Thoughts on Violence

Some of the recent news has got me thinking about the topic of violence, specifically its reality vs. its depiction in media and the many misconceptions surrounding it. It's something I think about more often than most people are comfortable admitting, but I suppose one of the perks of being a psychiatrist is that people find it slightly less alarming coming from me than from, say, their plumber or nanny. I also happen to work in a setting with a higher than average incidence of violence, so I have reasons to think about this aside from my own morbid curiosity and personal experiences. I’d been planning on writing something on this subject for a while, and I figured this was as good a time as any.

Generally speaking, our public discourse on the topic of violence is conflicted at best, but more often than not it’s just incoherent. The psychiatrist in me thinks we’re so deeply ambivalent about violence on a societal level that we can’t even discuss it rationally, hence the ludicrous pairing of slogans like “Violence will NOT be tolerated” with literally almost any other aspect of American culture, to pick just one example. Frank and honest discourse on the topic is lacking, in part due to our cultural ambivalence, but also because so many salient and instructive episodes of violence are highly politicized, rendering them insulated from sober-minded inquiry. Here, however, I’ll focus more on situational specifics and leave the cultural diagnosing for another time. The substance of my thoughts is below. The main purpose of this introduction is to state emphatically that none of this is intended to be partisan, aimed at “left” or “right”, or to advocate for any particular policy, cause, or group. While some of these issues are, of course, political, my overriding purpose is to encourage honest discourse on this topic and to reduce needless injury and death.

1 - Being in a violent encounter is a bit like sex in the sense that if you’ve never experienced it, you really cannot imagine what it’s like, and your attempts to do so will inevitably be unrealistic.

2 - If you have never been in a violent encounter before, then any intuitions you have about whether you would run, stand and fight, or do this or that are unreliable—you don’t know what you’d do.

3 - A situation can escalate from seemingly benign, or slightly tense, right into homicide in a split second.

4 - Observing a violent encounter in retrospect or from a distance almost inevitably results in dramatically underestimating the sheer chaos and confusion inherent in the situation. The ability to analyze a video frame-by-frame fuels the illusion that those acting in the situation at the time should/could have considered each of their actions with the same thoroughness and scrutiny we’re subjecting them to after the fact. This perspective obscures the incredible speed at which events transpire and in which life or death decisions must be made on woefully incomplete information. It ignores the effects of the adrenaline surge on the body, the tunnel vision, distorted sense of time, fumbling fine motor skills, tremor, involuntary bladder and bowel activity, the tendency of many to either freeze in terror or run around in a disorganized panic, and so on. Real violence does not obey the rules of turn-based RPGs in which you have the leisure to consider all the pros and cons of your next move before acting.

5 - Many fail to appreciate the kinetic energy imparted by a punch from a man who really means it. Mike Tyson was, of course, completely correct when he said “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. For those who have never been in that situation, it is difficult to convey the degree of disorientation and shock you experience when it lands, as all thoughts suddenly vacate your brain. It’s like a combination of that uncanny “jolt” when you miscount the last step on the way down the stairs and, well, getting punched in the face. Furthermore, many seem to be unaware that a single punch to the head can sometimes be fatal, either from the strike landing at a particularly unlucky angle, or else the skull’s subsequent collision with the pavement, curb, or whatever else it smashes into.

6 - Having alcohol in the veins of one or more participants is a reliable way to make an escalation to violence dramatically more likely and more rapid.

7 - Conversely: along with not having lethal weapons handy, removing alcohol (and inebriated people) from a situation is usually the single most effective intervention for lowering the ambient risk of violence.

8 - Despite the apparent ubiquity of violence in our culture, most depictions of it range between mildly and thoroughly fantastical, even in supposedly “realistic” movies. Most movie fight scenes—and media depictions of violence more generally—reliably distort almost every aspect of what a realistic violent encounter actually looks like. These distortions nearly all point in the direction of making fighting look easier (and safer) than it is.

9 - It takes one fight to realize actual opponents don’t cooperate the way they do on screen. Movie fights are choreographed to make the participants look good, or at least have the action be legible to the viewer, which is the precise opposite of most actual fights.

10 - Trying to fight an armed assailant is a last resort—only when escape is impossible and people are at risk of imminent serious injury or death.

11 - Movies depicting untrained people picking up guns for the first time and using them competently/safely to defend themselves are sending a dangerous message.

12 - If you’re defending yourself against someone wielding a knife, even if you survive, assume you will get very badly stabbed/slashed in the process. Knife wounds can be truly horrific.

13 - Engaging multiple combatants alone is an excellent way to get beaten or killed very quickly. Unlike in the movies, if you’re fighting multiple people, they typically don’t take turns conveniently coming at you one at a time.

14 - If you are untrained and are squaring off against a man who knows how to fight, you will almost certainly lose.

