Violence in Never OK
Who among us has never gotten so mad or so aggrieved or so aggressive as to resort to violence to give emphasis and voice to our feelings? I believe few men can make that claim and probably most women would be unable to make that claim. I make the gender specification because it seems to me that there is some hard-wiring in the male psyche that defaults to violence when threatened. I’ll bet I got violent a few times before this, but I remember once in 7th Grade when I lived in Maine for a few years when I resorted to violence. South-central Maine was a pretty rough area back in the mid-60s when we moved there. I recall that for my birthday I was in Ralphie mode (from A Christmas Story) in that there was nothing I wanted more than a BB gun rifle. And despite my mother’s fervent distaste for guns, she relented on the guilty feeling that as the sole male in a family of emails, she might be doing my male psyche a disservice by not satisfying that urge. I went out and inflicted violence on an innocent bird for no particular reason. It was not threatening me and it was certainly not a food source. I also tried to inflict violence on a chipmunk but got more than I gave once I cornered him in a outdoor cellar stair. But it was in the Poland Community School (Grades K-8) that I got to experience violence between humans.
During recess, there was always a struggle between the boys for the limited array of sporting equipment that the school made available. I am reminded of that scene from The Last Castle when James Gandolfini, the warden of a military prison, tell his subordinate to only put out one basketball in order to drive us the prisoner tension level. Well, Poland Community School also only put out one basketball for recess. It so happened that my friend got hold of it when a class bully grabbed him around the neck from behind, trying to unseat the ball from his grasp. It was clear from the surprise attack that my friend was getting choked out, probably not to any serious harm, but physically assaulted at very least. My reaction was immediate and visceral. I knocked the bully’s hand off of his neck and proceeded to punch him three or four times in the stomach, which was unprotected, such that he fell backwards and tumbled over a desk to the floor. He was more stunned than hurt because despite my size, I was known more for my academic prowess than anything of a physical nature. I was, at that moment neither happy nor sad about my reaction, and stood there with balled fists expecting a follow-on which never came since the male teacher came over to intercede. His reaction was to say, “Nice going” to me and to tell the bully that “that’ll teach you…”. That was it, fight over. I had not only been absolved of responsibility, but I was even applauded for my reaction. In the moment, I felt good about what I had done.
In the years that have passed since then, I have not been so kind to myself for my reaction. I realize that my act of violence was in reaction to unprovoked violence and that it was done, not on my own behalf, but in defense of a friend. But that doesn’t really matter. I met violence with violence and ended the exchange with that. It could have gone on to further violence had the teacher not interceded and either my friend, nearby spectators or even I might have been the recipients of greater, escalated violence due to my reaction. But more importantly than the possibility of contingent consequences, there is the absolute fact that violence is never justifiable, even if that is the only thing that might stop the unprovoked violence. What I did was wrong. What I should have done was to use the force necessary to disengage the threat to my friend and then forced the bully to be more reasonable and to stop. Someone is bound to say that the only thing a bully understands is violence, but I must reject that argument. I should and would have turned the other cheek when confronted if I had thought this through properly. But that would have required me to subvert my cerebral cortex reaction and replace it with an informed, thoughtful and conscientious response from my cerebellum.
What separates us from the animals is that we have a cerebellum capable of overriding our brain stem primordial reactions. It is why men do not throw women down on the street and rape them or push down a weaker person and steal their possessions. It’s called civilization and it is defined as “the stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced.”. It is what we call a state of grace and it is the goal of human development for almost all people of the world.
Last night at the Academy Awards, actor Will Smith, an A-list actor who was on the cusp of receiving his Oscar for Best Actor in a movie called CODA, walked up on stage and slapped Chris Rock, an A-list comedian who was hosting the proceedings at that moment. Rock had made a joke at the expense of Smith’s wife, Jada, who suffers from alopecia, which has caused her to lose her hair. Smith’s reaction was to disrupt the show and violently strike Rock in response to what he took to be an offense about his wife. While most of Hollywood did not know what to make of the interaction at that moment, the overwhelming reaction in the press is to condemn Smith for his actions. This is absolutely the right reaction to this event. There is nothing unusual about comedians taking shots at people both within the realm of good taste or outside of it. In some ways, it is normal for comedians to offend someone during their shows. To Chris Rock’s credit, after acknowledging that Will Smith’s slap was neither perfunctory nor non-violent, he carried on with his act and finished his job while the audience tried desperately to digest what had just happened. When Will Smith was called up for his Best Actor win, he was clearly emotional and apologized to the guests and the Academy, but did not apologize to Chris Rock. It was half a loaf and did not do much to absolve Smith of his wrongdoing.
People love to say that this sort of altercation is nonsense in the face of a war in Ukraine that is having devastating outcomes for Ukrainian people and Russian soldiers alike. I disagree. It is relatively easy to see the wrongness of a military invasion which, despite the thin false-narrative of Putin, was unprovoked. We can all feel the wrong in the bombed hospitals, the massive refugee flows and the tear-jerking pictures of injured and dead children caught as collateral damage by this display of aggressive violence. But it is the civility of our everyday interactions that sets the tone for the world. A physical slap given for an insult is the first step in escalating violence to the point where might makes right and that is simply NOT right. Will Smith needs for the sake of his immortal soul to apologize for his actions. He must acknowledge the headstrong wrongness of the act and tell the world that it is important to acknowledge our mistakes (we are ALL fallible) and then explain as I have here, that violence is NEVER OK.