Violence and Elephants
The old tale from Jainism on the blind men describing an elephant works well for our fantasy of "understanding" violence.
The topic always reminds me of a long quote from Rory Miller's Meditations on Violence, a book that I read many years ago.
Know this: Watching every martial arts movie ever filmed gives you as much understanding of fighting as a child watching Dumbo learned about elephants. Learning a martial art often teaches you as much as a taxidermist would know about elephants. Watching boxing or the UFC teaches as much as a trip to the zoo or the circus. Really, really studying the best research available gives you an incredible amount of knowledge about violence or about elephants, but there is always one detail missing.
When you are standing next to an elephant, it is huge. It could crush you at will or tear you in half, and there is nothing you could do. The advantage of being blind, of only knowing a part of this beast, is the comfortable illusion of safety.
Violence is a beast we can't "see". It changes shapes continually. And I'm not sure that there is something to "understand".
It's a hydra with many heads. Infinite variables drown in an unpredictable mix of adrenaline, emotion, survival, and craziness. All in different proportions. Not one recipe fits for all cases of violence.
Can we get rid of human violence?
Don't think so. It's a nice hard proposal.
Violence is part of nature. Humans are part of nature. The undesirable thing still lives inside us - just check your path through life for real. Under enough friction, the heat makes us explode.
For the old English violence was part of life. Peace? A brief interval between battles. They danced around the Comitatus (think tribal here). The same for most old American Indians tribes. Warfare was a path to prestige and personal achievements.
Maybe to coexist with violence is our wyrd (fate/destiny before becoming "weird"). The Wæl-wulf (Slaughter-Wolf) spirit can't be exorcised from the human soul yet. We are the same old folks, just changed clothes.
Back to the title of this post:
What violence and elephants have in common?
Both are HUGE. Just go to the zoo.