Acceptable Violence

It's the 4th of July. Here in the U.S. it's also known as Independence Day. The day we celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Which is a nice way of saying we won the war with the British. On this day, we light fireworks to represent the cannon fire in the war. We sign the Star Spangled Banner (National Anthem) which is a song depicting a battle in that same war. It would seem that this national holiday is really a celebration of war, violence, and death. Which brings to mind, when is violence acceptable?

From: wikipedia.org

I have struggled with this question for a large portion of my life. Growing up as I did, violence was a common thread in my life. I saw violence all around me. Coming from family, friends, and even myself. I found it excessively difficult to control my temper when I was younger. Finally, in my later years of life, I have found the internal peace I have long sought-after. I have come to see how I had gone wrong in life. I had been a violent person, quick to anger, and attack anything around me just to avoid attacking the people around me. Now that I'm older, wiser, and much calmer I ask myself the same old question. When is violence acceptable?

I come to a simple answer with just a bit of nuance. It's not. Violence is never acceptable. Even in the very few cases I will show as exceptions to this rule, it is regrettable. Violence should never be the first option and only used as a last resort. 

The first exception is self defense. If someone is attacking you then you should defend yourself. Though you should never be the one to throw the first punch. Only what is required to protect yourself and no more. Even if someone pulls a weapon on you, killing that person is not needed. Disarming, and restraining is all that is required. Any more and you move from self defense and into retribution. Also know as vigilantism. You are not the judge, jury, executioner, a comic book hero, or the long ranger. It is not your duty to punish them for the acts of violence they had committed.

The second and last exception is to protect others from violence. Once again, disarming and restraining is all that is required. More violence will not help you or the people you are trying to protect. It will not stop the assailant from committing more acts of violence later on. It will not teach them a lesson. These people need to be rehabilitated, and adding to the violence of their lives will not do that. Showing restraint can start the process. 

The old saying goes, "Sticks and stone may break my bones but words will never hurt me." I was told this many times as a child and I never believed it, and I still don't. Some words hurt. The emotional pain can feel like every bone in your body is breaking all at once. While I can empathise, I cannot condone violence as a response to words. Walking away, or using words in response is the only actions acceptable. 

The human race in general is quick to violence. Attacking people seems to be the first reaction for many. Thus we have wars, mass shootings, domestic abuse, death penalties, gangs, rape, beheadings, and other kinds of atrocities. I can't be the only one that wants these horrible things to end.

Can you imagine the world we would live in if we replaced every bullet fired with a handshake, every fist thrown with a kiss, and every bomb with a flowers? If we replaced every act of violence with a show of love? Can you imagine a world like that? I can, and that is a world in which I want to live and raise my kids.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."   -Carl Sagan in the now epic Pale Blue Dot from the series Cosmos

Carl had a great point in the video. The Earth is just a small world in what we now know to be a universe full of worlds. In the grand cosmic scheme of things our differences on this tiny world are insignificant. Our fighting one another is pointless. However, our cooperation and caring for one another could someday take us beyond this word and beyond the known universe.

I might be some insignificant guy named Rug living in a single house, in a small town, in one of fifty states, in a single country among many, on a tiny planet, orbiting a single star among an uncountable number of starts, on the edge of a average galaxy, in the small cluster of galaxies, taking up a tiny insignificant portion of the known universe, but that is what I think.