15 - Movies and TV now commonly portray women as being able to go toe to toe with men in a fight and hold their own. This is even the case in some non-superhero/fantasy genres, where realism is otherwise considered a value. While most of us understand this is fiction and either don’t care at all or are perhaps mildly annoyed on aesthetic grounds, a very small but non-trivial minority of women increasingly engage in rhetoric and behavior that might indicate they consider these depictions as plausible. Needless to say, this is an extremely dangerous misconception to hold.

16 - If you’re a woman and your spidey sense tells you “this guy/situation is dangerous”, you should listen to that feeling. Do not let fear of impropriety or social awkwardness prevent you from protecting yourself.

17 - If when viewing a video involving a police shooting you think anything in the vicinity of, “why didn’t they just shoot him in the leg?” then you have no idea how violence or firearms work. It takes most people a good bit of training to be able to reliably shoot stationary targets accurately using a pistol in a controlled range environment. Now, imagine (do not actually try this!) how difficult it would be to hit that stationary target if your friend were standing behind you screaming in your ear, or if you were trying to balance on a slippery surface, or if someone were lunging at you with a knife, or while you’re attending to the screams of a bystander. Imagine all of those together, plus some. It is pure fantasy to imagine that in the fractions of a second during an adrenaline-fueled life or death struggle, someone could aim his pistol at a small, rapidly moving target (a leg) while he himself is also in motion, with the purpose of specifically disabling his opponent.

18 - A fight that you win can still ruin your life. Even in cases of necessary self-defense, “victory” doesn’t necessarily mean you come out looking or feeling better. Maybe a jury isn’t convinced you had no alternative to violence. Maybe your relationships are damaged in any number of ways. Maybe your injuries don’t heal by the next scene like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible. Maybe maiming or killing someone has some unintended psychological effects on you.

19 - While violence in self-defense is sometimes necessary, generally speaking the single most effective self-defense technique that exists is to simply leave the situation as quickly as possible—just walk away. Most violence between men involves a large amount of ego, specifically the kind that can’t stand being disrespected and can’t back down. While superficial, immature versions of manliness might see walking away as cowardly or not sticking up for oneself, if you ask men who regularly work around violence they will give you more or less the same advice: the fight isn’t worth it.

20 - In terms of civilians and protestors engaging with armed agents of the state: there seems to be an alarming ignorance (or reckless disregard) among some people of the fundamental asymmetries at play regarding the use of force. Some seem genuinely surprised when law enforcement actually uses force to accomplish their assigned tasks. To be clear: I’m not taking a position on the merits of any particular protest or police action, nor passing judgment on any cause or “side”, nor am I trying to dissuade people from petitioning their government for a redress of grievances; but rather to state the plain reality of the situation. That reality—it can’t be emphasized enough—is that protestors are going up against men who have trained for violent confrontation, possess weapons and protective equipment, a coordinated hierarchy with clear chains of command, and the availability of armed reinforcements. The protestors have none of these things. Most importantly, however, the police have the legal authority to use force, and when they do, they don’t mess around. Needless to say, whether that use of force is judged to have been legitimate/constitutional in any particular instance is another question; the point here is that law enforcement have the presumed authority to use force in specified circumstances when they deem it necessary. The clips of civilians’ shocked and bewildered expressions as they are manhandled by police might be made the object of ridicule online, as some unsympathetic commenters relish the sight of a protestor’s belated realization which seems to say, “wait, I thought there were takebacksies, I didn’t realize this was for real!” It should be kept firmly in mind, however, that this is the exact same expression on the face of the unfortunate person who, after critically misjudging the police’s current sense of threat, gets shot to death within seconds of a scuffle breaking out. While these outcomes are tragic and should be investigated with close scrutiny, surprise at their occurrence is a sign of deep naïveté. Police carry guns for a reason. As most of us know, law enforcement does not typically respond to what they deem to be obstruction or threats by engaging you in a slap fight as you each flail at the other with your heads turned away. Rightly or wrongly, they will tackle you, pile on, very likely hurt you, definitely not be looking out for your comfort in the slightest, and you might end up dead if things go sufficiently sideways. When groups of shouting people are in the equation, the entire situation becomes that much more combustible. The police aren’t playing a game, and while many protestors are deeply serious about their cause and responsible in carrying it out, too many are cavalier and reckless in ways that put lives needlessly at risk.

21 - Just because you don’t intend to escalate a situation to overt violence doesn’t mean the other person also knows that. This is especially true when interacting with law enforcement, who don’t know whether the next routine traffic stop is the one they get a gun pulled on them. While many police officers will patiently and reasonably try to de-escalate a situation, using force minimally and only when necessary, not all of them will, and pushing a cop’s buttons is not something worth gambling your life on.