If the BNP were to win the next general election, you may have voted against them but unless you actively revolt against them, you are partly responsible for everything they do while in power. We are responsible for our governments actions. If you dislike those actions then you remove the government otherwise you tacitly live with it. I hate the fact that we are in Iraq but seeing as those thousands of people who protested against the war aren't willing to revolt and hold Blair as a war criminal then they, and we, are just as responsible.
Cliche but for evil to triumph it requires only that good people do nothing. So take care when you preach that you protested, what else did you do?
I agree, wars are fought over resources nowadays but I don't agree that this has nothing to do with the general population. Because of Global Warming, it is predicted that by 2012, most of the states in the middle east will be at war with each other over fresh water supplies. That will directly affect the populace, the bill for your heating and petrol for your car is directly affected by the events in the middle east, ok this may seem like the most pathetic thing to argue about, a few quid at the pump for the lives of Iraqi civillians, but I think you underestimate how much each of us have become hotwired into the global world.
I studied under Professor Paul Rogers for two years at Bradford, during that time I discovered just how closely linked everything is. Carlisle is a pretty isolated city, and it's nice like that, but national and international events have direct influence on the business done in the city which then directly affects us, the consumer even if it's how much cash we have in our wallet. It can make a huge difference however, for instance, if Iraq hadn't been invaded, and oil prices were lower, there could be more tax on petrol, giving the Chancellor billions more to spend and essential services, such as Carlisle's flood defences, might have been built a year earlier. Thousands of people across the city would not have been flooded, causing thousands of pounds of cash.
I don't know whether or not that situation could have happened, but it is possible. It's just an example of how we are all affected.
Another thing I learnt at Bradford was that the nature/nurture debate, which you cling to in your argument, really is not helpful at all. Is what we are down to our genes or our environment? Quite frankly you can argue one side or the other for years and not get anywhere. Shakespeare's character of Caliban is a classic view as Caliban, born to a witch on a beautiful island, tries to discover who he really is. Plato and Socrates argue on this question. This was before science even existed, and yet here we are two thousand years later and still no one can answer the nature nurture debate. It's pointless. Human Beings are, the way they are and if you watch them objectively you will see that they exhibit characteristics that mark them out as animals. Which we are. Sure we like to think of ourselves as individuals, we like to think we are capable of independent thought, and we are, but at the same time we must be aware where those thoughts arise from? What are our own bigotries and biases. From your blog I know that you consider yourself a socialist, thereby anything you think is not true socialism, or is anti socialism such as my blog (Even though I consider myself a socialist) you find a need to disparage. Not that this is wrong, but are you aware of where your own thoughts come from? You use examples about yourself in your argument such as you'd rather have a cup of tea than go a round with Tyson, and then you say that you'd bet I'd feel the same. Never ever bet. Know. Other people will not make the same decision as you.
Before you get into a "You say people react predictably, then that they react differently." argument let me clarify.
Tyson vs Cup of Tea, is a decision, one or the other. We use our brains to weigh up the relative merits of both and then make the decision sensibly or adventurously depending on who we are. When I talk about instinct I mean open ended decisions that can have hundreds of consequences. Lets go back to mother with threatened child.
Does the mother attack the threat, protect the child, take the child and run, try and make herself look threatening, stand between the threat and the child or simply run away and leave the child.
Whereas the last decision, one or two, I could call maybe fifty percent of the time, I could call this one maybe seventy five percent of the time depending on the situation. So could you. If the family were animals I could call it a hundred percent.
Do you see how I mean about predictability and instinct. I can go to XS almost any night and could pick the fights. It's part of human nature, summing up danger and whether to avoid it or get involved. Bouncers have to do this all the time. If humans didn't want to fight, they wouldn't. How do you explain boxing, wrestling, all these other "safe" forms of violence? People hate to sit around and debate, they hate to lose what they see as theirs, they hate to be disaffected, they hate to not feel safe. When this happens, anger turns into violence.
Dear Friend, thanks for the reply - very thought provoking. I think I'll deal with the many issues you raise individually in posts on my blog when I haven't got anything else to write about, which is most of the time.
Cheers
Piers
P.S. Please don't 'punch anyone's head in', it could be me.
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