On Violence
On Violence.
I am not a violent man.
I am also an incredibly violent man.
In nature violence is ubiquitous and essentially involved in any natural process. When I say violence in nature I do not mean simply the predator tearing into prey, I mean any action in which a state of stability is disrupted or a course of events is severed.
When an egg hatches and new life is born into the world the shell is shattered and fluids spill forth from the wound.
When sunlight warms an object the energy from billions of atoms tearing apart and reuniting is disrupting the unity and calmness of the material it heats.
When the waves lap the shore the entirity of all the water on earth is being yanked and thrown by the gargantuan mass of our moon.
All things in the universe are in their own way violent; be that through the overwhelming force of gravity, the viscera of metabolic interchanges or the metaphysical jerking within the mind of a single being. Violence is all around us and all actions are either an effort to enact violent change or lessen it.
Physical violence is in itself a beautiful metaphor for the cosmic sword dance we find ourselves intwined with. Ever we are blocking attempts on our lives by chance and fate, and ever we strike at god with our attempts to progress or change our lives or circumstance. We grapple and clinch the universe in struggles of art or struggles of health and we dominate and kill with our large strokes of metaphysical motion.
When I quit a job I am killing a version of me that stayed in that job. When I leave a partner I am murdering our children and their descendants. When I write a post I am gnawing at the sanity preserved by contentment and procrastination.
All these examples and poeticisms are enjoyable to partake in but are shadows cast by my meaning when writing this; that parallels between physical violence and metaphysical violence are essential to understand.
When I fight I do not seek to lightly irritate my opponent, I do not seek a draw or a happy reconciliation, and nor can I take back strikes given nor can apologies heal the wounds inflicted upon me. In life, as in fighting, decisiveness and commitment are paramount, for to half act leaves one in a limbo gaining all of the negatives of the course chosen and precious few of the positives if any at all. The beauty of real combat is that one can clearly see the effects of a strike if one is acclimatised to the sport; a luxury we rarely have in life.
When we are decisive in a fight we are committed to our actions, we dodge fully from blows, we strike with force and we bring to bear all of our skill and strength on our chosen opponent. Metaphysical violence is no different; when we are decisive and committed in our life and actions we find that the effects are full and our potency as an actor on our stage is displayed to our own mind; the wounds we inflict on the universe being those changes we wish to see.
A common adage is ‘strike first, strike hard’. The meaning of this phrase is that often the first agent to act decisively will – through their truth of action – most often attain the desired result. The sucker punch, the pre-emptive strike and the goading movements of intimidation are only effective if absolutely decisive and absolutely sure in their aims. We must be prepared to sucker punch our lives in order to inflict damage enough to be able to enact our will.
Another aspect of violence is mastery.
When I speak of mastery I speak of one’s ability to decide the course which their life will take. Earlier I spoke of metaphysical violence and the ability to extract from the universe the things we want via decisive movements, but now I speak of the literal.
A phrase is common in some circles; ‘violence is golden’. Never in my life have I heard something so absolutely true. The gold standard of any physical agent must essentially boil down to the most universally applicable skill, talent or ability they have, a skilled orator can act widely on the social level and gain through this, an open minded and intelligent person may be able to act on a level below this, as we see in sociopaths making moves below the cognitive radar of most people. At the very bottom of this we see a creature with claws and tusks and rippling muscle, coupled with the innate sense of danger.
Before words and before sociality and before cooperation there was blood. Once words fail, once social skill fails, once the raw instinct of our cooperative species fails there will still be, at the very bottom, blood.
Violence, threat and the ability to destroy will forever underpin the psyche of any intelligent creature with a physical body, and this is incredibly important. Any plan of any scale by any intelligence will always be foiled by application of violence one way or another, and because of this it is essential that any person seeking true power, respect or self sufficiency must be present on the plane of violence, or the foundations underpinning their ability will be unstable and unsafe.
No skill will ever matter as much as the ability to physically be violent. No person will ever receive true and total respect if they are not clearly capable of violence. Without violence, any other creature at any time always will have the option of applying their will to us through force of violence, and if we cannot resist it with our own we will be undone. No matter our intelligence or beauty or social standing or wealth, if we are unable to match the violence applied to us we are instantly overwhelmed.
Self mastery is the ability to decide the course of their life, and I would be willing to believe that precious few of us wish for their lives to be dictated by lesser men capable of greater violence.
When earlier I wrote that I am not a violent man, I meant that if you were to ask anyone who knows me if I was cruel or violent in a traditional abrahamic sense, they would reply that no, I am not cruel, I am not violent, I am friendly and calm.
When earlier I wrote that I am an incredibly violent man, I meant that if you asked someone if I had power over my life, they would reply that I have absolute power over my life.
Integral to my life is freedom. Integral to freedom is self mastery. Integral to self mastery is violence.
The ability to be violent is the ability to be free of other wills being forced upon you.
The ability to be violent is essential to freedom.
‘Speak softly, and carry a big stick.’ - Roosevelt.
