The Immortality of Violence

The thing no one wants to admit

Stephen was a highly successful trial attorney in our state's capital city, which wasn't a shock given who he was. He was an intelligent, witty and cunning individual with sharply defined good looks to match his brilliant mind.

He had a spectacular, sprawling home on the good side of town. Expensive new cars to compliment his well tailored suits and designer watches. He was creative, charismatic, shrewd, rich and entrepreneurial to round off the enchanted life he enjoyed.

Yet all of that meant absolutely nothing as he stared down the barrel of his own gun. Held pointed at his face where he laid on his king sized bed while some highschool drop out, who couldn't even write his own name, demanded the combination to the safe his partner waited in front of.

Violence is eternal.

Your utopia will never come.

I am fully aware that this is a grim opening to what you may believe is going to be a cynical take in things. This is not a prediction of doom or sorrow. I'm simply approaching things as I perceive them to be vs how we’d like them to be. I'm looking at us as a whole rather than as the pieces we find appealing.

The reason I know that the Utopians will never have their promised land is because they fail to understand, or even acknowledge, a fundamental truth about the human race.

Some people are better than others.

Calm down, I'm not interested in your “everyone is equal” copy-and-paste take on the matter. I understand that's what you want but it doesn't hold up under even accidental scrutiny. There is no scenario where two people are actually equal.

To paraphrase “The Incredibles”, If everyone is special then that means no one is.

The world will always have people who are more successful than others. You can try to reorganize society all you'd like however some people are going to be smarter than others. There will always be the prettiest girl in the room. Some men are natural problem solvers. Someone is the comedian, the scientist, the accountant, the charmer.

There's no way around it. You can start two people off with absolutely identical lives and one is going to outperform the other in some way. Even clones, starting from the same position, will end up in different places. We're not AI androids just yet. However, that's simply a thought exercise since we all know people aren't starting from the same position.

With all of that said about those with natural advantages, we now must cover those without. The dumb, the uncreative, the ugly, those who got the short end of the stick. Pick your disadvantage, there are an equal number to choose from as there are qualities the winners enjoy. Anything you're good at, there's people who aren't.

I went to a Catholic High School for a very brief moment. I had been expelled from all of the local public schools and my old man basically tricked them into letting me enroll and then never paid them a single penny in tuition. That's another story for another time. However, during my very brief visit, I encountered an entirely different species of human being.

Rich kids.

Walking down the halls in that stupid button up shirt and a clip-on tie I studied them like a wolf cub that had stumbled into a butcher shop. I wasn't sure where to even begin but I did know I was going to eat well past my fill.

They were born into comfort and I could smell it on them. I wasn't jealous but I did resent them for it. They could tell in turn that I didn't belong and made the mistake of thinking that the “mean school kid” schtick could work on me. Even at 15 years old I was already a veteran of the “You Gon' Learn” war with life.

One of those Most-Likely-to-X types thought he'd show everyone how cool he was before class by making a sideways comment about my smell. I did stink, so he wasn't being dishonest. However, his tone made whether or not he was right irrelevant. I wasn't one to be made an example of, but I made a damn fine lesson that follows.

Close your eyes and picture a popular preppy Catholic school boy. What does he look like? Got an image? Amazing, you have psychic powers because that's exactly what he looked like. Blonde side-part haircut and all.

I got up from my desk, walked over to him and slapped him across his face like I was throwing a jab. Stunned he reflexively placed his hand over where I had struck him with his mouth hanging open like a mute soprano vocalist. The moment his breath gave me the impression he might try to utter a protest I knocked his hand away and jab-slapped him in the exact same spot a second time.

You're not in charge here.

That's because violence is the great equalizer. The option available to all people no matter what disadvantages they may suffer. That kid had everything in life on me, was superior to me by every measurable metric, yet I negated all of them by being better with just one. Even the system itself was on his side with its rules and consequences and favoritism. He had his advantages, I had mine.

And you think there could ever be a world without violence?

You think the lowly will ever give up the one thing they have to stay in the game?

“bUt WHaT iF eVerYonE WaS tReAtED eqUaLLy?” What if we all had the same resources and opportunities and…. Well, you know the selling points.

That wouldn't change my original point. So long as intelligence or cunning or charisma and anything else you could imagine exists, there will always be people who are above others. Advantages create class systems completely independently of any intelligent planning. Someone is going to be on top no matter how utopian this world becomes. And if someone is on top, then people will be below them living by their “good graces”.

Even if you take war and greed and fear and ideology out of the mix, on a simple human to human level, we can never be the same. We're not robots and even if we become that, I'm still right. Violence must exist so long as humanity does.

But why bring all of this up? I recognize that it must feel a little doom and gloom for the average reader. I bring it up because it's impossible to respond to the world around you if you're not willing to be honest about it. It's living life with blinders on which makes you nieve and vulnerable to danger.

By accepting that “capacity for violence” is a core human quality, no different than measuring your IQ, you can approach situations honestly and with a clearer mind. You can see things as they are rather than as you want them to be.

None of this is to make excuses for pain and victimization. There must be consequences, things in place to maintain order. Something our society is actually very successful at doing. I am not saying it's superior, I am simply saying that it is an unavoidable aspect of humanity. Stop ignoring one of the core fundamentals to being human.

Violence causes pain and destruction but so does fire. It's no more dangerous than the brilliant scientific minds that invent bombs. And just like how those scientists misused intelligence, violence is absolutely misused the vast majority of the time. Yet it can also be righteous as well. The things that make us human are not themselves inherently evil though how we apply them can be. Punish those who abuse it but don't pretend they're being abnormal.

What must be recognized that our violent tendencies can no more be eradicated than any other aspect of being human. To say “a world without violence” is no different than saying a world without intelligence or creativity or philosophy or any other characteristics that make us, us.

We're a package deal as a species. We can build individually the person we're going to be however it's all standing atop a foundation we all share. Acknowledge it so that aspect can be worked with because you can not eradicate it. Say what you want about Stephen and those thugs, they were all equally people doing what people do.

You may like one side better than the other but that doesn't change the permanency of things.

Violence is here to stay. Act accordingly.