In his book, On Combat, Col Dave Grossman teaches the universal human phobia is being violently attacked by another human. We fear other people more than anything.
Some of the best information I've ever come across is in the book, When Violence Is The Answer, by Tim Larkin. Larkin wrote, "A bigger, stronger, faster person, intent on doing you grievous bodily harm, is a base fear of every human. It’s only natural to try to push those fears out of our minds when we lack the skills and the knowledge to act effectively in defense of ourselves and our loved ones. Instead, we hope our fears are never realized and we try to rationalize them away: 'I don’t need to worry about this. I live in the right neighborhood. I have the right friends. I am a good person. Stuff like this doesn’t happen to people like me.' I’m sorry, but you’re wrong." The quotes used below all come from When Violence Is The Answer.
So what do we do? Instead of rationalizing the fear and hoping for the best, we dismantle it by learning about it. To be prepared to defend ourselves, we must understand violence. Buying a gun does not make you safe. A gun is simply a tool. It's hardware. You need the software (knowledge, skill, and understanding) to create safety and find peace of mind.
"Violence is rarely the answer, but when it is, it’s the only answer." We live in a society that believes 'violence is never the answer', but that's false. Violence is just a tool. It's good or bad depending on the person or group wielding it. No amount of negotiation, talking or placating would have defeated the Nazi threat to Europe and the world - just violence. Violence was the only tool that would defeat the Nazis. Sometimes violence is the answer.
"As a society, we struggle to distinguish between violence and the people who use it. Since we mostly associate violence with criminals, we tell ourselves that violence itself is criminal, violence is evil, violence is bad. We think that because violence is undesirable, to study it is to endorse it—to say that we think it is desirable. There is a certain logic to this point of view at the surface. If criminals do something often enough, that something is probably going to be criminal itself… we tell ourselves that, because criminals often use violence, violence itself is always criminal. But that’s a big mistake: violence is a tool like any other. As with any other tool, the proper object of our moral and ethical judgment isn’t the “what”—after all, you wouldn’t call a screwdriver or a toothbrush evil—but rather the “why,” the ends to which human beings choose to direct it."
"If violence becomes inevitable and inescapable, you must never hesitate to harness your knowledge and lean on your training to protect yourself. You must never let thoughts about what violence means or says delay its utilization, because in those moments where it is necessary, there is no room for nuance and semantics. There is no time to parse a predator’s intent, to figure out what is going on inside their head, to understand how they think and what kind of moral code they have (or don’t have)."
The Two Types of Violence
Social Aggression: "They are quasi-violent scenarios that stem from conflict and jockeying within the social hierarchy. I call them quasi-violent not because I don’t take them seriously, but rather because they don’t always involve violence as we understand it—sometimes it’s just talking or threatening—and they’re less about physically destroying the other person than they are about asserting social dominance, gaining some advantage, or elevating social status. That’s why people instinctively want to gather around and watch these types of conflicts, because they want to see what happens."
Asocial Violence: "I call violence of this nature “asocial.” Asocial violence is violence that has nothing to do with communication or reshuffling the pecking order. Asocial violence is nothing like that: it doesn’t try to change the order, it tries to wreck the order. It’s the kind of violent interaction we instinctively run from—the kind in which there is only mayhem, death, misery, and horror. (The knockout game is asocial violence.) At the end of the day, all violence has the potential to be a matter of life or death. The difference with asocial violence is that death and destruction are not its by-products; they are its purpose. It is essential we understand this distinction between social aggression and asocial violence right now. Social aggression is about competition; asocial violence is about destruction. Competition has rules; destruction has none. Social aggression is about communication—implicitly with status indicators but explicitly with lots of taunting and posturing. There is no talking with asocial violence."
If there is one reliable way to distinguish between the two kinds of violent encounter, it is the presence or absence of communication. If a man comes upon you from behind as you’re walking home from dinner and he puts a gun to your head and says, “Give me your wallet or I’ll blow your brains out,” that is fundamentally an act of social aggression. It may feel asocial, because you feel powerless when you’re taken by surprise, but how you feel has nothing to do with whether a situation is social or asocial. What matters is the intent and the action of the attacker. In this scenario, his primary motive is not to destroy, it’s to dominate. He’s using the threat of violence to make it easier to get what he wants. If the situation were asocial, if what he wanted to do was destroy you, you would not hear any words. You probably wouldn’t even hear the hammer cock before the trigger got pulled and the bullet left the chamber.
You can rarely, if ever, talk yourself out of asocial violence. Asocial violence doesn’t care about your social skills. Negotiating with an Asocially violent person, like a terrorist, serial killer, etc, is like arguing with a bullet. If it’s coming your way, words won’t deflect it. If somebody has decided to stab you to death, capitulation doesn’t appease them. It only makes their work easier. When it comes to asocial violence, if you have not been able to foresee and escape it, you must render your attacker one of three ways to survive: incapacitated, unconscious, or dead.
Sometimes violence is the answer - and when it is, it's the only answer.