Violence

Violence is the last resort of the ignorant.

Lawlessness in this society is predicated on intolerance to violence.  Lawfulness means he can’t stand violence.  He is lawful because he cannot tolerate violence, therefore he’s told he had better be good or he will have to face violence.

The nations of Earth and the police forces and the courts, the bosses the whipmasters, and crime bosses have used this mechanism from time immemorial—rule by violence.  Therefore an individual will recoil from violence and he is promised that in the face of violence he will not be able to survive.  Therefore he must avoid violence by not confronting violence.

You end up with him retreating away from violence until he has no further back to go and he subsequently becomes violent.

In this world, violence and the threat of violence is king.  Violence is the great governing principle at this time and is used by governments as a mechanism to control their citizens. The American government has used this mechanism against Americans from the time the Declaration of Independence was signed.  Shi’ite (not Muslim) governments use this control mechanism against its citizens to keep them in line.

You must have consented at some time or another to be ruled by violence.  To be totally free would be to be to refuse to be intimidated by violence leveled at you that it would have no effect.  Violence fails when a person refuses to consent to be ruled by violence anymore and it suddenly and inexplicably becomes ineffective against him.

An individual that is no longer afraid of violence becomes a very dangerous individual to a State or group that depends totally upon violence for its good order and discipline.  The funny thing is that when you show that you are not afraid of violence, your attacker gets the idea that he is the one that is now in danger.

You and I know that violence in the final analysis never really accomplishes anything lasting in handling people or animals.  When violence is too extravagant, it tends to backfire on itself.

Most Americans carry a gun.  The reason is not what we think it is; to protect themselves.  They have lived with violence and the threat of violence so long that they have recoiled from violence and its threat that they have become intolerant of violence and therefore have become violent—they have embraced violence instead of confronting it.

Is it any wonder that gun control did not pass the Senate—the fear of violence and the Republicans’ imminent fear of the loss of control of Americans by violence is why it did not pass.  Violence begets violence—fear of violence also begets violence.  Violent individuals such as the NRA and the terrorist group Anonymous are cowards.  They have guns because they have a fear of people.

You give somebody a gun, after a while he gets the idea that he ought to use it.  Guns have nothing to do with law and order; they create explosions and chaos.  Policing something with violence is not to police it.

In Barack Obama’s speech, he centered on getting us to confront violence by saying “bombs can’t touch us”.  He’s saying confront violence.  Have a flippant “so what?” attitude to violence.  Take back your power by not being afraid of violence.  That attitude scares the hell out of the violent.

Meeting violence to solve a problem never solves anything.

Every now and then some city gets bombed.  Somebody decides to make the world safe for fascism, safe for Al Qaeda, safe for democracy, safe for somebody, by engaging in violence--that's the most unsafe thing they could possibly do.

Violence by definition is an uncontrolled commotion.  You don't want one. I don't want one.  But who said you couldn't control a commotion? I didn't.  Who said a commotion had to exist?  Who defines a series of motions as a commotion?  We can ask all sorts of interesting questions of this proposition of violence.

If you want to set people free at large, it would be necessary to change their mind on the subject of what they should obey.  If they should obey good sense, good control, if they would obey orderliness, they would continue to be free.

But if they continue to be indoctrinated into the idea that they should obey violence, they will again become very unfree.

If you carry that out very far, you should say, "Any State or government or group or individual that maintains itself by threat of violence and an absence of reason is not only doomed to fail but is doomed to carry with it the corpses of all those who have consented to its violence".

America lives by the Code of Hammurabi.  That was, one time, the thing used by reformers.  They said, “We’re going to make a society a good society and the way we’re going to do that is extract an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  That’ll teach them”.

Now here’s our problem as a society.  Individuals in this society are being subjected to violence of great magnitude in terms of great humanity and every individual that’s pushed a little further off the line with violence degrades the society just that much more.  People’s willingness to help and to live is reduced.  What is a society’s will to survive but the collective will of the individual to live?  That’s all it is.